it, my lad. How do, Patsy!
_[Hypatia kisses him]._ How is my Chickabiddy? _[He kisses Mrs
Tarleton's hand and poses expansively in the middle of the picture]._
Look at me! Look at these wrinkles, these gray hairs, this repulsive
mask that you call old age! What is it? _[Vehemently]_ I ask you,
what is it?

BENTLEY. Jolly nice and venerable, old man. Dont be discouraged.

TARLETON. Nice? Not a bit of it. Venerable? Venerable be blowed!
Read your Darwin, my boy. Read your Weismann. _[He goes to the
sideboard for a drink of lemonade]._

MRS TARLETON. For shame, John! Tell him to read his Bible.

TARLETON. _[manipulating the syphon]_ Whats the use of telling
children to read the Bible when you know they wont. I was kept away
from the Bible for forty years by being told to read it when I was
young. Then I picked it up one evening in a hotel in Sunderland when
I had left all my papers in the train; and I found it wasnt half bad.
_[He drinks, and puts down the glass with a smack of enjoyment]._
Better than most halfpenny papers, anyhow, if only you could make
people believe it. _[He sits down by the writing-table, near his
wife]._ But if you want to understand old age scientifically, read
Darwin and Weismann. Of course if you want to understand it
romantically, read about Solomon.

MRS TARLETON. Have you had tea, John?

TARLETON. Yes. Dont interrupt me when I'm improving the boy's mind.
Where was I? This repulsive mask--Yes. _[Explosively]_ What is
death?

MRS TARLETON. John!

HYPATIA. Death is a rather unpleasant subject, papa.

TARLETON. Not a bit. Not scientifically. Scientifically it's a
delightful subject. You think death's natural. Well, it isnt. You
read Weismann. There wasnt any death to start with. You go look in
any ditch outside and youll find swimming about there as fresh as
paint some of the identical little live cells that Adam christened in
the Garden of Eden. But if big things like us didnt die, we'd crowd
one another off the face of the globe. Nothing survived, sir, except
the sort of people that had the sense and good manners to die and make
room for the fresh supplies. And so death was introduced by Natural
Selection. You get it out of your head, my lad, that I'm going to die
because I'm wearing out or decaying. Theres no such thing as decay to
a vital man. I shall clear out; but I shant decay.

BENTLEY. And what about the wrinkles and the almond tr