ergy] question for question. Can a sane man
translate Euripides?

CUSINS. No.

UNDERSHAFT [reining him by the shoulder] Can a sane woman make a
man of a waster or a woman of a worm?

CUSINS [reeling before the storm] Father Colossus--Mammoth
Millionaire--

UNDERSHAFT [pressing him] Are there two mad people or three in
this Salvation shelter to-day?

CUSINS. You mean Barbara is as mad as we are!

UNDERSHAFT [pushing him lightly off and resuming his equanimity
suddenly and completely] Pooh, Professor! let us call things by
their proper names. I am a millionaire; you are a poet; Barbara
is a savior of souls. What have we three to do with the common
mob of slaves and idolaters? [He sits down again with a shrug of
contempt for the mob].

CUSINS. Take care! Barbara is in love with the common people. So
am I. Have you never felt the romance of that love?

UNDERSHAFT [cold and sardonic] Have you ever been in love with
Poverty, like St Francis? Have you ever been in love with Dirt,
like St Simeon? Have you ever been in love with disease and
suffering, like our nurses and philanthropists? Such passions are
not virtues, but the most unnatural of all the vices. This love
of the common people may please an earl's granddaughter and a
university professor; but I have been a common man and a poor
man; and it has no romance for me. Leave it to the poor to
pretend that poverty is a blessing: leave it to the coward to
make a religion of his cowardice by preaching humility: we know
better than that. We three must stand together above the common
people: how else can we help their children to climb up beside
us? Barbara must belong to us, not to the Salvation Army.

CUSINS. Well, I can only say that if you think you will get her
away from the Salvation Army by talking to her as you have been
talking to me, you don't know Barbara.

UNDERSHAFT. My friend: I never ask for what I can buy.

CUSINS [in a white fury] Do I understand you to imply that you
can buy Barbara?

UNDERSHAFT. No; but I can buy the Salvation Army.

CUSINS. Quite impossible.

UNDERSHAFT. You shall see. All religious organizations exist by
selling themselves to the rich.

CUSINS. Not the Army. That is the Church of the poor.

UNDERSHAFT. All the more reason for buying it.

CUSINS. I don't think you quite know what the Army does for the
poor.

UNDERSHAFT. Oh yes I do. It draws their teeth: that is enough for
me--as a man of business--

CUSINS. Nonse