THE ARCHBISHOP.  I wonder you did not kill yourself.  I often wonder why the poor in those evil old times did not kill themselves.  They did not even kill other people.

MRS LUTESTRING.  You never kill yourself, because you always may as well wait until tomorrow.  And you have not energy or conviction enough to kill the others.  Besides, how can you blame them when you would do as they do if you were in their place?

BURGE-LUBIN.  Devilish poor consolation, that.

MRS LUTESTRING.  There were other consolations in those days for people like me.  We drank preparations of alcohol to relieve the strain of living and give us an artificial happiness.

BURGE-LUBIN {[[all together,]} Alcohol!  CONFUCIUS {[making] } Pfff ...!  BARNABAS {[wry faces]] } Disgusting.

MRS LUTESTRING.  A little alcohol would improve your temper and manners, and make you much easier to live with, Mr Accountant General.

BURGE-LUBIN [laughing] By George, I believe you!  Try it, Barnabas.

CONFUCIUS.  No.  Try tea.  It is the more civilized poison of the two.

MRS LUTESTRING.  You, Mr President, were born intoxicated with your own well-fed natural exuberance.  You cannot imagine what alcohol was to an underfed poor woman.  I had carefully arranged my little savings so that I could get drunk, as we called it, once a week; and my only pleasure was looking forward to that poor little debauch.  That is what saved me from suicide.  I could not bear to miss my next carouse.  But when I stopped working, and lived on my pension, the fatigue of my life’s drudgery began to wear off, because, you see, I was not really old.  I recuperated.  I looked younger and younger.  And at last I was rested enough to have courage and strength to begin life again.  Besides, political changes were making it easier:  life was a little better worth living for the nine-tenths of the people who used to be mere drudges.  After that, I never turned back or faltered.  My only regret now is that I shall die when I am three hundred or thereabouts.  There was only one thing that made life hard; and that is gone now.

CONFUCIUS.  May we ask what that was?

MRS LUTESTRING.  Perhaps you will be offended if I tell you.

BURGE-LUBIN.  Offended!  My dear lady, do you suppose, after such a stupendous revelation, that anything short of a blow from a sledge-hammer could produce the smallest impression on any of us?

MRS LUTESTRING.  Well, you see, it has been so hard on me never to meet a grown-up person.  You are all such children.  And I never was very fond of children, except that one girl who woke up the mother passion in me.  I have been very lonely sometimes.

BURGE-LUBIN [again gallant] But surely, Mrs Lutestring, that has been your own fault.  If I may say so, a lady of your attractions need never have been lonely.

MRS LUTESTRING.  Why?