muckrakers who are incapable of their own glorious destiny, and unconscious of their own divinity.  They tell me there are leucocytes in my blood, and sodium and carbon in my flesh.  I thank them for the information, and tell them that there are blackbeetles in my kitchen, washing soda in my laundry, and coal in my cellar.  I do not deny their existence; but I keep them in their proper place, which is not, if I may be allowed to use an antiquated form of expression, the temple of the Holy Ghost.  No doubt you think me behind the times; but I rejoice in my enlightenment; and I recoil from your ignorance, your blindness, your imbecility.  Humanly I pity you.  Intellectually I despise you.

ZOO.  Bravo, Daddy!  You have the root of the matter in you.  You will not die of discouragement after all.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  I have not the smallest intention of doing so, madam.  I am no longer young; and I have moments of weakness; but when I approach this subject the divine spark in me kindles and glows, the corruptible becomes incorruptible, and the mortal Bolge Bluebin Barlow puts on immortality.  On this ground I am your equal, even if you survive me by ten thousand years.

ZOO.  Yes; but what do we know about this breath of life that puffs you up so exaltedly?  Just nothing.  So let us shake hands as cultivated Agnostics, and change the subject.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  Cultivated fiddlesticks, madam!  You cannot change this subject until the heavens and the earth pass away.  I am not an Agnostic:  I am a gentleman.  When I believe a thing I say I believe it:  when I don’t believe it I say I don’t believe it.  I do not shirk my responsibilities by pretending that I know nothing and therefore can believe nothing.  We cannot disclaim knowledge and shirk responsibility.  We must proceed on assumptions of some sort or we cannot form a human society.

ZOO.  The assumptions must be scientific, Daddy.  We must live by science in the long run.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  I have the utmost respect, madam, for the magnificent discoveries which we owe to science.  But any fool can make a discovery.  Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory.  When I was seven years old I discovered the sting of the wasp.  But I do not ask you to worship me on that account.  I assure you, madam, the merest mediocrities can discover the most surprising facts about the physical universe as soon as they are civilized enough to have time to study these things, and to invent instruments and apparatus for research.  But what is the consequence?  Their discoveries discredit the simple stories of our religion.  At first we had no idea of astronomical space.  We believed the sky to be only the ceiling of a room as large as the earth, with another room on top of it.  Death was to us a going upstairs into that room, or, if we did not obey the priests, going downstairs