No one can deny that the testator had strict right upon his side; nevertheless the reader will agree with me that Theobald and Christina might not have considered the christening dinner so great a success if all the facts had been before them.  Mr Pontifex had during his own lifetime set up a monument in Elmhurst Church to the memory of his wife (a slab with urns and cherubs like illegitimate children of King George the Fourth, and all the rest of it), and had left space for his own epitaph underneath that of his wife.  I do not know whether it was written by one of his children, or whether they got some friend to write it for them.  I do not believe that any satire was intended.  I believe that it was the intention to convey that nothing short of the Day of Judgement could give anyone an idea how good a man Mr Pontifex had been, but at first I found it hard to think that it was free from guile.

The epitaph begins by giving dates of birth and death; then sets out that the deceased was for many years head of the firm of Fairlie and Pontifex, and also resident in the parish of Elmhurst.  There is not a syllable of either praise or dispraise.  The last lines run as follows:—­

   HE NOW LIES AWAITING A JOYFUL RESURRECTION
   AT THE LAST DAY. 
   WHAT MANNER OF MAN HE WAS
   THAT DAY WILL DISCOVER.

CHAPTER XIX

This much, however, we may say in the meantime, that having lived to be nearly seventy-three years old and died rich he must have been in very fair harmony with his surroundings.  I have heard it said sometimes that such and such a person’s life was a lie:  but no man’s life can be a very bad lie; as long as it continues at all it is at worst nine-tenths of it true.

Mr Pontifex’s life not only continued a long time, but was prosperous right up to the end.  Is not this enough?  Being in this world is it not our most obvious business to make the most of it—­to observe what things do bona fide tend to long life and comfort, and to act accordingly?  All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it—­and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow.  He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most; God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.  If Mr Pontifex is to be blamed it is for not having eaten and drunk less and thus suffered less from his liver, and lived perhaps a year or two longer.

Goodness is naught unless it tends towards old age and sufficiency of means.  I speak broadly and exceptis excipiendis.  So the psalmist says, “The righteous shall not lack anything that is good.”  Either this is mere poetical license, or it follows that he who lacks anything that is good is not righteous; there is a presumption also that he who has passed a long life without lacking anything that is good has himself also been good enough for practical purposes.