“That depends entirely, my dear Sir, upon what you postulated.”

“The older I get,” observed Mr. van Koppen, “the more I realize that everything depends upon what a man postulates.  The rest is plain sailing.”

“I never heard a truer remark,” said Keith, “not even from you!  One has only to posit a thing, and it’s done.  Don’t you agree, Bishop?  Here is what I would call a worn-out earthenware plate.  It is not a plate unless I tell it to be a plate.  You may call it anything you like—­it can’t answer back.  But we need not pursue the argument.  Speaking for myself, I am feeling as comfortable as a beetle in a rose.”

The Vice-President remarked: 

“We all know what it means when Mr. Keith becomes horticultural in his similes.  It means the same thing as when I become legal.  Gentlemen!  I propose to grow legal within the next half-hour or so.”

“You promised to tell me the history of your cannas,” said Mr. Heard.

“You were going to tell it me too,” answered Denis.

“I did.  I was.  And I will.  But let me ask you this:  have you ever heard of a teetotaler conspicuous for kindliness of heart, or intellectually distinguished in any walk of life?  I should be glad to know his name.  A sorry crew!  Not because they drink water, but because the state of mind which makes them dread alcohol is unpropitious to the hatching of any generous idea.  When men have well drunk.  I like that phrase.  When men have well drunk.  I am inclined to think that the Aramaic text has not been tampered with at this point.  What do you say, Heard?”

“Nothing is more improbable,” replied the bishop.  “And the water, you perceive, was changed into wine; not into cocoa or lemonade.  That conveys, if I am not mistaken, rather a suggestive implication.”

“I have been pursuing Seneca’s letters.  He was a cocoa-drinker, masquerading as an ancient.  An objectionable hypocrite!  I wish people would read Seneca instead of talking about him.”

Van Koppen observed: 

“What a man postulates is truer than what exists.  I have grown grey in trying to make my fellow-creatures understand that realities are less convincing than make-believe.”

“Given the proper atmosphere,” said the bishop, laughing, “everything becomes inevitable.  If you were wrong, Mr. van Koppen, where would our poets and novelists be?”

“Where are they?” queried the American.

“How shall that come out of a man,” continued Mr. Heard, “which was never in him?  How shall he generate a harmonious atmosphere if he be disharmonious himself?  It is all a question of plausibility, of verisimi—­simili—­”