"They should be joyous."
"They are accounted so," his dragoman replied; "but for my part, I prefer to criticise life for myself, especially when I am drunk."
"Are there no plays, no operas?" asked the Angel from behind his glass.
"Not in the old and proper sense of these words. They disappeared towards the end of the Great Skirmish."
"What food for the mind is there, then?" asked the Angel, adding an oyster to his collection.
"None in public, sir, for it is well recognised, and has been ever since those days, that laughter alone promotes business and removes the thought of death. You cannot recall, as I can, sir, the continual stream which used to issue from theatres, music-halls, and picture-palaces in the days of the Great Skirmish, nor the joviality of the Strand and the more expensive restaurants. I have often thought," he added with a touch of philosophy, "what a height of civilisation we must have reached to go jesting, as we did, to the Great Unknown."
"Is that really what the English did at the time of the Great Skirmish?" asked the Angel.
"It is," replied his dragoman solemnly.
"Then they are a very fine people, and I can put up with much about them which seems to me distressing."
"Ah! sir, though, being an Englishman, I am sometimes inclined to disparage the English, I am yet convinced that you could not fly a week's journey and come across another race with such a peculiar nobility, or such an unconquerable soul, if you will forgive my using a word whose meaning is much disputed. May I tempt you with a clam?" he added, more lightly. "We now have them from America—in fair preservation, and very nasty they are, in my opinion."