"An admirable idea, sir," replied his dragoman; "we will have it in the White City."
IX
"What in your opinion is the nature of happiness?" asked the Angel Æthereal, as he finished his second bottle of Bass, in the grounds of the White City. The dragoman regarded his angel with one eye.
"The question is not simple, sir, though often made the subject of symposiums in the more intellectual journals. Even now, in the middle of the twentieth century, some still hold that it is a by-product of fresh air and good liquor. The Old and Merrie England indubitably procured it from those elements. Some, again, imagine it to follow from high thinking and low living, while no mean number believe that it depends on women."
"Their absence or their presence?" asked the Angel, with interest.
"Some this and others that. But for my part, it is not altogether the outcome of these causes."
"Is this now a happy land?"
"Sir," returned his dragoman, "all things earthly are comparative."
"Get on with it," said the Angel.
"I will comply," responded his dragoman reproachfully, "if you will permit me first to draw your third cork. And let me say in passing that even your present happiness is comparative, or possibly superlative, as you will know when you have finished this last bottle. It may or may not be greater; we shall see."