“You take my meaning, sir,” said his dragoman, “though I should not have worded it so happily. But certainly the return to self began, and people used to think: ‘The war is not so bloody as I thought, for I am getting better money than I ever did; and the longer it lasts the more I shall get, and for the sake of this I am prepared to endure much.’ The saying ‘Beef and beer, for soon you must put up the shutters,’ became the motto of all classes. ‘If I am to be shot, drowned, bombed, ruined, or starved to-morrow,’ they said, ‘I had better eat, drink, marry, and buy jewellery to-day.’ And so they did, in spite of the dreadful efforts of one bishop and two gentlemen who presided over the important question of food. They did not, it is true, relax their manual efforts to accomplish the defeat of their enemies or ‘win the war,’ as it was somewhat loosely called; but they no longer worked with their spirits, which, with a few exceptions, went to sleep. For, sir, the spirit, like the body, demands regular repose, and in my opinion is usually the first of the two to snore. Before the Great Skirmish came at last to its appointed end the snoring from spirits in this country might have been heard in the moon. People thought of little but money, revenge, and what they could get to eat, though the word ‘sacrifice’ was so accustomed to their lips that they could no more get it off them than the other forms of lip-salve, increasingly in vogue. They became very merry. And the question I would raise is this: By which of these two standards shall we assess the word ‘happiness’? Were these people happy when they mourned and thought not of self; or when they married and thought of self all the time?” “By the first standard,” replied the Angel, with kindling eyes. “Happiness is undoubtedly nobility.” “Not so fast, sir,” replied his dragoman; “for I have frequently met with nobility in distress; and, indeed, the more exalted and refined the mind, the unhappier is frequently the owner thereof, for to him are visible a thousand cruelties and mean injustices which lower natures do not perceive.” “Hold!” exclaimed the Angel: “This is blasphemy against Olympus, ‘The Spectator,’ and other High-Brows.” “Sir,” replied his dragoman gravely, “I am not one of those who accept gilded doctrines without examination; I read in the Book of Life rather than in the million tomes written by men to get away from their own unhappiness.” “I perceive,” said the Angel, with a shrewd glance, “that you have something up your sleeve. Shake it out!”