“To correct a thing,” answered his dragoman, “you must first be aware of it, and these are not; no more than they are aware that it is disproportionate to spend six days out of every seven in a counting-house or factory. Man, sir, is the creature of habit, and when his habits are bad, man is worse.” “I have a headache,” said the Angel; “the noise is more deafening than it was when I was here in 1910.” “Yes, sir; since then we have had the Great Skirmish, an event which furiously intensified money-making. We, like every other people, have ever since been obliged to cultivate the art of getting five out of two-and-two. The progress of civilisation has been considerably speeded-up thereby, and everything but man has benefited; even horses, for they are no longer overloaded and overdriven up Tower Hill or any other.” “How is that,” asked the Angel, “if the pressure of work is greater?” “Because they are extinct,” said his dragoman; “entirely superseded by electric and air traction, as you see.” “You appear to be inimical to money,” the Angel interjected, with a penetrating look. “Tell me, would you really rather own one shilling than five and sixpence?” “Sir,” replied his dragoman, “you are putting the candidate before the caucus, as the saying is. For money is nothing but the power to purchase what one wants. You should rather be inquiring what I want.” “Well, what do you?” said the Angel. “To my thinking,” answered his dragoman, “instead of endeavouring to increase money when we found ourselves so very bankrupt, we should have endeavoured to decrease our wants. The path of real progress, sir, is the simplification of life and desire till we have dispensed even with trousers and wear a single clean garment reaching to the knees; till we are content with exercising our own limbs on the solid earth; the eating of simple food we have grown ourselves; the hearing of our own voices, and tunes on oaten straws; the feel on our faces of the sun and rain and wind; the scent of the fields and woods; the homely roof, and the comely wife unspoiled by heels, pearls, and powder; the domestic animals at play, wild birds singing, and children brought up to colder water than their fathers. It should have been our business to pursue health till we no longer needed the interior of the chemist’s shop, the optician’s store, the hairdresser’s, the corset-maker’s, the thousand-and-one emporiums which patch and prink us, promoting our fancies and disguising the ravages which modern life makes in our figures. Our ambition should have been to need so little that, with our present scientific knowledge, we should have been able to produce it very easily and quickly, and have had abundant leisure and sound nerves and bodies wherewith to enjoy nature, art, and the domestic affections. The tragedy of man, sir, is his senseless and insatiate curiosity and greed, together with his incurable habit of neglecting the present for the sake of a future which will never come.”