FER. Mausoleums? No. What put that into your head? MR. W. I thought, perhaps, your aunt, finding me too much for herself, might have determined to float me into a company, and had put you on to promote me. All right. Go on, Ferdinand. (_Business with cigar._ MR. WATMUFF _is about to light it, when_ MRS. WATMUFF _speaks outside. He burns his mouth, etc., ad lib._) FER. Well, I've made an important discovery. MR. W. Bravo, Ferdinand! WALTER. An inventor? Sir, I congratulate you. FER. Well, perhaps I ought to say that I've made an important discovery that another fellow has made an important discovery. All the States are wild about it; and, as he was an intimate friend of mine, and always said he would like to do me a good turn, I, without bothering him about it, noted down the particulars and came over to England to introduce it as _my_ discovery. WALTER. How will he like that? FER. Probably not at all. But inventors and discoverers are proverbially discontented and disappointed men, and he mustn't fight with destiny. MR. W. But what is it? FER. Frost. MR. W. and WALTER. Frost? FER. Exactly. Frost. Frost applied to freezing. Of course you know that a lot of American meat is now shipped to England. Much cheaper meat than English meat, and, consequently, big fortunes to be made out of the process. But it isn't altogether satisfactory, because it's difficult to preserve the meat during the voyage. Goes bad, you know; gets high, and that sort of thing. WALTER. High in price, do you mean? FER. Well, a little bit in that way, perhaps; but decidedly high in another. Very good. To the speculative American mind it becomes, therefore, a matter for conjecture, how is such evil to be overcome? An American with more than usually speculative and powerful mind gets over the difficulty. Frost. MR. W. Frost? FER. Frost. Liquid discovered which, injected into the ear of animal, freezes him _pro tem._, and suspends the beggars animation for as long as you please. Freeze and suspend your animal in America,--unfreeze him in England by simple process of another liquid, and a warm bath,--he lives again,--you kill him,--and get fresh meat. Important to every man who keeps horse, cow, sheep, or pig,--_vide_ advertisement of company, whose motto is, "Not lost, but gone before." (_All rise._) WALTER. That hardly strikes me as appropriate, because under the old system the meat usually was "gone" before-- FER. Before reaching destination. Good. Motto must be altered. MR. W. But, Ferdinand, surely you are not going into the meat trade? FER. Certainly not. Mark the small mind. Can't see further than the bare facts stated in preliminary prospectus. My view is to adapt the discovery to the human being. MR. W. Impossible! And what would be the good of it?