That was the question. The answer comes promptly: By making still their course of life with Thy commands agree. Nothing could be simpler; except perhaps the instructions of the dying Sir Walter Scott to his son-in-law and biographer: "My dear, be a good man; be virtuous; be religious. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here." Those surely were less complex times. To-day--well, my Utopia, if ever I framed one, would be a land where the laws demanded that people should be vicious. Then one would be able to count at any rate on a little virtue. If no man might live with a woman in any but an irregular union, there would be at once quite a run on honest matrimony and the Law Courts would be full of desperately wicked monogamists; while if everyone was expected to steal and swindle, there would soon be an extensive criminal class who respected property. CHAPTER VII IN WHICH MR. DABNEY WARMS HIS HOUSE WITH A DISCUSSION AND I AM GLAD TO GET HOME Mr. Dabney of _The Balance_ having asked me to his housewarming, I found myself in his new rooms at about half-past nine, prepared for an unwonted night of it. He pretends that after my departure for the altar a period of decadence set in over Bemerton's and he had at last to leave. All inhabitants of rooms know these fluctuations. Everything will go smoothly for years and then suddenly comes a relaxation of energy on the part of the staff. It will come _chez_ Packer without a doubt; but not just yet. Dabney has moved from Westminster to the Temple, where a gentleman ought to live--to a noble suite in King's Bench Walk with a sidelong view of the river across the grass, on which in the cool of the evening the agile barristers disport themselves at lawn-tennis. He looks towards Lambeth and has a blessed glimpse over the trees and roofs of the giant gasometer of the Oval, and he can imagine on a summer's day all kinds of delectable occurrences in progress on the other side of it--Hitch at mid-off stopping express trains; Hobbs at the wicket, punishing and masterful; or whatever he most fancies. The white wainscotted room when I entered it was full of smoke and noisy with talk. I contrived to find Dabney's hand in the fog and he pushed me into a chair. I gathered that public men were under discussion: the session was well advanced and the unexpected abilities which it had brought forth and the old abilities which it had tested and found wanting were being appraised, in the off-hand smoking-room way. Funny to one outside the machine to hear names which ought by their eminence to inspire respect--and among the simple and ignorant do so--tossed about so lightly and discussed so contemptuously. This man, it is true, was fifty per cent. stronger than last year; but most of them were disappointments, done.