"Oh, what a world it is!--a world of infinite pettinesses. I'm dreadfully poor and cowardly myself, but I've always had the greatest reverence for the gift of immortality, and I used to think if I could have chosen, I would have been born and then have died directly. But now that I believe unbaptized babies and people whose goodness, however perfect, is only natural, will have, in another existence, but natural beatitude, and as such a state wouldn't at all satisfy me for an eternity, I should have to tarry long enough to be baptized, and after that one can't wish to run away directly from the foes one has just promised to war against. A soul _not_ such a responsibility, and is always thrusting in to complicate and confuse matters! "But, do you know, I think so often what an admirable, harmonious, earthly preface to eternal bliss in the natural order would Anglicanism be--Anglicanism of the moderate type, a little quickened with the evangelical element, but neither high nor low. The life, as I remember it in the close at ----, was so pleasant, so decorous, so amiable, so full of good, comfortable, luxurious things, so ladylike and gentlemanly, so reputable. One kept the commandments mainly; one was never anything but high-bred and high-toned; one did one's duty too--taught a little in the schools; looked after the rheumatic old bodies in cottages delightfully picturesque to sketch, but dark and damp as graves to live in; handed buns and tea at the school treats; one wasn't always thinking about delicate matters of conscience, about renunciation, self-abnegation, and what it must mean to be a soldier under a captain who neither lived delicately, nor slept softly, nor was used to stately shelter--a crucified head whose arms are the instruments of the Passion--and how well off one's body was!" And I've been--no, I've been bidden to the Dialectical Society. You don't know what that is, my barbaric New Zealander? And I didn't know either when Mr. Malise sent me tickets for one evening, specially urging my attendance, as there would be something well worth hearing--a paper on "Celibacy" read by its author, a gifted young girl of only twenty-two! I took my tickets to my liege. "Ronayne, fount of wisdom and light, whatever may the Dialectical Society be?" "The Dialectical Society, madam, is a body of men and women who meet to rake up, turn over, and discuss to all their verges subjects which the weaker mass of mortals think upon only on compulsion, with fear and trembling, and in mental sackcloth and ashes. And pray, what have you to do with Dialecticals, Eve? We are _not_ going there, if that's what those tickets mean!"