we want; that's what Captain Beauchamp works
for--their happiness; that's the aim of life for all of us. Look at me!
I'm as happy as the day. I pray every night, and I go to church every
Sunday, and I never know what it is to be unhappy. The Lord has blessed
me with a good digestion, healthy pious children, and a prosperous shop
that's a competency--a modest one, but I make it satisfy me, because
I know it's the Lord's gift. Well, now, and I hate Sabbath-breakers; I
would punish them; and I'm against the public-houses on a Sunday; but
aboard my little yacht, say on a Sunday morning in the Channel, I don't
forget I owe it to the Lord that he has been good enough to put me in
the way of keeping a yacht; no; I read prayers to my crew, and a chapter
in the Bible-Genesis, Deuteronomy, Kings, Acts, Paul, just as it comes.
All's good that's there. Then we're free for the day! man, boy, and me;
we cook our victuals, and we must look to the yacht, do you see. But
we've made our peace with the Almighty. We know that. He don't mind the
working of the vessel so long as we've remembered him. He put us in that
situation, exactly there, latitude and longitude, do you see, and work
the vessel we must. And a glass of grog and a pipe after dinner, can't
be any offence. And I tell you, honestly and sincerely, I'm sure my
conscience is good, and I really and truly don't know what it is not to
know happiness.'

'Then you don't know God,' said Carpendike, like a voice from a cave.

'Or nature: or the state of the world,' said Beauchamp, singularly
impressed to find himself between two men, of whom--each perforce of his
tenuity and the evident leaning of his appetites--one was for the barren
black view of existence, the other for the fantastically bright. As
to the men personally, he chose Carpendike, for all his obstinacy and
sourness. Oggler's genial piety made him shrink with nausea.

But Lord Palmet paid Mr. Oggler a memorable compliment, by assuring him
that he was altogether of his way of thinking about happiness.

The frank young nobleman did not withhold a reference to the two or
three things essential to his happiness; otherwise Mr. Oggler might have
been pleased and flattered.

Before quitting the shop, Beauchamp warned Carpendike that he should
come again. 'Vote or no vote, you're worth the trial. Texts as many as
you like. I'll make your faith active, if it's alive at all. You speak
of the Lord loving his own; you make out th