d to this day the post of Lord of the Exchequer is vacant.

LXXI

THE REFORMER

The Great Uplifter died and stood before Saint Peter.

"Alas," said Saint Peter, "I cannot let you in."

"But why?" demanded the Great Uplifter. "For surely I have been a good
and striving man."

"Just so," answered Saint Peter. "You have been a good and striving man
and you must be rewarded with happiness. Here, where all are happy, you
would be unhappy, for here would be no work for your hands to do."

And that is how the Great Uplifter happened to go to hell.

LXXII

FATALISM

The stock-broker's wife, mother of six children and portly, was a
fatalist. "Why worry?" she was wont to say. "When the time comes for me
to die, it will come properly enough, and that's all there is to it."

That afternoon, she was run over by a brewery wagon while on her way to
see a singing teacher about having her voice cultivated.

LXXIII

TECHNIQUE

The star actor, unable to restrain his mirth at the astounding satin
decollete worn by his leading woman in the scene where she, a street
waif, pleads with him to give her a farthing that she and her widowed
mother may not starve, turned his back to the audience. So
uncontrollable were his chuckles that his shoulders heaved up and down,
and his head shook, and his neck got red, and his eyes watered.

"A master of the acting technique," thought the audience. "How
wonderfully he expresses the emotional outburst of grief!"

LXXIV

FINIS

Somewhere, a funeral bell was tolling.

Somewhere, a thousand and one miles away, a woman was asking her lover
for the third time in five minutes if he really loved her.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note

The following changes have been made to the text:

Page 5: "Immorality" changed to "Immortality".

Page 6: "Scholar" changed to "The Scholar".

Page 6: "Grotesqueries" changed to "Grotesquerie".

Page 78: "stood be fore" changed to "stood before".

End of Project Gutenberg's A Book Without A Title, by George Jean Nathan

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