people.

BURGE-LUBIN. That settles it. Whats the use of arguing? The Chink says
you are wrong; and theres an end of it.

BARNABAS. I say nothing against the Chink's arguments. But what about my
facts?

CONFUCIUS. If your facts include a case of a man living 283 years, I
advise you to take a few weeks at the seaside.

BARNABAS. Let there be an end of this hinting that I am out of my mind.
Come and look at the cinema record. I tell you this man is Archbishop
Haslam, Archbishop Stickit, President Dickenson, General Bullyboy and
himself into the bargain; all five of them.

THE ARCHBISHOP. I do not deny it. I never have denied it. Nobody has
ever asked me.

BURGE-LUBIN. But damn it, man--I beg your pardon, Archbishop; but
really, really--

THE ARCHBISHOP. Dont mention it. What were you going to say?

BURGE-LUBIN. Well, you were drowned four times over. You are not a cat,
you know.

THE ARCHBISHOP. That is very easy to understand. Consider my situation
when I first made the amazing discovery that I was destined to live
three hundred years! I--

CONFUCIUS [_interrupting him_] Pardon me. Such a discovery was
impossible. You have not made it yet. You may live a million years
if you have already lived two hundred. There is no question of three
hundred years. You have made a slip at the very beginning of your fairy
tale, Mr Archbishop.

BURGE-LUBIN. Good, Confucius! [_To the Archbishop_] He has you there. I
don't see how you can get over that.

THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: it is quite a good point. But if the Accountant
General will go to the British Museum library, and search the catalogue,
he will find under his own name a curious and now forgotten book, dated
1924, entitled The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas. That gospel was that
men must live three hundred years if civilization is to be saved. It
shewed that this extension of individual human life was possible, and
how it was likely to come about. I married the daughter of one of the
brothers.

BARNABAS. Do you mean to say you claim to be a connection of mine?

THE ARCHBISHOP. I claim nothing. As I have by this time perhaps three or
four million cousins of one degree or another, I have ceased to call on
the family.

BURGE-LUBIN. Gracious heavens! Four million relatives! Is that
calculation correct, Confucius?

CONFUCIUS. In China it might be forty millions if there were no checks
on population.

BURGE-LUBIN. This is a staggerer. It brings home to one--but
[_r