sed yourself to the wrong audience. You have spoken to artists,
born and self-made, but artists can always manage without help. Your
help was invoked in behalf of artisans, of adventurers, of speculators.
What was wanted of you was a formula for the fabrication of gold bricks
which would meet the demands of current dealers in that sort of wares."

"But if I have never made gold bricks myself, or not knowingly?"

"Ah, that is what you say! But do you suppose anybody will believe you?"

The prominent author put on the hat which he flattered himself was a
No. 7, but which we could plainly see was a No. 12, and said, with an
air of patronizing compassion, "You have sat here so long in your
cushioned comfort, looking out on the publishing world, that you have
become corrupt, cynical, pessimistic."

XX

PRACTICAL IMMORTALITY ON EARTH

The talk at a dinner given by the Easy Chair to some of its most valued
friends was of the life after death, and it will not surprise any
experienced observer to learn that the talk went on amid much unserious
chatter, with laughing irrelevancies more appropriate to the pouring of
champagne, and the changing of plates, than to the very solemn affair in
hand. It may not really have been so very solemn. Nobody at table took
the topic much to heart apparently. The women, some of them, affected an
earnest attention, but were not uncheerful; others frankly talked of
other things; some, at the farther end of the table, asked what a given
speaker was saying; the men did not, in some cases, conceal that they
were bored.

"No," the first speaker said, after weighing the pros and cons, "for my
part, I don't desire it. When I am through, here, I don't ask to begin
again elsewhere."

"And you don't expect to?" his closest listener inquired.

"And I don't expect to."

"It is curious," the closest listener went on, "how much our beliefs are
governed by our wishes in this matter. When we are young and are still
hungering for things to happen, we have a strong faith in immortality.
When we are older, and the whole round of things, except death, has
happened, we think it very likely we shall not live again. It seems to
be the same with peoples; the new peoples believe, the old peoples
doubt. It occurs to very, very few men to be convinced, as a friend of
mine has been convinced against the grain, of the reality of the life
after death. I will not say by what means he was convinced, for that is