"If you have no sons to extend your industrious line," I said, when he
had revealed this fact to me, "why do you not adopt one to that end?"
With narrow-minded covetousness, he replied that nowadays he had
enough to do to keep himself, and that it would be more reasonable to
get some one to adopt HIM.
"But," I exclaimed, ignoring this ill-timed levity, "who, when you
have Passed Beyond, will worship you and transmit to your spirit the
necessities of life?"
"Governor," he replied, using the term of familiar dignity, "I've made
shift without being worshipped for five and sixty years, and it
worries me a sight more to know who will transmit to my body the
necessities of life until I HAVE Passed Beyond."
"The final consequences of your self-opinionated carelessness," this
person continued, "will be that your neglected and unprovided shadow,
finding itself no longer acceptable to the society of the better class
demons, will wander forth, and allying itself in despair to the
companionship of a band of outcasts like itself, will be driven to
dwell in unclean habitations and to subsist on the uncertain bounty of
the charitable."
"Very likely," replied the irredeemable person before me. "I can't
help its troubles. I have to do all that myself as it is."
Doubtless this fanaticism contains the secret of the ease with which
these barbarians have possessed themselves of the greater part of the
earth, and have even planted their assertive emblems on one or two
spots in our own Flowery Kingdom.
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