marriages, proneness to invest in the wrong stock, uncontrollable
desire to recite poetry at evening parties. Religion, politics,
education--all these things are so much wasted energy. To live happy
and good for ever and ever, all we have to do is to hunt out these
various germs and wring their necks for them--or whatever the proper
treatment may be. Heaven, I gather from medical science, is merely a
place that is free from germs."

"We talk a lot about it," thought Mrs. Wilkins, "but it does not seem
to me that we are very much better off than before we took to
worrying ourselves for twenty-four 'ours a day about 'ow we are going
to live. Lord! to read the advertisements in the papers you would
think as 'ow flesh and blood was never intended to 'ave any natural
ills. 'Do you ever 'ave a pain in your back?' because, if so,
there's a picture of a kind gent who's willing for one and sixpence
halfpenny to take it quite away from you--make you look forward to
scrubbing floors, and standing over the wash-tub six 'ours at a
stretch like to a beanfeast. 'Do you ever feel as though you don't
want to get out of bed in the morning?' that's all to be cured by a
bottle of their stuff--or two at the outside. Four children to keep,
and a sick 'usband on your 'ands used to get me over it when I was
younger. I used to fancy it was just because I was tired.

[The one Cure-All.]

"There's some of them seem to think," continued Mrs. Wilkins, "that
if you don't get all you want out of this world, and ain't so 'appy
as you've persuaded yourself you ought to be, that it's all because
you ain't taking the right medicine. Appears to me there's only one
doctor as can do for you, all the others talk as though they could,