response; he was scarcely aware of it. He was in a kind of dream. In an
even, conversational tone, in French at once idiomatic and very simple,
he began:

"My dear friends, this is a world where men get tired. If they work they
get tired, and if they play they get tired. If they look straight ahead
of them they walk straight, but then they get blind by-and-by; if they
look round them and get open-eyed, their feet stumble and they fall. It
is a world of contradictions. If a man drinks much he loses his head,
and if he doesn't drink at all he loses heart. If he asks questions he
gets into trouble, and if he doesn't ask them he gets old before his
time. Take the hymn we have just sung:

"'On the other side of Jordan,
In the sweet fields of Eden,
Where the tree of life is blooming,
There is rest for you!'

"We all like that, because we get tired, and it isn't always summer, and
nothing blooms all the year round. We get up early and we work late, and
we sleep hard, and when the weather is good and wages good, and there's
plenty in the house, we stay sober and we sadly sing, 'On the other side
of Jordan'; but when the weather's heavy and funds scarce, and the pork
and molasses and bread come hard, we get drunk, and we sing the comic
chanson 'Brigadier, vows avez raison!' We've been singing a sad song
to-night when we're feeling happy. We didn't think whether it was sad or
not, we only knew it pleased our ears, and we wanted those sweet fields
of Eden, and the blooming tree of life, and the rest under the tree. But
ask a question or two. Where is the other side of Jordan? Do you go up
to it, or down to it? And how do you go? And those sweet fields of