Some of the lads professed to have done it, but one disappointed-
looking youth confessed to failure.

"But how can you be sure it was not a saveloy?" the host persisted.

"Because," explained the boy, "I haven't got the stomach-ache."

It appeared that saveloys, although a dish of which he was fond,
invariably and immediately disagreed with him. If only we were all
daemon and nothing else philosophy would be easier. Unfortunately,
there is more of us.

Another argument much approved by philosophy is that nothing matters,
because a hundred years hence, say, at the outside, we shall be dead.
What we really want is a philosophy that will enable us to get along
while we are still alive. I am not worrying about my centenary; I am
worrying about next quarter-day. I feel that if other people would
only go away, and leave me--income-tax collectors, critics, men who
come round about the gas, all those sort of people--I could be a
philosopher myself. I am willing enough to make believe that nothing
matters, but they are not. They say it is going to be cut off, and
talk about judgment summonses. I tell them it won't trouble any of
us a hundred years hence. They answer they are not talking of a
hundred years hence, but of this thing that was due last April
twelvemonth. They won't listen to my daemon. He does not interest
them. Nor, to be candid, does it comfort myself very much, this
philosophical reflection that a hundred years later on I'll be sure
to be dead--that is, with ordinary luck. What bucks me up much more
is the hope that they will be dead. Besides, in a hundred years
things may have improved. I may not want to be dead. If I were sure