'Ah, of course. From your own strictly subjective point of view
that's very natural. I also look at the question abstractly from
the side of the empirical ego, and correctly deduce a corresponding
conclusion. Only then, you see, the terms of the minor premiss are
luckily reversed.'

'Well, my dear fellow,' said the curate, 'the fact about the
tea-things is this. You eat up your income, devour your substance
in riotous living; I prefer to feast my eyes and ears to my grosser
senses. You dine at high table, and fare sumptuously every day;
I take a commons of cold beef for lunch, and have tea off an egg
and roll in my own rooms at seven. You drink St. Emilion or still
hock; I drink water from the well or the cup that cheers but
not obfuscates. The difference goes to pay for the crockery. Do
likewise, and with your untold wealth you might play Aunt Sally at
Oriental blue, and take cock-shots with a boot-jack at hawthorn-pattern
vases.'

'At any rate, Berkeley, you always manage to get your money's worth
of amusement out of your money.'

'Of course, because I lay myself out to do it. Buy a bottle of
champagne, drink it off, and there you have to show for your total
permanent investment on the transaction the memory of a noisy evening
and a headache the next morning. Buy a flute, or a book of poems,
or a little picture, or a Palissy platter, and you have something
to turn to with delight and admiration for half a lifetime.'

'Ah, but it isn't everybody who can isolate himself so utterly
from the workaday world and live so completely in his own little