“I wonder,” he ejaculated once, “I wonder what God did with himself before he made such a kettle of fish as this world.”
Again, “Now supposing that all these things in the Bible about Adam and the beginning had never been written down, and we had not been told that God did it, what should we have done? Should we have found out these things for ourselves?”
“Sometimes when I am all alone, and my old girl says the same, it seems to me that I am not of much account; it is as if I had been forgotten and left off the register, and how will it be at the Judgment Day? Sometimes I think to myself, It will be fine sleeping and never hearing the blessed trumpet and getting into that crowd. But one night I dreamed that I had died and was up above, and that an angel woke me up and asked me to take his trumpet, because he wanted a bit of sleeping after waiting ever since Adam’s time, and I was to blow it at twelve o’clock and then it would be Judgment Day. Well, as he looked like a gentleman, I said I would and I took the trumpet and stared at it a bit, because it was that trumpet that was to wake the dead for the Judgment Day. I was wide awake and I could see the dead all round me, more of them than there are mangolds in twenty acres. Close to me were the angels, and they were all asleep, worn out with waiting so long, I suppose. They had wings like peacocks and owls and orpingtons--beautiful! I enjoyed myself. But when it got near to twelve o’clock I got a bit anxious. The angel was fast asleep and I did not see why I should wake him up, or anybody else. Once or twice I put the trumpet to my lips, but I thought--No, I would sleep myself and there would be no Judgment Day. But I could not sleep for thinking of the keeper who used to kill my old girl’s cats as fast as they grew up and went into the woods at night; and, without thinking what I was at, I blew the trumpet and what with the terrible noise and the sight of all these poor people waking up I awoke myself and my old girl said that I had made a noise like a trumpet in my sleep. But it did seem a pity that they should all wake up just as if they had to go to ploughing and all that again.”
But Bacchus is his only god, who has already given him many gifts. On Friday nights he is as a child upon the throne, holding himself wonderfully straight on the settle at the inn, never letting go of the tankard except to have it filled, and smiling delicately with weary eyes, as he drinks the six ale--