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longer than usual. Take the mere question of the manufacture of the specific, whatever it may be! There are forty millions of people in the country. Let me assume for the sake of illustration that each person would have to consume, say, five ounces a day of the elixir. That would be⁠—let me see⁠—five times three hundred and sixty-five is⁠—um⁠—twenty-five⁠—thirty-two⁠—eighteen⁠—eighteen hundred and twenty-five ounces a year: just two ounces over the hundredweight. Burge Two million tons a year, in round numbers, of stuff that everyone would clamor for: that men would trample down women and children in the streets to get at. You couldn’t produce it. There would be blue murder. It’s out of the question. We must keep the actual secret to ourselves. Conrad Staring at them. The actual secret! What on earth is the man talking about? Burge The stuff. The powder. The bottle. The tabloid. Whatever it is. You said it wasn’t lemons. Conrad My good sir: I have no powder, no bottle, no tabloid. I am not a quack: I am a biologist. This is a thing that’s going to happen. Lubin Completely let down. Going to happen! Oh! Is that all? He looks at his watch. Burge Going to happen! What do you mean? Do you mean that you can’t make it happen? Conrad No more than I could have made you happen. Franklyn We can put it into men’s heads that there is nothing to prevent its happening but their own will to die before their work is done, and their own ignorance of the splendid work there is for them to do. Conrad Spread that knowledge and that conviction; and as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, the thing will happen. Franklyn We don’t know where or when or to whom it will happen. It may happen first to someone in this room. Haslam It won’t happen to me: that’s jolly sure. Conrad It might happen to anyone. It might happen to the parlor maid. How do we know? Savvy The parlor maid! Oh, that’s nonsense, Nunk. Lubin Once more quite comfortable. I think Miss Savvy has delivered the final verdict. Burge Do you mean to say that you have nothing more practical to offer than the mere wish to live longer? Why, if people could live by merely wishing to, we should all be living forever already! Everybody would like to live forever. Why don’t they? Conrad Pshaw! Everybody would like to have a million of money. Why haven’t they? Because the men who would like to be millionaires won’t save sixpence even with the chance of starvation staring them in the face. The men who want to live forever won’t cut off a glass of beer or a pipe of tobacco, though they believe the teetotallers and nonsmokers live longer. That sort of liking is not willing. See what they do when they know they must. Franklyn Do not mistake mere idle fancies for the tremendous miracle-working force of Will nerved to creation by a conviction of Necessity. I tell you men capable of such willing, and realizing its necessity, will do it reluctantly, under inner compulsion, as all great efforts are made. They will hide what they are doing from themselves: they will take care not to know what they are doing. They will live three hundred years, not because they would like to, but because the soul deep down in them will know that they must, if the world is to be saved. Lubin Turning to Franklyn and patting him almost paternally. Well, my dear Barnabas, for the last thirty years the post has brought me at least once a week a plan from some crank or other for the establishment of the millennium. I think you are the maddest of all the cranks; but you are much the most interesting. I am conscious of a very curious mixture of relief and disappointment in finding that your plan is all moonshine, and that you have nothing practical to offer us. But what a pity! It is such a fascinating idea! I think you are too hard on us practical men; but there are men in every Government, even on the Front Bench, who deserve all you say. And now, before dropping the subject, may I put just one question to you? An idle question, since nothing can come of it; but still⁠— Franklyn Ask your question. Lubin Why do you fix three hundred years as the exact figure? Franklyn Because we must fix some figure. Less would not be enough; and more would be more than we dare as yet face. Lubin Pooh! I am quite prepared to face three thousand, not to say three million. Conrad Yes, because you don’t believe you Will be called on to make good your word. Franklyn Gently. Also, perhaps, because you have never been troubled much by vision of the future. Burge With intense conviction. The future does not exist for Henry Hopkins Lubin. Lubin If by the future you mean the millennial delusions which you use as a bunch of carrots to lure the uneducated British donkey to the polling booth to vote for you, it certainly does not. Burge I can see the future not only because, if I may say so in all humility, I have been gifted with a certain power of spiritual vision, but because I have practised as a solicitor. A solicitor has to advise families. He has to think of the future and know the past. His office is the real modern confessional. Among other things he has to make people’s wills for them. He has to show them how to provide for their daughters after their deaths. Has it occurred to you, Lubin, that if you live three hundred years, your daughters will have to wait a devilish long time for their money? Franklyn The money may not wait for them. Few investments flourish for three hundred years. Savvy And what about before your death? Suppose they didn’t get married! Imagine a girl living at home with her mother and on her father for