Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/184

 "Oh, my point of view, you mean?" said Willys. I admired his ability to find it again so quickly. "Speaking seriously, I can't—for more or less obvious reasons—take as calmly as His Excellency does the poor man's loss of pleasures. I appeal from the tyranny of our recent moral legislation to my constitutional guaranties of liberty and the right to pursue my happiness where I can find it. I agree with the Senator that the whole business is idiotic. It is idiotic impertinence to dictate what I shall eat and drink at my own table, or what I shall brew in my own cellar."

"If you had a cellar?" suggested Cornelia, rather spitefully reminding us of Willys's arrangements to leave his house in New Jersey to his wife, and his wife to his house. But, as I have said, she is firm on such points.

"Spare the wormwood, Cornelia darling," Oliver blandly interceded. "But, Willys, if you have a better remedy for our present discontents than mine, don't conceal it from the country. Everyone is clamoring for it. Only be sure it is a remedy. Be sure it rests firmly on the necessities of the situation. There is no use in talking of anything else."

"I'll tell you my remedy," said Willys, "when