Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 4).djvu/167

 :was getting on towards the fifties;-
 * my hair was slowly growing grizzled;
 * and, though my health was excellent,
 * yet painfully the thought beset me:
 * Who knows how soon the hour may strike,
 * the jury-verdict be delivered
 * that parts the sheep and goats asunder?
 * What could I do? To stop the trade
 * with China was impossible.
 * A plan I hit on-opened straightway
 * a new trade with the self-same land.
 * I shipped off idols every spring,
 * each autumn sent forth missionaries,
 * supplying them with all they needed,
 * as stockings, Bibles, rum, and rice-

MR. COTTON
 * Yes, at a profit?

PEER
 * Why, of course.
 * It prospered. Dauntlessly they toiled.
 * For every idol that was sold
 * they got a coolie well baptised,
 * so that the effect was neutralised.
 * The mission-field lay never fallow,
 * for still the idol-propaganda
 * the missionaries held in check.

MR. COTTON
 * Well, but the African commodities?

PEER
 * There, too, my ethics won the day.
 * I saw the traffic was a wrong one
 * for people of a certain ag