Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/189

 was—precisely—that they told their children fairy-stories. It seemed to Kennaston, for a while, that all religions ended in this blind-alley.

To exercise for an allotted period divinely-recommended qualities known as virtues, and to be rewarded therefor, by an immortal score-keeper, appeared a rather childish performance all around. Yet every religion agreed in asserting that such was the course of human life at its noblest; and to believe matters were thus arranged indisputably satisfied an innate craving of men's natures, as Kennaston was privileged to see for himself.

Under all theocracies the run of men proved much the same: as has been said, it was for the most part with quite ordinary people that Horvendile dealt in dreams. The Roman citizenry, for instance, he found did not devote existence, either under the Republic or the Empire, to shouting in unanimous response to metrical declamations, and worrying over their own bare legs, or in other ways conform to the best traditions of literature and the stage; nor did the Athenians corrobate their dramatists by talking perpetually of