Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/190

 the might of Zeus or Aphrodite, any more than motormen and stockbrokers conversed continually of the Holy Ghost. Substantial people everywhere worshiped at their accustomed temple at accustomed intervals, and then put the matter out of mind, in precisely the fashion of any reputable twentieth-century church-goer. Meanwhile they had their business-affairs, their sober chats on weather probabilities, their staid diversions (which everywhere bored them frightfully), their family jokes, their best and second-best clothes, their flirtations, their petty snobbishnesses, and their perfectly irrational faith in Omnipotence and in the general kindliness of Omnipotence—all these they had, and made play with, to round out living. Ritualistic worship everywhere seemed to be of the nature of a conscious outing, of a conscious departure from everyday life; it was generally felt that well-balanced people would not permit such jaunts to interfere with their business-matters or home-ties; but there was no doubt men did not like to live without religion and religion's promise of a less trivial and more ordered and symmetrical existence—to-morrow.