How to avoid Everything.

“They have now discovered, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, “the germ of old age.  They are going to inoculate us for it in early youth, with the result that the only chance of ever getting rid of our friends will be to give them a motor-car.  And maybe it will not do to trust to that for long.  They will discover that some men’s tendency towards getting themselves into trouble is due to some sort of a germ.  The man of the future, Mrs. Wilkins, will be inoculated against all chance of gas explosions, storms at sea, bad oysters, and thin ice.  Science may eventually discover the germ prompting to ill-assorted marriages, proneness to invest in the wrong stock, uncontrollable desire to recite poetry at evening parties.  Religion, politics, education—all these things are so much wasted energy.  To live happy and good for ever and ever, all we have to do is to hunt out these various germs and wring their necks for them—or whatever the proper treatment may be.  Heaven, I gather from medical science, is merely a place that is free from germs.”

“We talk a lot about it,” thought Mrs. Wilkins, “but it does not seem to me that we are very much better off than before we took to worrying ourselves for twenty-four ’ours a day about ’ow we are going to live.  Lord! to read the advertisements in the papers you would think as ’ow flesh and blood was never intended to ’ave any natural ills.  ‘Do you ever ’ave a pain in your back?’ because, if so, there’s a picture of a kind gent who’s willing for one and sixpence halfpenny to take it quite away from you—make you look forward to scrubbing floors, and standing over the wash-tub six ’ours at a stretch like to a beanfeast.  ‘Do you ever feel as though you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning?’ that’s all to be cured by a bottle of their stuff—or two at the outside.  Four children to keep, and a sick ’usband on your ’ands used to get me over it when I was younger.  I used to fancy it was just because I was tired.