Were you
convinced, Mr Haslam?
HASLAM. About our being able to live three hundred years? Frankly no.
CONRAD [_to Savvy_] Nor you, I suppose?
SAVVY. Oh, I don't know. I thought I was for a moment. I can believe, in
a sort of way, that people might live for three hundred years. But when
you came down to tin tacks, and said that the parlor maid might, then I
saw how absurd it was.
FRANKLYN. Just so. We had better hold our tongues about it, Con. We
should only be laughed at, and lose the little credit we earned on false
pretences in the days of our ignorance.
CONRAD. I daresay. But Creative Evolution doesnt stop while people are
laughing. Laughing may even lubricate its job.
SAVVY. What does that mean?
CONRAD. It means that the first man to live three hundred years maynt
have the slightest notion that he is going to do it, and may be the
loudest laugher of the lot.
SAVVY. Or the first woman?
CONRAD [_assenting_] Or the first woman.
HASLAM. Well, it wont be one of us, anyhow.
FRANKLYN. How do you know?
_This is unanswerable. None of them have anything more to say.
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