Their system is a sort of worldly-spiritual cliqueism: they really look on the rest of mankind as a doomed carcass which is to nourish them for heaven.
But one day something had happened to change the face of life, and since then the climb to the Deering house had seemed like a dream-flight up a heavenly stairway.
It has been calculated by philosophers that more damns go up to heaven from the Channel, in the course of a year, than from all the five oceans put together'.