GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 137 



stoned, thin-ileshed — an essentially practical 

 term. It is eminently suited to its purpose, and 

 so widely used that my friend the editor must ac- 

 cept it ; not looking askance as he did at my defi- 

 nition of a vampire as a vespertilial anaesthetist, 

 or breaking into open but wholly ineffectual re- 

 bellion, at the past tense of the verb to cande- 

 labra. I admit that the conjugation 



I candelabra 

 You candelabra 

 He candelabras 



arouses a ripple of confusion in the mind ; but it 

 is far more important to use words than to parse 

 them, anyway, so I acclaim perfect clarity for 

 "The fireflies candelabraed the trees!" 



Not to know the precise meaning of being 

 positively thigmotactic is a stimulant to the im- 

 agination, which opens the way to an entire es- 

 say on the disadvantages of education — a thought 

 once strongly aroused by the glorious red-and- 

 gold hieroglyphic signs of the Peking merchants 

 • — signs which have always thrilled me more than 

 the utmost efforts of our modern psychological 

 advertisers. 



Having crossed unconsciously b}^ such a slen- 



