Some Cranks and their Crotchets 435 



amused themselves. The task was to make a sen- 

 tence which should contain all the letters of the 

 alphabet, and each only once. "No one," says De 

 Morgan, " has done it with v and j treated as con- 

 sonants ; but you and / can do it " (u and i : oh, 

 monstrous pun !). Dr. Whewell got only separate 

 words, and failed to make a sentence : phiz, styx, 

 wrong, buck, flame, quid. Very pretty, but De 

 Morgan beat him out of sight with this weird senti- 

 ment ; /, quartz pyx, who fling muck beds ! Well, 

 what in the world can that mean ? "I long thought 

 that no human being could say it under any cir- 

 cumstances. At last I happened to be reading a 

 religious writer as he thought himself who 

 threw aspersions on his opponents thick and three- 

 fold. Heyday! came into my head, this fellow 

 flings muck beds : he must be a quartz pyx. And 

 then I remembered that a pyx is a sacred vessel, 

 and quartz is a hard stone, as hard as the heart of 

 a religious foe-curser. So that the line is the motto 

 of the ferocious sectarian, who turns his religious 

 vessels into mud-holders for the benefit of those 

 who will not see what he sees." 1 



I cite this drollery to show the world-wide dif- 

 ference between the playful nonsense of the wise 

 man and the strenuous nonsense of the mono- 



1 De Morgan, p. 163. 



