GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 137 
stoned, thin-fleshed—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 anesthetist, 
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 by such a slen- 
