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THE WATER BABIES half bad Latin, the other half worse Greek, and the rest what might have been English, if they had only learnt to write it. And this is the beginning thereof—

But what they proceeded to do, My Lady never knew; for she was so frightened at the long words that she ran for her life, and locked herself into her bedroom, for fear of being squashed by the words and strangled by the sentence. A boa-constrictor, she said, was bad company enough: but what was a boa-constrictor made of paving stones?

"It was quite shocking! What can they think is the matter with him?" said she to the old nurse.

"That his wit's just addled—maybe wi' unbelief and heathenry," quoth she.

"Then why can't they say so?"

And the heaven, and the sea, and the rocks, and the vales re-echoed—"Why, indeed?" But the doctors never heard them.

So she made Sir John write to The Times to command the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being to put a tax on long words— 149