appearance. I could suggest many other points in common were this part of my work lucrative, and, as it were, in the business; but it is not, and I must end. I might remind you that elephants probably grow old (though no man has lived to see it), that overcoats certainly do; that elephants are of divers sex, and this is true also of the overcoat. On the other hand, an overcoat has no feet and it has two tails or none, whereas the elephant has four feet and but one tail, and that a very little one.
I must wind up by telling you why I have written of an "overcoat" and not a "greatcoat." "Greatcoat" is the more vernacular; "overcoat" I think the more imperial. But that was not my reason. I wrote "overcoat" because it was a word similar in scansion and almost equivalent in stress-scheme (wow!) to the word "elephant." Of course, if I had considered length of syllable and vowel-value it would have been another matter, for "elephant" consists in three shorts, "overcoat" in a long, short and long. The first is a what-you-may-call-'um, and the second a thingumbob.
But I did not consider vowel sounds, and I was indifferent to longs and shorts. My
