“Not a bit of it!” Mr. Boldero laughed with an infectious confidence. “All we have to do is to talk about the great nerve centres of the spine: the shocks they get when you sit down too hard; the wearing exhaustion to which long-protracted sitting on unpadded seats subjects them. We’ll have to talk very scientifically about the great lumbar ganglia—if there are such things, which I really don’t pretend to know. We’ll even talk almost mystically about the ganglia. You know that sort of ganglion philosophy?” Mr. Boldero went on parenthetically. “Very interesting it is, sometimes, I think. We could put in a lot about the dark, powerful sense-life, sex-life, instinct-life which is controlled by the lumbar ganglion. How important it is that that shouldn’t be damaged. That already our modern conditions of civilization tend unduly to develop the intellect and the thoracic ganglia controlling the higher emotions. That we’re wearing out, growing feeble, losing our balance in consequence. And that the only cure—if we are to continue our present mode of civilized life—is to be found in Gumbril’s Patent Small-Clothes.” Mr. Boldero brought his hand with an emphatic smack on to the table as he spoke, as he fairly shouted, these last words. “Magnificent,” said Gumbril, with genuine admiration. “This sort of medical and philosophical dope,” Mr. Boldero went on, “is always very effective, if it’s properly used. The public to whom we are making our appeal is, of course, almost absolutely ignorant on these, or, indeed, on almost all other subjects. It is therefore very much impressed by the unfamiliar words; particularly if they have such a good juicy sound as the word ‘ganglia.’” “There was a young man of East Anglia, whose loins were a tangle of ganglia,” murmured Gumbril, _improvisatore_.