I was not ill-pleased. And then suddenly it occurred to me that I had never actually looked up the word in a dictionary. Carminative had grown up with me from the days of the cinnamon bottle. It had always been taken for granted. Carminative: for me the word was as rich in content as some tremendous, elaborate work of art; it was a complete landscape with figures. ’_And passion carminative as wine_...’ It was the first time I had ever committed the word to writing, and all at once I felt I would like lexicographical authority for it. A small English-German dictionary was all I had at hand. I turned up C, ca, car, carm. There it was: ‘Carminative: windtreibend.’ Windtreibend!” he repeated. Mr. Scogan laughed. Denis shook his head. “Ah,” he said, “for me it was no laughing matter. For me it marked the end of a chapter, the death of something young and precious. There were the years--years of childhood and innocence--when I had believed that carminative meant--well, carminative. And now, before me lies the rest of my life--a day, perhaps, ten years, half a century, when I shall know that carminative means windtreibend. ‘Plus ne suis ce que j’ai ete Et ne le saurai jamais etre.’ It is a realisation that makes one rather melancholy.” “Carminative,” said Mr. Scogan thoughtfully. “Carminative,” Denis repeated, and they were silent for a time. “Words,” said Denis at last, “words--I wonder if you can realise how much I love them. You are too much preoccupied with mere things and ideas and people to understand the full beauty of words. Your mind is not a literary mind. The spectacle of Mr. Gladstone finding thirty-four rhymes to the name ‘Margot’ seems to you rather pathetic than anything else. Mallarmé’s envelopes with their versified addresses leave you cold, unless they leave you pitiful; you can’t see that ‘Apte à ne point te cabrer, hue! Poste et j’ajouterai, dia! Si tu ne fuis onze-bis Rue Balzac, chez cet Hérédia,’ is a little miracle.” “You’re right,” said Mr. Scogan. “I can’t.” “You don’t feel it to be magical?” “No.”