On the side of the great machine it read: Standard Motor Gasoline, in capital letters. A great green tank was built upon the red chassis, FULL of gas. The little car looked and her heart leaped with shy wonder. Save the words. Save the words from themselves. They are like children. Young Men's Hebrew Association. Save them while they're still young. Words must not be allowed to say, to do--Geld them. They are not REALLY words they are geldings. Save the words. Yes, I repeat SAVE THE WORDS. When Voronoff would have had words to transplant, interstitial words--he said save the words. And what has anything Wells says to do with serious writing. FIRST let the words be free. The words are men, therefore they are not men. They cannot, must not, will not be mustered of the people, by the people, for the people. They are words. They will have their way. Puh, puh, puh, puh! said the little car going up hill. But the great green and red truck said nothing but continued to discharge its gasoline into a tank buried in the ground near the gutter. And the fog had coalesced into rain. Rain to soak the firewood the boys had left beside their old fire, like good scouts, for those to come after and the great car continued to discharge. CHAPTER V [Illustration] What then is a novel? _Un Novello_, pretty, pretty Baby. It is a thing of fixed form. It is pure English. Yes, she is of Massachusetts stock. Her great grandfather was thrown out of the Quaker church for joining the Continental army. Hates the English. Her life is a novel--almost too sensational. The story of Miss Li--so well told. _Qu'avez-vous vu_? Or they that write much and see little. Not much use to us. Speak of old Sun Bow pacing his mesa instead of Felipe Segundo in the barren halls of El Escorial--or asleep in his hard bed at one corner of the griddle. My mother would have a little nigger boy come with a brush and sit at her feet and brush her legs by the hour. Expressionism is to express skilfully the seething reactions of the contemporary European consciousness. Cornucopia. In at the small end and--blui! Kandinsky. But it's a fine thing. It is THE thing for the moment--in Europe. The same sort of thing, reversed, in America has a water attachment to be released with a button. That IS art. Everyone agrees that IS art. Just as one uses a handkerchief. It is the apotheosis of relief. Dadaism in one of its prettiest modes: _rien, rien, rien_.--But wait a bit. Maybe Dadaism is not so weak as one might imagine.--One takes it for granted almost without a thought that expressionism is the release of SOMETHING. Now then Aemilius, what is European consciousness composed of?--Tell me in one word.--_Rien, rien, rien_! It is at least very complicated. Oh very. You damned jackass. What do you know about Europe? Yes, what in Christ's name do you know? Your mouth is a sewer, a cloaca.