he mails,
And expressed the hope that this would teach him tact.

Well, the last I heard of Tilly he was planning not to think,
And he'd tied a piece of string around his tongue,
And he never went within a mile of either pen or ink,
And he always stood when _any_ song was sung.
And maybe you are thinking that his fate was rather tough,
But what I say is, not a bit, they didn't do enough.
When anybody differs with you, dammit, treat 'em rough,
Why, they ought to be bub-boiled alive and hung!

Humpty-Dumpty and Adam

It is not only every country that has its own language. It is each
generation. The books and family letters of our grandfathers are not
quite in our dialect. And so of the books of their grandfathers, and the
letters they wrote. These dialects are not so different from ours that
we can't make them out: they sound a little queer, that is all. Just as
our own way of talking and writing (and thinking) will seem so quaint to
our descendants that they'll put us away on the shelves.

A few books are written in a tongue that all times understand.

A few of us are linguists and have learned to enjoy the books of all
ages.

For the rest, aged books need translation into the speech of the day.

The poets of each generation seldom sing a new song. They turn to themes
men always have loved, and sing them in the mode of their times. Each
new tribe of artists perpetually repaints the same pictures. The
story-men tell the same stories. They remain fresh and young.

The disguise is new sometimes, but never the story behind it. A few
generations ago, when some one wrote Humpty-Dumpty, he was merely
retelling an old story for the men of his era, one of the oldest of
stories, the first part of Genesis.

It is a condensed account--it leaves out the serpent and Eve and the
apple. Some editor blue-penciled these parts, perhaps, as fanciful
little digressions. "Stick to the main theme," said the editor, "don't
go wandering off into frills. Your story is about the fall of Adam. Get
on. Make him fall."

"I had intended to introduce a love-interest," the author of
Humpty-Dumpty explained.

"A love interest!" sneered the editor. "You should have waited to be
born in the twentieth century. These are manlier times. Give us men and
adventure and fate."

"And what about the garden," the author sighed. "Must that be cut too?"

"By all means. Change the garden. It's a prett