r example, is essentially
carminative. It gives one the sense of warmth, the glow.

'And passion carminative as wine...'

was what I wrote. Not only was the line elegantly sonorous; it was also,
I flattered myself, very aptly compendiously expressive. Everything
was in the word carminative--a detailed, exact foreground, an immense,
indefinite hinterland of suggestion.

'And passion carminative as wine...'

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.
Mallarme's envelopes with their versified addresses leave you cold,
unless they leave you pitiful; you can't see that

'Apte a ne point te cabrer, hue! Poste et j'ajouterai, dia! Si tu ne
fuis onze-bis Rue Balzac, chez cet Heredia,'

is a little miracle."

"You're right," said Mr. Scogan. "I can't.