Buelg's probably spurious text, disputes that this
is the exact meaning of the noun.]

Horvendile considered this a curious enactment, but it seemed only one
among the innumerable mad customs of Philistia. So he shrugged, and he
made the book of his journeying, and of the things which he had seen
and heard and loved and hated and had put by in the course of his
passage among ageless and unfathomed mysteries.

And in the book there was nowhere any word of eating.

2--How the Garbage Man Came with Forks

Now to the book which Horvendile had made comes presently a
garbage-man, newly returned from foreign travel for his health's sake,
whose name was John. And this scavenger cried, "Oh, horrible! for here
is very shameless mention of a sword and a spear and a staff."

"That now is true enough," says Horvendile, "but wherein lies the
harm?"

"Why, one has but to write 'a fork' here, in the place of each of
these offensive weapons, and the reference to eating is plain."

"That also is true, but it would be your writing and not my writing
which would refer to eating."

John said, "Abandoned one, it is the law of Philistia and the holy
doctrine of St. Anthony Koprologos that if anybody chooses to
understand any written word anywhere as meaning 'to eat,' the word
henceforward has that meaning."

"Then you of Philistia have very foolish laws."

To which John the Scavenger sagely replied: "Ah, but if laws exist
they ought to fairly and impartially and without favoritism be
enforced until amended or repealed. Much of the unsettled condition
prevailing in the country at the present time can be traced directly
to a lack of law enforcement in many directions during past years."

"Now I misdoubt if I understand you, Messire John, for your
infinitives are split beyond comprehension. And when you talk about
the non-enforcement of anything in many directions, even though these
directions were during past years, I find it so confusing that the one
thing of which I can be quite certain is that it was never you whom
the law selected to pass upon and to amend all books."

This Horvendile says foolishly, not knowing it is an axiom among the
Philistines that literary expression is best controlled by somebody
with no misleading tenderness toward it; and that it is this custom,
as they proudly aver, which makes the literature of Philistia what it
is.

But John the Garbage-man said nothing at all, the while that he
changed