a very emphatic line. Talks of our proposal to use it in the elementary
schools---"

"Our proposal to use it in the elementary schools!"

"_I_ said something about that the other day--quite in passing--little
affair at a Polytechnic. Trying to make it clear the stuff was really
highly beneficial. Not in the slightest degree dangerous, in spite of
those first little accidents. Which cannot possibly occur again.... You
know it _would_ be rather good stuff--But he's taken it up."

"What did you say?"

"Mere obvious nothings. But as you see---! Takes it up with perfect
gravity. Treats the thing as an attack. Says there is already a
sufficient waste of public money in elementary schools without this.
Tells the old stories about piano lessons again--_you_ know. No one; he
says, wishes to prevent the children of the lower classes obtaining an
education suited to their condition, but to give them a food of this
sort will be to destroy their sense of proportion utterly. Expands the
topic. What Good will it do, he asks, to make poor people six-and-thirty
feet high? He really believes, you know, that they _will_ be thirty-six
feet high."

"So they would _be_," said Bensington, "if you gave them our food at all
regularly. But nobody said anything---"

"_I_ said something." "But, my dear Winkles--!"

"They'll be Bigger, of course," interrupted Winkles, with an air of