was something a little coarse, almost ungentlemanly, in the orthodox
form of proposal; and he had made up his mind that, if ever he should
happen to fall in love, he would propose by ideograph.

It was shortly after he had come to this decision that, at a
boy-and-girl dance given by a popular local hostess, he met the
divinest creature he had ever seen. Her name was Wug, the daughter of
Glug; and from the moment of their introduction he realised that she
was the one girl in the world for him. It only remained to compose the
ideograph.

Having steadied himself as far as possible by carving a few poems, as
described above, he addressed himself to the really important task of
the proposal.

It was extraordinarily difficult, for Ug had not had a very good
education. All he knew he had picked up in the give and take of tribal
life. For this reason he felt it would be better to keep the thing
short. But it was hard to condense all he felt into a brief note.
For a long time he thought in vain, then one night, as he tossed
sleeplessly on his bed of rocks, he came to a decision. He would
just ideograph, "Dear Wug, I love you. Yours faithfully, Ug. P.S.
R.S.V.P.," and leave it at that. So in the morning he got to work, and
by the end of the week the ideograph was completed. It consisted of
a rising sun, two cave-bears, a walrus, seventeen shin-bones of
the lesser rib-nosed baboon, a brontosaurus, three sand-eels, and
a pterodactyl devouring a mangold-wurzel. It was an uncommonly neat
piece of work, he considered, for one who had never attended an
art-school. He was pleased with it. It would, he flattered himself, be
a queer sort of girl who could stand out against that. For the first