to have killed the curiosity, but contrary to what one would expect,
it was living and active. When Kolokolo Bird said with a _mournful_
cry, "Go to the banks of the great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo River,"
etc., the implication of _mournful_ is, that there the Elephant's
Child would have a sorry time of it. The expression, "dear families,"
which occurs so often, is full of delightful irony and suggests the
vigorous treatment, anything but dear, which had come to the
Elephant's Child from them.

Perfect form consists in the "ability to convey thought and emotion
with perfect fidelity." The general qualities characteristic of
perfect form, which have been outlined by Professor Winchester, in his
_Principles of Literary Criticism_, are: (1) precision or clearness;
(2) energy or force; (3) delicacy or emotional harmony; and (4)
personality. Precision or clearness demands the precise value and
meaning of words. It requires that words have the power of denotation.
It appeals to the intellect of the reader or listener and demands that
language be neither vague nor ambiguous nor obscure. Energy or force
demands that perfect form have the quality of emotion. It requires
that words have especially the power of connotation. It appeals to the
emotions of the reader or listener and has the power to hold the
attention. It demands of language that sympathy which will imply what
it would suggest. Delicacy or emotional harmony demands that perfect
form please the taste. It requires that an emotional harmony be
secured by a selection and arrangement of the melody of words and of
the emotional associations which, together with the meanings, are tied
up in words. It demands that words have the power of perfect
adaptation to the thought and feeling they express, that words have
both the power of denotation and of connotation. It appeals to the
æsthetic sense of the reader or listener, it gives to form beauty and