distrusted the unknown, and we did not venture. The Professor considered
that our molar teeth clearly indicated grain, roots, and nuts as our food,
and the incisors as clearly suggested fruit, but at that time he was in
some doubt about the canine teeth. At his request some of us gravely
cracked nuts with him, and after the experiment we agreed that human
beings more naturally crack nuts with the back teeth, where leverage is
most powerful. A suspicion remained that our pointed fangs _might_ have
been used to tear flesh!

During this same visit it was suggested that the Society should change its
name to one that would describe it more accurately, "Vegetarian,"
strictly, implying that the members would eat only vegetables. There was
much difficulty in finding a portmanteau word that would convey
vegetables, eggs, and milk. Professor Newman much disliked the idea of
calling it the VEM Society (the name that was afterwards adopted, I
think); his proposal was "Anti-creophagite," or "Anti-creophagist." But he
could get no support for this name; members objected that no one would
know what it meant or how to spell it. Professor Newman had been pained to
learn that only two or three people in the hall knew the Greek word.

He was very much interested in language, and it was characteristic of him
never to pass a word that he did not know. He had a great dislike and
contempt for _slang_, and he deplored the growing use of it, and the
impoverishment of the language that resulted. But dialect words, or old
words that lingered in some parts of the country, while they had dropped
out of common speech, interested him greatly. One day a younger sister of
mine brought him a footstool as he sat reading, and in offering it to him
called it a "buffet." It is not a word in common use, but I think we had
adopted it from the nursery rhyme about "Miss Muffett, who sat on a
buffet." The Professor was on the alert at once.