A very terrible old fairy found the professor out ; she felt his bumps , and cast his nativity , and took the lunars of him carefully inside and out ; and so she knew what he would do as well as if she had seen it in a print book , as they say in the dear old west country ; and he did it ; and so he was found out beforehand , as everybody always is ; and the old fairy will find out the naturalists some day , and put them in the Times , and then on whose side will the laugh be ? So the old fairy took him in hand very severely there and then . But she says she is always most severe with the best people , because there is most chance of curing them , and therefore they are the patients who pay her best ; for she has to work on the same salary as the Emperor of China 's physicians -LRB- it is a pity that all do not -RRB- , no cure , no pay . So she took the poor professor in hand : and because he was not content with things as they are , she filled his head with things as they are not , to try if he would like them better ; and because he did not choose to believe in a water-baby when he saw it , she made him believe in worse things than water-babies -- in unicorns , fire - drakes , manticoras , basilisks , amphisbaenas , griffins , phoenixes , rocs , orcs , dog-headed men , three-headed dogs , three-bodied geryons , and other pleasant creatures , which folks think never existed yet , and which folks hope never will exist , though they know nothing about the matter , and never will ; and these creatures so upset , terrified , flustered , aggravated , confused , astounded , horrified , and totally flabbergasted the poor professor that the doctors said that he was out of his wits for three months ; and perhaps they were right , as they are now and then . So all the doctors in the county were called in to make a report on his case ; and of course every one of them flatly contradicted the other : else what use is there in being men of science ? But at last the majority agreed on a report in the true medical language , one half bad Latin , the other half worse Greek , and the rest what might have been English , if they had only learnt to write it . And this is the beginning thereof - `` The subanhypaposupernal anastomoses of peritomic diacellurite in the encephalo digital region of the distinguished individual of whose symptomatic phoenomena we had the melancholy honour -LRB- subsequently to a preliminary diagnostic inspection -RRB- of making an inspectorial diagnosis , presenting the interexclusively quadrilateral and antinomian diathesis known as Bumpsterhausen 's blue follicles , we proceeded '' - But what they proceeded to do My Lady never knew ; for she was so frightened at the long words that she ran for her life , and locked herself into her bedroom , for fear of being squashed by the words and strangled by the sentence . A boa constrictor , she said , was bad company enough : but what was a boa constrictor made of paving stones ? `` It was quite shocking ! What can they think is the matter with him ? '' said she to the old nurse . `` That his wit 's just addled ; may be wi ' unbelief and heathenry , '' quoth she . `` Then why ca n't they say so ? '' And the heaven , and the sea , and the rocks , and the vales re - echoed -- `` Why indeed ? '' But the doctors never heard them . So she made Sir John write to the Times to command the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being to put a tax on long words ; - A light tax on words over three syllables , which are necessary evils , like rats : but , like them , must be kept down judiciously . A heavy tax on words over four syllables , as heterodoxy , spontaneity , spiritualism , spuriosity , etc. . And on words over five syllables -LRB- of which I hope no one will wish to see any examples -RRB- , a totally prohibitory tax . And a similar prohibitory tax on words derived from three or more languages at once ; words derived from two languages having become so common that there was no more hope of rooting out them than of rooting out peth-winds . The Chancellor of the Exchequer , being a scholar and a man of sense , jumped at the notion ; for he saw in it the one and only plan for abolishing Schedule D : but when he brought in his bill , most of the Irish members , and -LRB- I am sorry to say -RRB- some of the Scotch likewise , opposed it most strongly , on the ground that in a free country no man was bound either to understand himself or to let others understand him .
XXXXX the bill fell through on the first reading ; and the Chancellor , being a philosopher , comforted himself with the thought that it was not the first time that a woman had hit off a grand idea and the men turned up their stupid noses thereat .
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