the females, and set the males free again. In time, as a consequence, the males would outnumber the females by such a high percentage that their persecution of the latter would eventually end in sterility and death for the whole race. In the same magazine there was a paper on hierba mate, the South American beverage, bitter and unpalatable until a taste for it is acquired, draughted from the leaves of the Ilex Paraguayensis. Genaro Romero, the Paraguayan, had rhapsodized regarding it: When we taste maté our energies are renewed, our nerves are comforted by the effect of the green sap, the juice of hope of the Paraguayan flora; and we experience strange impressions, we are nourished by an infusion of energy, and gilded dreams, possibly of good fortune, caress us. Campaspe wondered, at this juncture, if Esperanto had any irregular verbs. . . . She made an attempt to define her impression of the work of Gertrude Stein. She uses words, thought Campaspe, for their detonations and their connotations. . . . In the New York Times she discovered an account of a man who had devoted years to the engraving of the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin. Once this task was accomplished, he went first blind and then insane. . . . Out of the back of her mind she picked another detail: girls working in cordite factories use the explosive for chewing-gum. It acts as a heart stimulant.
Campaspe began to feel restless and energetic.
