VOCABULARY ENRICHMENT IN THE SUBURBS DUE TO THE CROSS WORD PUZZLE INFLUENCE
(Two neighbors, Mrs. Wordsworth and Mrs. Frazee, are spending a warm summer afternoon together on the former’s front porch. They are sewing.)
Mrs. W.—What is that you are working at, my dear?
Mrs. F.—I’m tatting Joe’s initials on his moreen vest. Are you making that ebon garment for yourself?
Mrs. W.—Yea. Just a black dress for every day. Henry says I look rather naif in black.
Mrs. F.—Well, perhaps; but it’s a bit too anile for me. Give me something in indigo or, say, ecru.
Mrs. W.—Quite right. There is really no neb in such solemn investments.
Mrs. F.—Stet.
Mrs. W.—By the way, didn’t I hear that your little Junior met with an accident?
Mrs. F.—Yes. The little oaf fell from an apse and fractured his artus.
Mrs. W.—Egad!
Mrs. F.—And to make matters worse Dr. Bloop botched it so that we had to trek into town to a specialist. How Dr. Bloop makes his sal is a rebus to me.
Mrs. W.—The zany.
Mrs. F.—Joe’s ire was so aroused that he told Dr. Bloop [[7]]right to his visage that he was a dolt and an ort. Is your offspring well?
Mrs. W.—Not entirely. He was abed yester with a severe megrim, dark arcs neath his orbs and as pale as talc.
Mrs. F.—Renal?
Mrs. W.—That is moot. You see, Dicky is so active.
Mrs. F.—A perfect icon of his pater; restless as a little emu.
Mrs. W.—He took a canoe out on the tarn and paddled over to the ait. There he stepped into a fen and got his feet roric.
Mrs. F.—Boys have such an elan for the eau.
Mrs. W.—Why can’t they play on the muirs and in the wald nearby? I gave him a drachm of ricin and thank goodness he was better this morn.
Mrs. F.—I’m so glad. This torrid weather is very trying. One’s vitality reaches its nadir in this heat, and to add to the discomfort I have an incompetent serf to contend with.
Mrs. W.—Oh, this esne problem. The last one I had was such a schelm I had to let her go. Would you drink a nice cold beaker of negus? I’m so sere.
Mrs. F.—Don’t trouble yourself, my dear.
Mrs. W.—Not at all. It’s Henry’s favorite quaff and he insists upon it being on the ice at all times. He gets quite roiled if it isn’t.
Mrs. F.—Well, we must humor our sires. I hate to hear them gnar.
(They are interrupted by piercing juvenile shrieks growing rapidly louder and nearer. Junior and Dicky, ages six [[8]]and seven, burst into view around the corner of the house. They take final kicks at each other before smothering their sobs in the laps of their respective mothers.)
Mrs. F.—Why, Junior, what is this?
Mrs. W.—Come, come, Dicky, aren’t you ashamed of such——
Dicky (Howling)—W-well, it’s h-his fault. He said I was a five-letter word meaning a human being with inferior intelligence and wit!
Junior—And he called me a four-letter word meaning an invisible particle of matter!
Dicky—And that’s what you are.
(They mix it up once more and are disentangled with difficulty.)
Mrs. F.—I think we had better be going, Mrs. Wordsworth. I’m so sorry.
Mrs. W.—Male progeny will be male progeny, you know.
(Mrs. F. drags Junior away.)
Dicky—(Yelling after him with much feeling)—ATOM!!
Junior—(Not too gently)—MORON!!!
N. D. Plume+Jean
—Reprinted by permission from F. P. A.’s Conning Tower, The N. Y. World. [[9]]