Women are seldom leolumps, for they never allow the conversation to depart from the subject of themselves. And so they never have to interrupt, or bring the topic back.
He breaks into your talk, and cries,
“Oh, that reminds me,”—then
Oh, how his tale your patience tries!
But you begin again.
A leolump you cannot shame;
His head is like a fly’s;
His brain is small, but all the same,
He has a thousand “I’s.”
Loob´lum, n. 1. A pleasant thing that is bad for one; rich, but dangerous food. 2. A flatterer; flattery.
Loob´loid, a. 1. Sweet, but indigestible.
Loobloid is the broiled live lobster and the hot mince pie. Loobloid, ice water when you are warm and whiskey when you are cold.
But human nature still woos the looblum. For youthful inexperience, green apples and the first cigar; for age, ennui and discouragement,—opium, morphine and cocaine.
Yes, all those things of which the bromide says, “I like them, but they don’t like me,” are loobloid. Black coffee at night and a cocktail in the morning—both are looblums.
And yet, the mental looblums are worse; corroding the character with sweetest poisons. How rapturously we gulp them down! You ask criticism on what you know is bad, and enjoy the loobloid praise. On his opening night, the ambitious playwright makes his speech in answer to the looblums of applause. (See Wumgush.)
On the morning after her wedding-day, the blue-nosed bride reads loobloid descriptions of her beauty at the ceremony.