The Jeweller’s Window

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30745, 8 May 1965, Page 5

The Jeweller’s Window

: dozen in which the "c" is long in standard English. They are: “Edith," "Ely," “Enid." "Enoch" (Eno), “epoch," "equal," “Erin" (often pronounced “Errin”). “Eton," "evil,” "Eva," and “even." On the other hand we find very few words in which the initial “e” is short, there are “echo,” and “Evans," and “Evan,” and “epic," and of these “echo” may be said to belong to the other group for though the ch looks like a double consonant it stands I for a single sound. When we look at these two lists, neither of which is probably complete though full enough to show the general tendency, we see how, when "ego” came into use an an English word in the early 19th century, it naturally joined up with the tame majority, with “evil” and "epoch” and turned away from the heretic “epic and “echo.” Would I then justify “ego”? Not at all, I disapprove of it just as strongly as I would discountenance “eepic” or "eecho.” Nothing that I can say, however, will discourage the use of "eego” among the professionals. It must not be supposed that this rule or habit of our speech is confined to words beginning with “e,” it is valid for all the vowels as. for instance, in “Amy,” “ibis," “open" and “unit," all with the long initial vowel.

Snake Story In such countries as Australia and India where snakes abound, such stories naturally abound too. These stories tend to be “tall” and their distributors to be labelled liars.

Here is one whose credibility had to be, or was thought to have to be, supported by legal action. One of my brothers was for a time in the Malayan Civil Service and acted as a magistrate in an outlying district.

Two mining prospectors came to his court or office and insisted on making an affidavit before him in order to establish the truth of a story they had to tell. He agreed to this though he could not see why they should think it necessary or effective. The “incredible” story they had to tell was this. They had descended into an abandoned mine and found at the bottom of the sharft a very large python which they killed. On examining the body they found that it contained another python and the “incredible” fact appeared. The two snakes had evidently been in conflict and the one had devoured the other so that one became the wrapping and the other the parcel. And the parcel was larger than the wrapping. Of the two snakes, the loser in the battle, doomed to be enveloped, was actually the larger of the two. The feelings of the conqueror as he set about the long task of digesting the body of his opponent may be "better imagined than described.” Another of my brothers, who became the leading authority on the snakes of India and Ceylon, gave me a photograph which he took in Japan, of a snake and its prey to show the relative proportions of the two. It showed the slender body of the snake and the comparitively bulky body of a hare slung on a stick. I would not say that the hare was actually larger than its temporary host but it was several times greater in diameter. The elastic-sided boot seems to have been nature’s model in devising the structure of these creatures.