Prince: if from affairs your soul craves rest,
Hie you to some abandoned nook.
There for your mind seek a gayer test
All in the leaves of the Cross Word Book.
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 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 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?