similar observances. I'm Secretary of a Nomological Society at
home, which is interested in pagodas, topes, and joss-houses; and
I've been travelling in Africa and in the South Sea Islands for a
long time past, working at materials for a History of Taboo, from
its earliest beginnings in the savage stage to its fully developed
European complexity; so of course all you say comes home to me
greatly. Your taboos, I foresee, will prove a most valuable and
illustrative study."

"I beg your pardon," Philip interposed stiffly, now put upon his
mettle. "We have NO taboos at all in England. You're misled, no
doubt, by a mere playful facon de parler, which society indulges
in. England, you must remember, is a civilised country, and taboos
are institutions that belong to the lowest and most degraded
savages."

But Bertram Ingledew gazed at him in the blankest astonishment. "No
taboos!" he exclaimed, taken aback. "Why, I've read of hundreds.
Among nomological students, England has always been regarded with
the greatest interest as the home and centre of the highest and
most evolved taboo development. And you yourself," he added with a
courteous little bow, "have already supplied me with quite half a
dozen. But perhaps you call them by some other name among
yourselves; though in origin and essence, of course, they're
precisely the same as the other taboos I've been examining so long
in Asia and Africa. However, I'm afraid I'm detaining you from the
function of your joss-house. You wish, no doubt, to make your
genuflexions in the Temple of Respectability."

And he reflected silently on the curious fact that the English give