sprints in
front of excitable mammoths. Everybody liked Ug, and it was a matter
of surprise to his friends that he had never married.

One bright day, however, they were interested to observe that he
had begun to exhibit all the symptoms. He brooded apart. Twice in
succession he refused a second help of pterodactyl at the tribal
luncheon table. And there were those who claimed to have come upon him
laboriously writing poetry on the walls of distant caves.

It should be understood that in those days only the most powerful
motive, such as a whole-hearted love, could drive a man to writing
poetry; for it was not the ridiculously simple task which it is
to-day. The alphabet had not yet been invented, and the only method by
which a young man could express himself was by carving or writing on
stone a series of pictures, each of which conveyed the sense of some
word or phrase. Thus, where the modern bard takes but a few seconds to
write, "You made me love you. I didn't want to do it, I didn't want
to do it," Ug, the son of Zug, had to sit up night after night till
he had carved three trees, a plesiosaurus, four kinds of fish, a
star-shaped rock, eleven different varieties of flowering shrub, and
a more or less lifelike representation of a mammoth surprised while
bathing. It is little wonder that the youth of the period, ever
impetuous, looked askance at this method of revealing their passion,
and preferred to give proof of their sincerity and fervour by waiting
for the lady of their affections behind a rock and stunning her with a
club.

But the refined and sensitive nature of Ug, the son of Zug, shrank
from this brusque form of wooing. He was shy with women. To him there
was something a little coarse, almost ungentlemanly, in the orthodox
form of proposal; and he had made up his mind that, if ever he should
happen to fall in love, he would propose by ideograph.

It was shortly after he had come to this decision that, at a
boy-and-girl dance given by a popular local hostess, he met the
divinest creature he had ever seen. Her name was Wug, the daughter of
Glug; and from the moment of their introduction he realised that she
was the one girl in the world for him. It only remained to compose the
ideograph.

Having steadied himself as far as possible by carving a few poems, as
described above, he addressed himself to the really important task of
the proposal.

It was extraordinarily difficult, for Ug had not had a very good