t and immediately began sawing a thin slab from off its smooth
end.

"Now," said he, after he had finished the rather difficult task, oiled
his saw and returned it to his kit, "I proceed to write the word LOVE in
the infinitive mood."

"Is that a sad mood?" asked Dickey. "It sounds very much like it, I
think."

Without heeding the question in the least the Itinerant Tinker turned
the slab for Dickey's inspection, and he read on it the two words, TO
LOVE. Taking up a wedge the Itinerant Tinker printed the word DEARLY on
the flat side of it, and then skilfully drove it between the words TO
and LOVE. When he again held it up for Dickey to see, it read: TO DEARLY
LOVE.

"There!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker, holding the slab proudly at
arm's length and turning his head slowly from side to side, "that's what
I call a fine bit of ingenuity!"

"So that's a split infinitive, is it?" Dickey asked.

"Why, you _stupid_ boy!" the Itinerant Tinker exclaimed; "didn't you
just this minute see me split it?"

"Yes, sir; I did," Dickey murmured rather shamefacedly.

"Then, if I _split_ it, what else _could_ it be but a split infinitive,
I'd like to know?"

"Well," said Dickey, a bit timidly, "I never heard a block of wood
called an _infinitive_ before."

"Oh, my!" sighed the Itinerant Tinker, as he sank down on his pile of
merchandise. "How you _do_ weary me!"

He sat looking at the slab of wood for such a long time, turning it
admiringly now that way, now this, that poor Dickey began to grow quite
nervous.

"Please," he ventured at last, "won't you show me now how you mend it?"
Dickey didn't care in the least to see it done, but he imagined that by
asking the question he would regain the good will of the old man.

"There you go again! There you go!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker. He
actually shed a tear. "I knew you'd do it--I knew it!"

"Now what have I done?" asked Dickey, innocently.

"You've broken the silence," said the Itinerant Tinker, sadly. "It'll
take me hours and hours to glue _that_ together. But first," he went on,
after another long pause, "I'll show you how neatly this split
infinitive can be mended."

Thereupon he withdrew the wedge, dipped a brush into a pot of glue, and,
after distributing the sticky fluid over the split sides, brought them
carefully and neatly together.

"There!" he exclaimed, triumphantly, "_that's_ the proper way to bring
together a split infinitive. Beware, my boy, of spli