ort space and proceeded to eat with every appearance of enjoyment.

"In Paris, a few years ago," resumed Klingenspiel, "one of the learned
faculty that lend a well deserved renown to the medical department of
that ancient institution, the University of Paris, discovered an
elixir which used during the period of human growth--and even
after--causes the stature to increase. By depositing an increased
supply of the matter necessary to the formation of bones, the frame
increases and the fleshy covering grows with it. You have doubtless
read of this in the papers, as I have seen it mentioned there recently
myself----"

"I beg your pardon," interrupted Nora, "but I must know what that
monster is. Please do not keep me in suspense any longer."

"Allow me to develop my discourse in its natural sequence," said
Klingenspiel. "I learned of this elixir at the time its originator
first formulated it and as we were friends, I secured from him the
formula----"

"What is that animal?" cried Nora, seizing Klingenspiel's ear with a
dexterity born of long experience in educational work, and lifting him
slowly toward a position upon the points of his toes.

"A guinea pig, a guinea pig, a guinea pig," howled the student of
heredity.

"You guinea, you," exclaimed Nora in incredulous amazement, and yet as
she looked at the monster, which having finished the cabbage was
crouching contentedly between two huge elms, she was struck by the
familiarity of the markings and contour of the tremendous brute.
Turning in such wise that of the appendices of his countenance it
should be his short and elusive nose instead of his ears presented
toward the grasp of the expert in the science of pedagogy,
Klingenspiel continued.

"Generations of guinea pigs succeed each other in less than three
months. In less than ten months, a pair of guinea pigs become
great-grandfather and great-grandmother. In a few years, heredity
could here do what a century of breeding horses could not. I treated a
pair of young guinea pigs with the elixir. Their growth was wonderful.
Their children inherited the size of their parents and to this the
elixir added, and so on, cumulatively, for successive generations. I
kept only a single pair out of each brood and disposed of that pair as
soon as the next generation became grown. I did this partly because I
could thus conduct my experiment with greater secrecy. Besides, after
the guinea pigs were large enough, I found considerab