rare charm we call temperament.  He is curious, polite, and sweet, and follows his own nose in spite of everything.  He wins out with strength, experience, and a new nose; and we are rejoiced at his triumphs.  His questions are so funny and yet they seem quite what any elephant with a bump of curiosity might ask.  To the Giraffe—­“What made his skin spotty?” To the Hippopotamus—­“Why her eyes were red?” To the Baboon—­“Why melons tasted just so?” And at last, “What does the Crocodile have for dinner?”

The setting of the tale is suggested continually in expressions which show visual imagination of a high order:  such as, “And he lived in Africa”; “dragged him through a thorn bush”; “blew bubbles into her ear”; “hove him into a hornet’s nest”; and “from Graham’s Town to Kimberley and from Kimberley to Khama’s Country, and from Khama’s Country east by north to the Limpopo.”

The tale possesses most delightful humor.  A verbal magic which fairly scintillates with the comic spirit, and clinging epithets of which Kipling is a master, suggest the exact picture needed.  Humor is secured largely through the use of the unique word; as, “spanked,” “precisely as Kolokolo Bird had said,” and “for he was a Tidy Pachyderm.”  Often it is increased by the use of newly coined words; as, “hijjus,” “curtiosity,” “scalesome, flailsome, tail,” “fever-trees,” “self-propelling man-of-war,” and “schloop of mud.”  Another element of humor in the tale is the artistic use of repetition, which has been previously referred to as one of the child’s interests.  Sometimes one meaning is expressed in several different ways; as, “immediately and directly, without stopping, for a long time.”  Or we are given contrasted terms; as, “a little warm but not at all astonished,” and then later, “very warm and greatly astonished.”  One main element of humor is this way in which expressions reflect back on preceding ones.  Sometimes we are given very surprising, startling, expressions; as, “wait-a-bit-thorn-bush “—­which reminds us of the “all-alone-stone” in Water Babies—­and “he sang to himself down his trunk.”

As to imagination, The Elephant’s Child is a delightful illustration of the appeal to the associative, the penetrative, and the contemplative imagination.  While its philosophy may be understood in part by the child it has a deeper meaning for the adult.  It seems to imply that it is the way of life to spank somebody else.  It is the stronger who spank the weaker until they become strong enough to stand up for themselves.  Then nobody spanks anybody any more and there is peace.  When the Child asked a question that no one would answer he set out to find his own answer just as in life it often is best to work to answer one’s own questions.  When the Elephant trusted the Crocodile he got something to keep just as in life the innocent may bear the marks of a contest though in no sense responsible for the contest.  Experience in the guise of the Python