Huluk · June 30, 2020 21:16
diff --git a/devilsdict b/devilsdict
 ABASEMENT, n.  A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence
 of wealth or power.  Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when
 addressing an employer.
 %
 ABATIS, n.  Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside
 from molesting the rubbish inside.
 %
 ABDICATION, n.  An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the
 high temperature of the throne.

  Poor Isabella's Dead, whose abdication
  Set all tongues wagging in the Spanish nation.
  For that performance 'twere unfair to scold her:
  She wisely left a throne too hot to hold her.
  To History she'll be no royal riddle--
  Merely a plain parched pea that jumped the griddle.

 G.J.
 %
 ABDOMEN, n.  The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with
 sacrificial rights, all true men engage.  From women this ancient
 faith commands but a stammering assent.  They sometimes minister at
 the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence
 for the one deity that men really adore they know not.  If woman had a
 free hand in the world's marketing the race would become
 graminivorous.
 %
 ABILITY, n.  The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of
 the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones.  In the
 last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high
 degree of solemnity.  Perhaps, however, this impressive quality is
 rightly appraised; it is no easy task to be solemn.
 %
 ABNORMAL, adj.  Not conforming to standard.  In matters of thought and
 conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be
 detested.  Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the
 straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself.
 Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and
 the hope of Hell.
 %
 ABORIGINIES, n.  Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a
 newly discovered country.  They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
 %
 ABRACADABRA.

  By _Abracadabra_ we signify
      An infinite number of things.
  'Tis the answer to What? and How? and Why?
  And Whence? and Whither?--a word whereby
      The Truth (with the comfort it brings)
  Is open to all who grope in night,
  Crying for Wisdom's holy light.

  Whether the word is a verb or a noun
      Is knowledge beyond my reach.
  I only know that 'tis handed down.
          From sage to sage,
          From age to age--
      An immortal part of speech!

  Of an ancient man the tale is told
  That he lived to be ten centuries old,
      In a cave on a mountain side.
      (True, he finally died.)
  The fame of his wisdom filled the land,
  For his head was bald, and you'll understand
      His beard was long and white
      And his eyes uncommonly bright.

  Philosophers gathered from far and near
  To sit at his feet and hear and hear,
          Though he never was heard
          To utter a word
      But "_Abracadabra, abracadab_,
          _Abracada, abracad_,
      _Abraca, abrac, abra, ab!_"
          'Twas all he had,
  'Twas all they wanted to hear, and each
  Made copious notes of the mystical speech,
          Which they published next--
          A trickle of text
  In a meadow of commentary.
      Mighty big books were these,
      In number, as leaves of trees;
  In learning, remarkable--very!

          He's dead,
          As I said,
  And the books of the sages have perished,
  But his wisdom is sacredly cherished.
  In _Abracadabra_ it solemnly rings,
  Like an ancient bell that forever swings.
          O, I love to hear
          That word make clear
  Humanity's General Sense of Things.

 Jamrach Holobom
 %
 ABRIDGE, v.t.  To shorten.

      When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for
  people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of
  mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
  them to the separation.

 Oliver Cromwell
 %
 ABRUPT, adj.  Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon-
 shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most
 affected by it.  Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another
 author's ideas that they were "concatenated without abruption."
 %
 ABSCOND, v.i.  To "move in a mysterious way," commonly with the
 property of another.

  Spring beckons!  All things to the call respond;
  The trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.

 Phela Orm
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 ABSENT, adj.  Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed;
 hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection
 of another.

  To men a man is but a mind.  Who cares
  What face he carries or what form he wears?
  But woman's body is the woman.  O,
  Stay thou, my sweetheart, and do never go,
  But heed the warning words the sage hath said:
  A woman absent is a woman dead.

 Jogo Tyree
 %
 ABSENTEE, n.  A person with an income who has had the forethought to
 remove himself from the sphere of exaction.
 %
 ABSOLUTE, adj.  Independent, irresponsible.  An absolute monarchy is
 one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases
 the assassins.  Not many absolute monarchies are left, most of them
 having been replaced by limited monarchies, where the sovereign's
 power for evil (and for good) is greatly curtailed, and by republics,
 which are governed by chance.
 %
 ABSTAINER, n.  A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying
 himself a pleasure.  A total abstainer is one who abstains from
 everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the
 affairs of others.

  Said a man to a crapulent youth:  "I thought
      You a total abstainer, my son."
  "So I am, so I am," said the scapegrace caught--
      "But not, sir, a bigoted one."

 G.J.
 %
 ABSURDITY, n.  A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with
 one's own opinion.
 %
 ACADEME, n.  An ancient school where morality and philosophy were
 taught.
 %
 ACADEMY, n.  [from ACADEME]   A modern school where football is
 taught.
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 ACCIDENT, n.  An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable
 natural laws.
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 ACCOMPLICE, n.  One associated with another in a crime, having guilty
 knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal,
 knowing him guilty.  This view of the attorney's position in the
 matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one
 having offered them a fee for assenting.
 %
 ACCORD, n.  Harmony.
 %
 ACCORDION, n.  An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an
 assassin.
 %
 ACCOUNTABILITY, n.  The mother of caution.

  "My accountability, bear in mind,"
      Said the Grand Vizier:  "Yes, yes,"
  Said the Shah:  "I do--'tis the only kind
      Of ability you possess."

 Joram Tate
 %
 ACCUSE, v.t.  To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a
 justification of ourselves for having wronged him.
 %
 ACEPHALOUS, adj.  In the surprising condition of the Crusader who
 absently pulled at his forelock some hours after a Saracen scimitar
 had, unconsciously to him, passed through his neck, as related by de
 Joinville.
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 ACHIEVEMENT, n.  The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.
 %
 ACKNOWLEDGE, v.t.  To confess.  Acknowledgement of one another's
 faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.
 %
 ACQUAINTANCE, n.  A person whom we know well enough to borrow from,
 but not well enough to lend to.  A degree of friendship called slight
 when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or
 famous.
 %
 ACTUALLY, adv.  Perhaps; possibly.
 %
 ADAGE, n.  Boned wisdom for weak teeth.
 %
 ADAMANT, n.  A mineral frequently found beneath a corset.  Soluble in
 solicitate of gold.
 %
 ADDER, n.  A species of snake.  So called from its habit of adding
 funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.
 %
 ADHERENT, n.  A follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects
 to get.
 %
 ADMINISTRATION, n.  An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to
 receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president.  A man of
 straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting.
 %
 ADMIRAL, n.  That part of a war-ship which does the talking while the
 figure-head does the thinking.
 %
 ADMIRATION, n.  Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
 ourselves.
 %
 ADMONITION, n.  Gentle reproof, as with a meat-axe.  Friendly warning.

  Consigned by way of admonition,
  His soul forever to perdition.

 Judibras
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 ADORE, v.t.  To venerate expectantly.
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 ADVICE, n.  The smallest current coin.

  "The man was in such deep distress,"
  Said Tom, "that I could do no less
  Than give him good advice."  Said Jim:
  "If less could have been done for him
  I know you well enough, my son,
  To know that's what you would have done."

 Jebel Jocordy
 %
 AFFIANCED, pp.  Fitted with an ankle-ring for the ball-and-chain.
 %
 AFFLICTION, n.  An acclimatizing process preparing the soul for
 another and bitter world.
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 AFRICAN, n.  A nigger that votes our way.
 %
 AGE, n.  That period of life in which we compound for the vices that
 we still cherish by reviling those that we have no longer the
 enterprise to commit.
 %
 AGITATOR, n.  A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors
 --to dislodge the worms.
 %
 AIM, n.

      The task we set our wishes to.
  "Cheer up!  Have you no aim in life?"
      She tenderly inquired.
  "An aim?  Well, no, I haven't, wife;
      The fact is--I have fired."

 G.J.
 %
 AIR, n.  A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for
 the fattening of the poor.
 %
 ALDERMAN, n.  An ingenious criminal who covers his secret thieving
 with a pretence of open marauding.
 %
 ALIEN, n.  An American sovereign in his probationary state.
 %
 ALLAH, n.  The Mahometan Supreme Being, as distinguished from the
 Christian, Jewish, and so forth.

  Allah's good laws I faithfully have kept,
  And ever for the sins of man have wept;
      And sometimes kneeling in the temple I
  Have reverently crossed my hands and slept.

 Junker Barlow
 %
 ALLEGIANCE, n.

  This thing Allegiance, as I suppose,
  Is a ring fitted in the subject's nose,
  Whereby that organ is kept rightly pointed
  To smell the sweetness of the Lord's anointed.

 G.J.
 %
 ALLIANCE, n.  In international politics, the union of two thieves who
 have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they
 cannot separately plunder a third.
 %
 ALLIGATOR, n.  The crocodile of America, superior in every detail to
 the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World.  Herodotus
 says the Indus is, with one exception, the only river that produces
 crocodiles, but they appear to have gone West and grown up with the
 other rivers.  From the notches on his back the alligator is called a
 sawrian.
 %
 ALONE, adj.  In bad company.

  In contact, lo! the flint and steel,
  By spark and flame, the thought reveal
  That he the metal, she the stone,
  Had cherished secretly alone.

 Booley Fito
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 ALTAR, n.  The place whereupon the priest formerly raveled out the
 small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination
 and cooked its flesh for the gods.  The word is now seldom used,
 except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a
 male and a female tool.

  They stood before the altar and supplied
  The fire themselves in which their fat was fried.
  In vain the sacrifice!--no god will claim
  An offering burnt with an unholy flame.

 M.P. Nopput
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 AMBIDEXTROUS, adj.  Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket
 or a left.
 %
 AMBITION, n.  An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while
 living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
 %
 AMNESTY, n.  The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would
 be too expensive to punish.
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 ANOINT, v.t.  To grease a king or other great functionary already
 sufficiently slippery.

  As sovereigns are anointed by the priesthood,
  So pigs to lead the populace are greased good.

 Judibras
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 ANTIPATHY, n.  The sentiment inspired by one's friend's friend.
 %
 APHORISM, n.  Predigested wisdom.

  The flabby wine-skin of his brain
  Yields to some pathologic strain,
  And voids from its unstored abysm
  The driblet of an aphorism.

 "The Mad Philosopher," 1697
 %
 APOLOGIZE, v.i.  To lay the foundation for a future offence.
 %
 APOSTATE, n.  A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle
 only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient
 to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.
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 APOTHECARY, n.  The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor
 and grave worm's provider.

  When Jove sent blessings to all men that are,
  And Mercury conveyed them in a jar,
  That friend of tricksters introduced by stealth
  Disease for the apothecary's health,
  Whose gratitude impelled him to proclaim:
  "My deadliest drug shall bear my patron's name!"

 G.J.
 %
 APPEAL, v.t.  In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
 %
 APPETITE, n.  An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a
 solution to the labor question.
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 APPLAUSE, n.  The echo of a platitude.
 %
 APRIL FOOL, n.  The March fool with another month added to his folly.
 %
 ARCHBISHOP, n.  An ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a
 bishop.

  If I were a jolly archbishop,
  On Fridays I'd eat all the fish up--
  Salmon and flounders and smelts;
  On other days everything else.

 Jodo Rem
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 ARCHITECT, n.  One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft
 of your money.
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 ARDOR, n.  The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
 %
 ARENA, n.  In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman
 wrestles with his record.
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 ARISTOCRACY, n.  Government by the best men.  (In this sense the word
 is obsolete; so is that kind of government.)  Fellows that wear downy
 hats and clean shirts--guilty of education and suspected of bank
 accounts.
 %
 ARMOR, n.  The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a
 blacksmith.
 %
 ARRAYED, pp.  Drawn up and given an orderly disposition, as a rioter
 hanged to a lamppost.
 %
 ARREST, v.t.  Formally to detain one accused of unusualness.

  God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.

 _The Unauthorized Version_
 %
 ARSENIC, n.  A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom
 it greatly affects in turn.

  "Eat arsenic?  Yes, all you get,"
      Consenting, he did speak up;
  "'Tis better you should eat it, pet,
      Than put it in my teacup."

 Joel Huck
 %
 ART, n.  This word has no definition.  Its origin is related as
 follows by the ingenious Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J.

  One day a wag--what would the wretch be at?--
  Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT,
  And said it was a god's name!  Straight arose
  Fantastic priests and postulants (with shows,
  And mysteries, and mummeries, and hymns,
  And disputations dire that lamed their limbs)
  To serve his temple and maintain the fires,
  Expound the law, manipulate the wires.
  Amazed, the populace that rites attend,
  Believe whate'er they cannot comprehend,
  And, inly edified to learn that two
  Half-hairs joined so and so (as Art can do)
  Have sweeter values and a grace more fit
  Than Nature's hairs that never have been split,
  Bring cates and wines for sacrificial feasts,
  And sell their garments to support the priests.
 %
 ARTLESSNESS, n.  A certain engaging quality to which women attain by
 long study and severe practice upon the admiring male, who is pleased
 to fancy it resembles the candid simplicity of his young.
 %
 ASPERSE, v.t.  Maliciously to ascribe to another vicious actions which
 one has not had the temptation and opportunity to commit.
 %
 ASS, n.  A public singer with a good voice but no ear.  In Virginia
 City, Nevada, he is called the Washoe Canary, in Dakota, the Senator,
 and everywhere the Donkey.  The animal is widely and variously
 celebrated in the literature, art and religion of every age and
 country; no other so engages and fires the human imagination as this
 noble vertebrate.  Indeed, it is doubted by some (Ramasilus, _lib.
 %
 II., De Clem._, and C. Stantatus, _De Temperamente_) if it is not a
 god; and as such we know it was worshiped by the Etruscans, and, if we
 may believe Macrobious, by the Cupasians also.  Of the only two
 animals admitted into the Mahometan Paradise along with the souls of
 men, the ass that carried Balaam is one, the dog of the Seven Sleepers
 the other.  This is no small distinction.  From what has been written
 about this beast might be compiled a library of great splendor and
 magnitude, rivalling that of the Shakespearean cult, and that which
 clusters about the Bible.  It may be said, generally, that all
 literature is more or less Asinine.

  "Hail, holy Ass!" the quiring angels sing;
  "Priest of Unreason, and of Discords King!"
  Great co-Creator, let Thy glory shine:
  God made all else, the Mule, the Mule is thine!"

 G.J.
 %
 AUCTIONEER, n.  The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked
 a pocket with his tongue.
 %
 AUSTRALIA, n.  A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and
 commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate
 dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an
 island.
 %
 AVERNUS, n.  The lake by which the ancients entered the infernal
 regions.  The fact that access to the infernal regions was obtained by
 a lake is believed by the learned Marcus Ansello Scrutator to have
 suggested the Christian rite of baptism by immersion.  This, however,
 has been shown by Lactantius to be an error.

  _Facilis descensus Averni,_
      The poet remarks; and the sense
  Of it is that when down-hill I turn I
      Will get more of punches than pence.

 Jehal Dai Lupe
 %
 BAAL, n.  An old deity formerly much worshiped under various names.
 As Baal he was popular with the Phoenicians; as Belus or Bel he had
 the honor to be served by the priest Berosus, who wrote the famous
 account of the Deluge; as Babel he had a tower partly erected to his
 glory on the Plain of Shinar.  From Babel comes our English word
 "babble."  Under whatever name worshiped, Baal is the Sun-god.  As
 Beelzebub he is the god of flies, which are begotten of the sun's rays
 on the stagnant water.  In Physicia Baal is still worshiped as Bolus,
 and as Belly he is adored and served with abundant sacrifice by the
 priests of Guttledom.
 %
 BABE or BABY, n.  A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or
 condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and
 antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion.
 There have been famous babes; for example, little Moses, from whose
 adventure in the bulrushes the Egyptian hierophants of seven centuries
 before doubtless derived their idle tale of the child Osiris being
 preserved on a floating lotus leaf.

          Ere babes were invented
          The girls were contended.
          Now man is tormented
  Until to buy babes he has squandered
  His money.  And so I have pondered
          This thing, and thought may be
          'T were better that Baby
  The First had been eagled or condored.

 Ro Amil
 %
 BACCHUS, n.  A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse
 for getting drunk.

  Is public worship, then, a sin,
      That for devotions paid to Bacchus
  The lictors dare to run us in,
      And resolutely thump and whack us?

 Jorace
 %
 BACK, n.  That part of your friend which it is your privilege to
 contemplate in your adversity.
 %
 BACKBITE, v.t.  To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find
 you.
 %
 BAIT, n.  A preparation that renders the hook more palatable.  The
 best kind is beauty.
 %
 BAPTISM, n.  A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself
 in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever.  It is
 performed with water in two ways--by immersion, or plunging, and by
 aspersion, or sprinkling.

  But whether the plan of immersion
  Is better than simple aspersion
      Let those immersed
      And those aspersed
  Decide by the Authorized Version,
  And by matching their agues tertian.

 G.J.
 %
 BAROMETER, n.  An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of
 weather we are having.
 %
 BARRACK, n.  A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of
 which it is their business to deprive others.
 %
 BASILISK, n.  The cockatrice.  A sort of serpent hatched from the egg
 of a cock.  The basilisk had a bad eye, and its glance was fatal.
 Many infidels deny this creature's existence, but Semprello Aurator
 saw and handled one that had been blinded by lightning as a punishment
 for having fatally gazed on a lady of rank whom Jupiter loved.  Juno
 afterward restored the reptile's sight and hid it in a cave.  Nothing
 is so well attested by the ancients as the existence of the basilisk,
 but the cocks have stopped laying.
 %
 BASTINADO, n.  The act of walking on wood without exertion.
 %
 BATH, n.  A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship,
 with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.

  The man who taketh a steam bath
  He loseth all the skin he hath,
  And, for he's boiled a brilliant red,
  Thinketh to cleanliness he's wed,
  Forgetting that his lungs he's soiling
  With dirty vapors of the boiling.

 Richard Gwow
 %
 BATTLE, n.  A method of untying with the teeth of a political knot
 that would not yield to the tongue.
 %
 BEARD, n.  The hair that is commonly cut off by those who justly
 execrate the absurd Chinese custom of shaving the head.
 %
 BEAUTY, n.  The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a
 husband.
 %
 BEFRIEND, v.t.  To make an ingrate.
 %
 BEG, v.  To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the
 belief that it will not be given.

  Who is that, father?
                        A mendicant, child,
  Haggard, morose, and unaffable--wild!
  See how he glares through the bars of his cell!
  With Citizen Mendicant all is not well.

  Why did they put him there, father?

                                       Because
  Obeying his belly he struck at the laws.

  His belly?

              Oh, well, he was starving, my boy--
  A state in which, doubtless, there's little of joy.
  No bite had he eaten for days, and his cry
  Was "Bread!" ever "Bread!"

                              What's the matter with pie?

  With little to wear, he had nothing to sell;
  To beg was unlawful--improper as well.

  Why didn't he work?

                       He would even have done that,
  But men said:  "Get out!" and the State remarked:  "Scat!"
  I mention these incidents merely to show
  That the vengeance he took was uncommonly low.
  Revenge, at the best, is the act of a Siou,
  But for trifles--

                      Pray what did bad Mendicant do?

  Stole two loaves of bread to replenish his lack
  And tuck out the belly that clung to his back.

  Is that _all_ father dear?

                              There's little to tell:
  They sent him to jail, and they'll send him to--well,
  The company's better than here we can boast,
  And there's--

                  Bread for the needy, dear father?

                                                     Um--toast.

 Atka Mip
 %
 BEGGAR, n.  One who has relied on the assistance of his friends.
 %
 BEHAVIOR, n.  Conduct, as determined, not by principle, but by
 breeding.  The word seems to be somewhat loosely used in Dr. Jamrach
 Holobom's translation of the following lines from the _Dies Irae_:

      Recordare, Jesu pie,
      Quod sum causa tuae viae.
      Ne me perdas illa die.

  Pray remember, sacred Savior,
  Whose the thoughtless hand that gave your
  Death-blow.  Pardon such behavior.
 %
 BELLADONNA, n.  In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly
 poison.  A striking example of the essential identity of the two
 tongues.
 %
 BENEDICTINES, n.  An order of monks otherwise known as black friars.

  She thought it a crow, but it turn out to be
      A monk of St. Benedict croaking a text.
  "Here's one of an order of cooks," said she--
      "Black friars in this world, fried black in the next."

 "The Devil on Earth" (London, 1712)
 %
 BENEFACTOR, n.  One who makes heavy purchases of ingratitude, without,
 however, materially affecting the price, which is still within the
 means of all.
 %
 BERENICE'S HAIR, n.  A constellation (_Coma Berenices_) named in honor
 of one who sacrificed her hair to save her husband.

  Her locks an ancient lady gave
  Her loving husband's life to save;
  And men--they honored so the dame--
  Upon some stars bestowed her name.

  But to our modern married fair,
  Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
  No stellar recognition's given.
  There are not stars enough in heaven.

 G.J.
 %
 BIGAMY, n.  A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will
 adjudge a punishment called trigamy.
 %
 BIGOT, n.  One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion
 that you do not entertain.
 %
 BILLINGSGATE, n.  The invective of an opponent.
 %
 BIRTH, n.  The first and direst of all disasters.  As to the nature of
 it there appears to be no uniformity.  Castor and Pollux were born
 from the egg.  Pallas came out of a skull.  Galatea was once a block
 of stone.  Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he
 grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water.  It
 is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a
 stroke of lightning.  Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount
 Aetna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar.
 %
 BLACKGUARD, n.  A man whose qualities, prepared for display like a box
 of berries in a market--the fine ones on top--have been opened on
 the wrong side.  An inverted gentleman.
 %
 BLANK-VERSE, n.  Unrhymed iambic pentameters--the most difficult
 kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much
 affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.
 %
 BODY-SNATCHER, n.  A robber of grave-worms.  One who supplies the
 young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied
 the undertaker.  The hyena.

  "One night," a doctor said, "last fall,
  I and my comrades, four in all,
      When visiting a graveyard stood
  Within the shadow of a wall.

  "While waiting for the moon to sink
  We saw a wild hyena slink
      About a new-made grave, and then
  Begin to excavate its brink!

  "Shocked by the horrid act, we made
  A sally from our ambuscade,
      And, falling on the unholy beast,
  Dispatched him with a pick and spade."

 Bettel K. Jhones
 %
 BONDSMAN, n.  A fool who, having property of his own, undertakes to
 become responsible for that entrusted to another to a third.

 Philippe of Orleans wishing to appoint one of his favorites, a
 dissolute nobleman, to a high office, asked him what security he would
 be able to give.  "I need no bondsmen," he replied, "for I can give
 you my word of honor."  "And pray what may be the value of that?"
 inquired the amused Regent.  "Monsieur, it is worth its weight in gold."
 %
 BORE, n.  A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
 %
 BOTANY, n.  The science of vegetables--those that are not good to
 eat, as well as those that are.  It deals largely with their flowers,
 which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and
 ill-smelling.
 %
 BOTTLE-NOSED, adj.  Having a nose created in the image of its maker.
 %
 BOUNDARY, n.  In political geography, an imaginary line between two
 nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary
 rights of the other.
 %
 BOUNTY, n.  The liberality of one who has much, in permitting one who
 has nothing to get all that he can.

      A single swallow, it is said, devours ten millions of insects
  every year.  The supplying of these insects I take to be a signal
  instance of the Creator's bounty in providing for the lives of His
  creatures.

 Henry Ward Beecher
 %
 BRAHMA, n.  He who created the Hindoos, who are preserved by Vishnu
 and destroyed by Siva--a rather neater division of labor than is
 found among the deities of some other nations.  The Abracadabranese,
 for example, are created by Sin, maintained by Theft and destroyed by
 Folly.  The priests of Brahma, like those of Abracadabranese, are holy
 and learned men who are never naughty.

  O Brahma, thou rare old Divinity,
  First Person of the Hindoo Trinity,
  You sit there so calm and securely,
  With feet folded up so demurely--
  You're the First Person Singular, surely.

 Polydore Smith
 %
 BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think what we think.  That which
 distinguishes the man who is content to _be_ something from the man
 who wishes to _do_ something.  A man of great wealth, or one who has
 been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of
 brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on.  In our
 civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so
 highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of
 office.
 %
 BRANDY, n.  A cordial composed of one part thunder-and-lightning, one
 part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the
 grave and four parts clarified Satan.  Dose, a headful all the time.
 Brandy is said by Dr. Johnson to be the drink of heroes.  Only a hero
 will venture to drink it.
 %
 BRIDE, n.  A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
 %
 BRUTE, n.  See HUSBAND.
 %
 CAABA, n.  A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the
 patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca.  The patriarch had perhaps
 asked the archangel for bread.
 %
 CABBAGE, n.  A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and
 wise as a man's head.

 The cabbage is so called from Cabagius, a prince who on ascending
 the throne issued a decree appointing a High Council of Empire
 consisting of the members of his predecessor's Ministry and the
 cabbages in the royal garden.  When any of his Majesty's measures of
 state policy miscarried conspicuously it was gravely announced that
 several members of the High Council had been beheaded, and his
 murmuring subjects were appeased.
 %
 CALAMITY, n.  A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder
 that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering.  Calamities
 are of two kinds:  misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to
 others.
 %
 CALLOUS, adj.  Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils
 afflicting another.

 When Zeno was told that one of his enemies was no more he was
 observed to be deeply moved.  "What!" said one of his disciples, "you
 weep at the death of an enemy?"  "Ah, 'tis true," replied the great
 Stoic; "but you should see me smile at the death of a friend."
 %
 CALUMNUS, n.  A graduate of the School for Scandal.
 %
 CAMEL, n.  A quadruped (the _Splaypes humpidorsus_) of great value to
 the show business.  There are two kinds of camels--the camel proper
 and the camel improper.  It is the latter that is always exhibited.
 %
 CANNIBAL, n.  A gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple
 tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period.
 %
 CANNON, n.  An instrument employed in the rectification of national
 boundaries.
 %
 CANONICALS, n.  The motley worm by Jesters of the Court of Heaven.
 %
 CAPITAL, n.  The seat of misgovernment.  That which provides the fire,
 the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the
 anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the
 disgrace before meat.  _Capital Punishment_, a penalty regarding the
 justice and expediency of which many worthy persons--including all
 the assassins--entertain grave misgivings.
 %
 CARMELITE, n.  A mendicant friar of the order of Mount Carmel.

  As Death was a-rising out one day,
  Across Mount Camel he took his way,
      Where he met a mendicant monk,
      Some three or four quarters drunk,
  With a holy leer and a pious grin,
  Ragged and fat and as saucy as sin,
      Who held out his hands and cried:
  "Give, give in Charity's name, I pray.
  Give in the name of the Church.  O give,
  Give that her holy sons may live!"
      And Death replied,
      Smiling long and wide:
      "I'll give, holy father, I'll give thee--a ride."

      With a rattle and bang
      Of his bones, he sprang
  From his famous Pale Horse, with his spear;
      By the neck and the foot
      Seized the fellow, and put
  Him astride with his face to the rear.

  The Monarch laughed loud with a sound that fell
  Like clods on the coffin's sounding shell:
  "Ho, ho!  A beggar on horseback, they say,
      Will ride to the devil!"--and _thump_
      Fell the flat of his dart on the rump
  Of the charger, which galloped away.

  Faster and faster and faster it flew,
  Till the rocks and the flocks and the trees that grew
  By the road were dim and blended and blue
      To the wild, wild eyes
      Of the rider--in size
      Resembling a couple of blackberry pies.
  Death laughed again, as a tomb might laugh
      At a burial service spoiled,
      And the mourners' intentions foiled
      By the body erecting
      Its head and objecting
  To further proceedings in its behalf.

  Many a year and many a day
  Have passed since these events away.
  The monk has long been a dusty corse,
  And Death has never recovered his horse.
      For the friar got hold of its tail,
      And steered it within the pale
  Of the monastery gray,
  Where the beast was stabled and fed
  With barley and oil and bread
  Till fatter it grew than the fattest friar,
  And so in due course was appointed Prior.

 G.J.
 %
 CARNIVOROUS, adj.  Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorous
 vegetarian, his heirs and assigns.
 %
 CARTESIAN, adj.  Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author
 of the celebrated dictum, _Cogito ergo sum_--whereby he was pleased
 to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence.  The dictum
 might be improved, however, thus:  _Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum_--
 "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an
 approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
 %
 CAT, n.  A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be
 kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

  This is a dog,
      This is a cat.
  This is a frog,
      This is a rat.
  Run, dog, mew, cat.
  Jump, frog, gnaw, rat.

 Elevenson
 %
 CAVILER, n.  A critic of our own work.
 %
 CEMETERY, n.  An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies,
 poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager.  The
 inscriptions following will serve to illustrate the success attained
 in these Olympian games:

      His virtues were so conspicuous that his enemies, unable to
  overlook them, denied them, and his friends, to whose loose lives
  they were a rebuke, represented them as vices.  They are here
  commemorated by his family, who shared them.
      In the earth we here prepare a
      Place to lay our little Clara.

 Thomas M. and Mary Frazer

      P.S.--Gabriel will raise her.
 %
 CENTAUR, n.  One of a race of persons who lived before the division of
 labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who
 followed the primitive economic maxim, "Every man his own horse."  The
 best of the lot was Chiron, who to the wisdom and virtues of the horse
 added the fleetness of man.  The scripture story of the head of John
 the Baptist on a charger shows that pagan myths have somewhat
 sophisticated sacred history.
 %
 CERBERUS, n.  The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the
 entrance--against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody,
 sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the
 entrance.  Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the
 poets have credited him with as many as a hundred.  Professor
 Graybill, whose clerky erudition and profound knowledge of Greek give
 his opinion great weight, has averaged all the estimates, and makes
 the number twenty-seven--a judgment that would be entirely
 conclusive if Professor Graybill had known (a) something about dogs,
 and (b) something about arithmetic.
 %
 CHILDHOOD, n.  The period of human life intermediate between the
 idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth--two removes from the sin
 of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
 %
 CHRISTIAN, n.  One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely
 inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
 One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not
 inconsistent with a life of sin.

  I dreamed I stood upon a hill, and, lo!
  The godly multitudes walked to and fro
  Beneath, in Sabbath garments fitly clad,
  With pious mien, appropriately sad,
  While all the church bells made a solemn din--
  A fire-alarm to those who lived in sin.
  Then saw I gazing thoughtfully below,
  With tranquil face, upon that holy show
  A tall, spare figure in a robe of white,
  Whose eyes diffused a melancholy light.
  "God keep you, stranger," I exclaimed.  "You are
  No doubt (your habit shows it) from afar;
  And yet I entertain the hope that you,
  Like these good people, are a Christian too."
  He raised his eyes and with a look so stern
  It made me with a thousand blushes burn
  Replied--his manner with disdain was spiced:
  "What!  I a Christian?  No, indeed!  I'm Christ."

 G.J.
 %
 CIRCUS, n.  A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted
 to see men, women and children acting the fool.
 %
 CLAIRVOYANT, n.  A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of
 seeing that which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is a
 blockhead.
 %
 CLARIONET, n.  An instrument of torture operated by a person with
 cotton in his ears.  There are two instruments that are worse than a
 clarionet--two clarionets.
 %
 CLERGYMAN, n.  A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual
 affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones.
 %
 CLIO, n.  One of the nine Muses.  Clio's function was to preside over
 history--which she did with great dignity, many of the prominent
 citizens of Athens occupying seats on the platform, the meetings being
 addressed by Messrs. Xenophon, Herodotus and other popular speakers.
 %
 CLOCK, n.  A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern
 for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.

  A busy man complained one day:
  "I get no time!"  "What's that you say?"
  Cried out his friend, a lazy quiz;
  "You have, sir, all the time there is.
  There's plenty, too, and don't you doubt it--
  We're never for an hour without it."

 Purzil Crofe
 %
 CLOSE-FISTED, adj.  Unduly desirous of keeping that which many
 meritorious persons wish to obtain.

  "Close-fisted Scotchman!" Johnson cried
      To thrifty J. Macpherson;
  "See me--I'm ready to divide
      With any worthy person."
  Sad Jamie:  "That is very true--
      The boast requires no backing;
  And all are worthy, sir, to you,
      Who have what you are lacking."

 Anita M. Bobe
 %
 COENOBITE, n.  A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the
 sin of wickedness; and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a
 brotherhood of awful examples.

  O Coenobite, O coenobite,
      Monastical gregarian,
  You differ from the anchorite,
      That solitudinarian:
  With vollied prayers you wound Old Nick;
  With dropping shots he makes him sick.

 Quincy Giles
 %
 COMFORT, n.  A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's
 uneasiness.
 %
 COMMENDATION, n.  The tribute that we pay to achievements that
 resembles, but do not equal, our own.
 %
 COMMERCE, n.  A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the
 goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money
 belonging to E.
 %
 COMMONWEALTH, n.  An administrative entity operated by an incalculable
 multitude of political parasites, logically active but fortuitously
 efficient.

  This commonwealth's capitol's corridors view,
  So thronged with a hungry and indolent crew
  Of clerks, pages, porters and all attaches
  Whom rascals appoint and the populace pays
  That a cat cannot slip through the thicket of shins
  Nor hear its own shriek for the noise of their chins.
  On clerks and on pages, and porters, and all,
  Misfortune attend and disaster befall!
  May life be to them a succession of hurts;
  May fleas by the bushel inhabit their shirts;
  May aches and diseases encamp in their bones,
  Their lungs full of tubercles, bladders of stones;
  May microbes, bacilli, their tissues infest,
  And tapeworms securely their bowels digest;
  May corn-cobs be snared without hope in their hair,
  And frequent impalement their pleasure impair.
  Disturbed be their dreams by the awful discourse
  Of audible sofas sepulchrally hoarse,
  By chairs acrobatic and wavering floors--
  The mattress that kicks and the pillow that snores!
  Sons of cupidity, cradled in sin!
  Your criminal ranks may the death angel thin,
  Avenging the friend whom I couldn't work in.

 K.Q.
 %
 COMPROMISE, n.  Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives
 each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought
 not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his
 due.
 %
 COMPULSION, n.  The eloquence of power.
 %
 CONDOLE, v.i.  To show that bereavement is a smaller evil than
 sympathy.
 %
 CONFIDANT, CONFIDANTE, n.  One entrusted by A with the secrets of B,
 confided by _him_ to C.
 %
 CONGRATULATION, n.  The civility of envy.
 %
 CONGRESS, n.  A body of men who meet to repeal laws.
 %
 CONNOISSEUR, n.  A specialist who knows everything about something and
 nothing about anything else.

 An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision,
 some wine was pouted on his lips to revive him.  "Pauillac, 1873," he
 murmured and died.
 %
 CONSERVATIVE, n.  A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as
 distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with
 others.
 %
 CONSOLATION, n.  The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate
 than yourself.
 %
 CONSUL, n.  In American politics, a person who having failed to secure
 an office from the people is given one by the Administration on
 condition that he leave the country.
 %
 CONSULT, v.i.  To seek another's disapproval of a course already
 decided on.
 %
 CONTEMPT, n.  The feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too
 formidable safely to be opposed.
 %
 CONTROVERSY, n.  A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the
 injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.

  In controversy with the facile tongue--
  That bloodless warfare of the old and young--
  So seek your adversary to engage
  That on himself he shall exhaust his rage,
  And, like a snake that's fastened to the ground,
  With his own fangs inflict the fatal wound.
  You ask me how this miracle is done?
  Adopt his own opinions, one by one,
  And taunt him to refute them; in his wrath
  He'll sweep them pitilessly from his path.
  Advance then gently all you wish to prove,
  Each proposition prefaced with, "As you've
  So well remarked," or, "As you wisely say,
  And I cannot dispute," or, "By the way,
  This view of it which, better far expressed,
  Runs through your argument."  Then leave the rest
  To him, secure that he'll perform his trust
  And prove your views intelligent and just.

 Conmore Apel Brune
 %
 CONVENT, n.  A place of retirement for woman who wish for leisure to
 meditate upon the vice of idleness.
 %
 CONVERSATION, n.  A fair for the display of the minor mental
 commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of
 his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
 %
 CORONATION, n.  The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward
 and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a
 dynamite bomb.
 %
 CORPORAL, n.  A man who occupies the lowest rung of the military
 ladder.

  Fiercely the battle raged and, sad to tell,
  Our corporal heroically fell!
  Fame from her height looked down upon the brawl
  And said:  "He hadn't very far to fall."

 Giacomo Smith
 %
 CORPORATION, n.  An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit
 without individual responsibility.
 %
 CORSAIR, n.  A politician of the seas.
 %
 COURT FOOL, n.  The plaintiff.
 %
 COWARD, n.  One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
 %
 CRAYFISH, n.  A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but
 less indigestible.

      In this small fish I take it that human wisdom is admirably
  figured and symbolized; for whereas the crayfish doth move only
  backward, and can have only retrospection, seeing naught but the
  perils already passed, so the wisdom of man doth not enable him to
  avoid the follies that beset his course, but only to apprehend
  their nature afterward.

 Sir James Merivale
 %
 CREDITOR, n.  One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial
 Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.
 %
 CREMONA, n.  A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.
 %
 CRITIC, n.  A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody
 tries to please him.

  There is a land of pure delight,
      Beyond the Jordan's flood,
  Where saints, apparelled all in white,
      Fling back the critic's mud.

  And as he legs it through the skies,
      His pelt a sable hue,
  He sorrows sore to recognize
      The missiles that he threw.

 Orrin Goof
 %
 CROSS, n.  An ancient religious symbol erroneously supposed to owe its
 significance to the most solemn event in the history of Christianity,
 but really antedating it by thousands of years.  By many it has been
 believed to be identical with the _crux ansata_ of the ancient phallic
 worship, but it has been traced even beyond all that we know of that,
 to the rites of primitive peoples.  We have to-day the White Cross as
 a symbol of chastity, and the Red Cross as a badge of benevolent
 neutrality in war.  Having in mind the former, the reverend Father
 Gassalasca Jape smites the lyre to the effect following:

  "Be good, be good!" the sisterhood
      Cry out in holy chorus,
  And, to dissuade from sin, parade
      Their various charms before us.

  But why, O why, has ne'er an eye
      Seen her of winsome manner
  And youthful grace and pretty face
      Flaunting the White Cross banner?

  Now where's the need of speech and screed
      To better our behaving?
  A simpler plan for saving man
      (But, first, is he worth saving?)

  Is, dears, when he declines to flee
      From bad thoughts that beset him,
  Ignores the Law as 't were a straw,
      And wants to sin--don't let him.
 %
 CUI BONO?  [Latin]  What good would that do _me_?
 %
 CUNNING, n.  The faculty that distinguishes a weak animal or person
 from a strong one.  It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction
 and great material adversity.  An Italian proverb says:  "The furrier
 gets the skins of more foxes than asses."
 %
 CUPID, n.  The so-called god of love.  This bastard creation of a
 barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of
 its deities.  Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is
 the most reasonless and offensive.  The notion of symbolizing sexual
 love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the
 wounds of an arrow--of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art
 grossly to materialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work--
 this is eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on
 the doorstep of prosperity.
 %
 CURIOSITY, n.  An objectionable quality of the female mind.  The
 desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one
 of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
 %
 CURSE, v.t.  Energetically to belabor with a verbal slap-stick.  This
 is an operation which in literature, particularly in the drama, is
 commonly fatal to the victim.  Nevertheless, the liability to a
 cursing is a risk that cuts but a small figure in fixing the rates of
 life insurance.
 %
 CYNIC, n.  A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are,
 not as they ought to be.  Hence the custom among the Scythians of
 plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
 %
 DAMN, v.  A word formerly much used by the Paphlagonians, the meaning
 of which is lost.  By the learned Dr. Dolabelly Gak it is believed to
 have been a term of satisfaction, implying the highest possible degree
 of mental tranquillity.  Professor Groke, on the contrary, thinks it
 expressed an emotion of tumultuous delight, because it so frequently
 occurs in combination with the word _jod_ or _god_, meaning "joy."  It
 would be with great diffidence that I should advance an opinion
 conflicting with that of either of these formidable authorities.
 %
 DANCE, v.i.  To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably
 with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter.  There are many
 kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two
 sexes have two characteristics in common:  they are conspicuously
 innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.
 %
 DANGER, n.

  A savage beast which, when it sleeps,
      Man girds at and despises,
  But takes himself away by leaps
      And bounds when it arises.

 Ambat Delaso
 %
 DARING, n.  One of the most conspicuous qualities of a man in
 security.
 %
 DATARY, n.  A high ecclesiastic official of the Roman Catholic Church,
 whose important function is to brand the Pope's bulls with the words
 _Datum Romae_.  He enjoys a princely revenue and the friendship of
 God.
 %
 DAWN, n.  The time when men of reason go to bed.  Certain old men
 prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk
 with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh.  They then
 point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
 health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
 not because of their habits, but in spite of them.  The reason we find
 only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
 others who have tried it.
 %
 DAY, n.  A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.  This period
 is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day
 improper--the former devoted to sins of business, the latter
 consecrated to the other sort.  These two kinds of social activity
 overlap.
 %
 DEAD, adj.

  Done with the work of breathing; done
  With all the world; the mad race run
  Through to the end; the golden goal
  Attained and found to be a hole!

 Squatol Johnes
 %
 DEBAUCHEE, n.  One who has so earnestly pursued pleasure that he has
 had the misfortune to overtake it.
 %
 DEBT, n.  An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the
 slave-driver.

  As, pent in an aquarium, the troutlet
  Swims round and round his tank to find an outlet,
  Pressing his nose against the glass that holds him,
  Nor ever sees the prison that enfolds him;
  So the poor debtor, seeing naught around him,
  Yet feels the narrow limits that impound him,
  Grieves at his debt and studies to evade it,
  And finds at last he might as well have paid it.

 Barlow S. Vode
 %
 DECALOGUE, n.  A series of commandments, ten in number--just enough
 to permit an intelligent selection for observance, but not enough to
 embarrass the choice.  Following is the revised edition of the
 Decalogue, calculated for this meridian.

  Thou shalt no God but me adore:
  'Twere too expensive to have more.

  No images nor idols make
  For Robert Ingersoll to break.

  Take not God's name in vain; select
  A time when it will have effect.

  Work not on Sabbath days at all,
  But go to see the teams play ball.

  Honor thy parents.  That creates
  For life insurance lower rates.

  Kill not, abet not those who kill;
  Thou shalt not pay thy butcher's bill.

  Kiss not thy neighbor's wife, unless
  Thine own thy neighbor doth caress

  Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete
  Successfully in business.  Cheat.

  Bear not false witness--that is low--
  But "hear 'tis rumored so and so."

  Covet thou naught that thou hast not
  By hook or crook, or somehow, got.

 G.J.
 %
 DECIDE, v.i.  To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences
 over another set.

  A leaf was riven from a tree,
  "I mean to fall to earth," said he.

  The west wind, rising, made him veer.
  "Eastward," said he, "I now shall steer."

  The east wind rose with greater force.
  Said he:  "'Twere wise to change my course."

  With equal power they contend.
  He said:  "My judgment I suspend."

  Down died the winds; the leaf, elate,
  Cried:  "I've decided to fall straight."

  "First thoughts are best?"  That's not the moral;
  Just choose your own and we'll not quarrel.

  Howe'er your choice may chance to fall,
  You'll have no hand in it at all.

 G.J.
 %
 DEFAME, v.t.  To lie about another.  To tell the truth about another.
 %
 DEFENCELESS, adj.  Unable to attack.
 %
 DEGENERATE, adj.  Less conspicuously admirable than one's ancestors.
 The contemporaries of Homer were striking examples of degeneracy; it
 required ten of them to raise a rock or a riot that one of the heroes
 of the Trojan war could have raised with ease.  Homer never tires of
 sneering at "men who live in these degenerate days," which is perhaps
 why they suffered him to beg his bread--a marked instance of
 returning good for evil, by the way, for if they had forbidden him he
 would certainly have starved.
 %
 DEGRADATION, n.  One of the stages of moral and social progress from
 private station to political preferment.
 %
 DEINOTHERIUM, n.  An extinct pachyderm that flourished when the
 Pterodactyl was in fashion.  The latter was a native of Ireland, its
 name being pronounced Terry Dactyl or Peter O'Dactyl, as the man
 pronouncing it may chance to have heard it spoken or seen it printed.
 %
 DEJEUNER, n.  The breakfast of an American who has been in Paris.
 Variously pronounced.
 %
 DELEGATION, n.  In American politics, an article of merchandise that
 comes in sets.
 %
 DELIBERATION, n.  The act of examining one's bread to determine which
 side it is buttered on.
 %
 DELUGE, n.  A notable first experiment in baptism which washed away
 the sins (and sinners) of the world.
 %
 DELUSION, n.  The father of a most respectable family, comprising
 Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many
 other goodly sons and daughters.

  All hail, Delusion!  Were it not for thee
  The world turned topsy-turvy we should see;
  For Vice, respectable with cleanly fancies,
  Would fly abandoned Virtue's gross advances.

 Mumfrey Mappel
 %
 DENTIST, n.  A prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth,
 pulls coins out of your pocket.
 %
 DEPENDENT, adj.  Reliant upon another's generosity for the support
 which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.
 %
 DEPUTY, n.  A male relative of an office-holder, or of his bondsman.
 The deputy is commonly a beautiful young man, with a red necktie and
 an intricate system of cobwebs extending from his nose to his desk.
 When accidentally struck by the janitor's broom, he gives off a cloud
 of dust.

  "Chief Deputy," the Master cried,
  "To-day the books are to be tried
  By experts and accountants who
  Have been commissioned to go through
  Our office here, to see if we
  Have stolen injudiciously.
  Please have the proper entries made,
  The proper balances displayed,
  Conforming to the whole amount
  Of cash on hand--which they will count.
  I've long admired your punctual way--
  Here at the break and close of day,
  Confronting in your chair the crowd
  Of business men, whose voices loud
  And gestures violent you quell
  By some mysterious, calm spell--
  Some magic lurking in your look
  That brings the noisiest to book
  And spreads a holy and profound
  Tranquillity o'er all around.
  So orderly all's done that they
  Who came to draw remain to pay.
  But now the time demands, at last,
  That you employ your genius vast
  In energies more active.  Rise
  And shake the lightnings from your eyes;
  Inspire your underlings, and fling
  Your spirit into everything!"
  The Master's hand here dealt a whack
  Upon the Deputy's bent back,
  When straightway to the floor there fell
  A shrunken globe, a rattling shell
  A blackened, withered, eyeless head!
  The man had been a twelvemonth dead.

 Jamrach Holobom
 %
 DESTINY, n.  A tyrant's authority for crime and fool's excuse for
 failure.
 %
 DIAGNOSIS, n.  A physician's forecast of the disease by the patient's
 pulse and purse.
 %
 DIAPHRAGM, n.  A muscular partition separating disorders of the chest
 from disorders of the bowels.
 %
 DIARY, n.  A daily record of that part of one's life, which he can
 relate to himself without blushing.

  Hearst kept a diary wherein were writ
  All that he had of wisdom and of wit.
  So the Recording Angel, when Hearst died,
  Erased all entries of his own and cried:
  "I'll judge you by your diary."  Said Hearst:
  "Thank you; 'twill show you I am Saint the First"--
  Straightway producing, jubilant and proud,
  That record from a pocket in his shroud.
  The Angel slowly turned the pages o'er,
  Each stupid line of which he knew before,
  Glooming and gleaming as by turns he hit
  On Shallow sentiment and stolen wit;
  Then gravely closed the book and gave it back.
  "My friend, you've wandered from your proper track:
  You'd never be content this side the tomb--
  For big ideas Heaven has little room,
  And Hell's no latitude for making mirth,"
  He said, and kicked the fellow back to earth.

 "The Mad Philosopher"
 %
 DICTATOR, n.  The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of
 despotism to the plague of anarchy.
 %
 DICTIONARY, n.  A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth
 of a language and making it hard and inelastic.  This dictionary,
 however, is a most useful work.
 %
 DIE, n.  The singular of "dice."  We seldom hear the word, because
 there is a prohibitory proverb, "Never say die."  At long intervals,
 however, some one says:  "The die is cast," which is not true, for it
 is cut.  The word is found in an immortal couplet by that eminent poet
 and domestic economist, Senator Depew:

  A cube of cheese no larger than a die
  May bait the trap to catch a nibbling mie.
 %
 DIGESTION, n.  The conversion of victuals into virtues.  When the
 process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead--a circumstance from
 which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies
 are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.
 %
 DIPLOMACY, n.  The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
 %
 DISABUSE, v.t.  To present your neighbor with another and better
 error than the one which he has deemed it advantageous to embrace.
 %
 DISCRIMINATE, v.i.  To note the particulars in which one person or
 thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another.
 %
 DISCUSSION, n.  A method of confirming others in their errors.
 %
 DISOBEDIENCE, n.  The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
 %
 DISOBEY, v.t.  To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity
 of a command.

  His right to govern me is clear as day,
  My duty manifest to disobey;
  And if that fit observance e'er I shut
  May I and duty be alike undone.

 Israfel Brown
 %
 DISSEMBLE, v.i.  To put a clean shirt upon the character.
  Let us dissemble.

 Adam
 %
 DISTANCE, n.  The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to
 call theirs, and keep.
 %
 DISTRESS, n.  A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a
 friend.
 %
 DIVINATION, n.  The art of nosing out the occult.  Divination is of as
 many kinds as there are fruit-bearing varieties of the flowering dunce
 and the early fool.
 %
 DOG, n.  A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch
 the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.  This Divine Being in
 some of his smaller and silkier incarnations takes, in the affection
 of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant.  The Dog
 is a survival--an anachronism.  He toils not, neither does he spin,
 yet Solomon in all his glory never lay upon a door-mat all day long,
 sun-soaked and fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means
 wherewith to purchase the idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned
 with a look of tolerant recognition.
 %
 DRAGOON, n.  A soldier who combines dash and steadiness in so equal
 measure that he makes his advances on foot and his retreats on
 horseback.
 %
 DRAMATIST, n.  One who adapts plays from the French.
 %
 DRUIDS, n.  Priests and ministers of an ancient Celtic religion which
 did not disdain to employ the humble allurement of human sacrifice.
 Very little is now known about the Druids and their faith.  Pliny says
 their religion, originating in Britain, spread eastward as far as
 Persia.  Caesar says those who desired to study its mysteries went to
 Britain.  Caesar himself went to Britain, but does not appear to have
 obtained any high preferment in the Druidical Church, although his
 talent for human sacrifice was considerable.

 Druids performed their religious rites in groves, and knew nothing
 of church mortgages and the season-ticket system of pew rents.  They
 were, in short, heathens and--as they were once complacently
 catalogued by a distinguished prelate of the Church of England--
 Dissenters.
 %
 DUCK-BILL, n.  Your account at your restaurant during the canvas-back
 season.
 %
 DUEL, n.  A formal ceremony preliminary to the reconciliation of two
 enemies.  Great skill is necessary to its satisfactory observance; if
 awkwardly performed the most unexpected and deplorable consequences
 sometimes ensue.  A long time ago a man lost his life in a duel.

  That dueling's a gentlemanly vice
      I hold; and wish that it had been my lot
      To live my life out in some favored spot--
  Some country where it is considered nice
  To split a rival like a fish, or slice
      A husband like a spud, or with a shot
      Bring down a debtor doubled in a knot
  And ready to be put upon the ice.
  Some miscreants there are, whom I do long
      To shoot, to stab, or some such way reclaim
  The scurvy rogues to better lives and manners,
  I seem to see them now--a mighty throng.
      It looks as if to challenge _me_ they came,
  Jauntily marching with brass bands and banners!

 Xamba Q. Dar
 %
 DULLARD, n.  A member of the reigning dynasty in letters and life.
 The Dullards came in with Adam, and being both numerous and sturdy
 have overrun the habitable world.  The secret of their power is their
 insensibility to blows; tickle them with a bludgeon and they laugh
 with a platitude.  The Dullards came originally from Boeotia, whence
 they were driven by stress of starvation, their dullness having
 blighted the crops.  For some centuries they infested Philistia, and
 many of them are called Philistines to this day.  In the turbulent
 times of the Crusades they withdrew thence and gradually overspread
 all Europe, occupying most of the high places in politics, art,
 literature, science and theology.  Since a detachment of Dullards came
 over with the Pilgrims in the _Mayflower_ and made a favorable report
 of the country, their increase by birth, immigration, and conversion
 has been rapid and steady.  According to the most trustworthy
 statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but
 little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians.  The
 intellectual centre of the race is somewhere about Peoria, Illinois,
 but the New England Dullard is the most shockingly moral.
 %
 DUTY, n.  That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit,
 along the line of desire.

  Sir Lavender Portwine, in favor at court,
  Was wroth at his master, who'd kissed Lady Port.
  His anger provoked him to take the king's head,
  But duty prevailed, and he took the king's bread,
          Instead.

 G.J.
 %
 EAT, v.i.  To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of
 mastication, humectation, and deglutition.

 "I was in the drawing-room, enjoying my dinner," said Brillat-Savarin,
 beginning an anecdote.  "What!" interrupted Rochebriant; "eating dinner
 in a drawing-room?"  "I must beg you to observe, monsieur," explained
 the great gastronome, "that I did not say I was eating my dinner, but
 enjoying it.  I had dined an hour before."
 %
 EAVESDROP, v.i.  Secretly to overhear a catalogue of the crimes and
 vices of another or yourself.

  A lady with one of her ears applied
  To an open keyhole heard, inside,
  Two female gossips in converse free--
  The subject engaging them was she.
  "I think," said one, "and my husband thinks
  That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
  As soon as no more of it she could hear
  The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
  "I will not stay," she said, with a pout,
  "To hear my character lied about!"

 Gopete Sherany
 %
 ECCENTRICITY, n.  A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ
 it to accentuate their incapacity.
 %
 ECONOMY, n.  Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for
 the price of the cow that you cannot afford.
 %
 EDIBLE, adj.  Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a
 toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man
 to a worm.
 %
 EDITOR, n.  A person who combines the judicial functions of Minos,
 Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, but is placable with an obolus; a severely
 virtuous censor, but so charitable withal that he tolerates the
 virtues of others and the vices of himself; who flings about him the
 splintering lightning and sturdy thunders of admonition till he
 resembles a bunch of firecrackers petulantly uttering his mind at the
 tail of a dog; then straightway murmurs a mild, melodious lay, soft as
 the cooing of a donkey intoning its prayer to the evening star.
 Master of mysteries and lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of
 thought, his face suffused with the dim splendors of the
 Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the
 editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to
 suit.  And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard
 the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines
 of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack
 up some pathos.

  O, the Lord of Law on the Throne of Thought,
      A gilded impostor is he.
  Of shreds and patches his robes are wrought,
              His crown is brass,
              Himself an ass,
      And his power is fiddle-dee-dee.
  Prankily, crankily prating of naught,
  Silly old quilly old Monarch of Thought.
      Public opinion's camp-follower he,
      Thundering, blundering, plundering free.
                  Affected,
                      Ungracious,
                  Suspected,
                      Mendacious,
  Respected contemporaree!
                                                    J.H. Bumbleshook
 %
 EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the
 foolish their lack of understanding.
 %
 EFFECT, n.  The second of two phenomena which always occur together in
 the same order.  The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the
 other--which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has
 never seen a dog except in the pursuit of a rabbit to declare the
 rabbit the cause of a dog.
 %
 EGOTIST, n.  A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

  Megaceph, chosen to serve the State
  In the halls of legislative debate,
  One day with all his credentials came
  To the capitol's door and announced his name.
  The doorkeeper looked, with a comical twist
  Of the face, at the eminent egotist,
  And said:  "Go away, for we settle here
  All manner of questions, knotty and queer,
  And we cannot have, when the speaker demands
  To be told how every member stands,
  A man who to all things under the sky
  Assents by eternally voting 'I'."
 %
 EJECTION, n.  An approved remedy for the disease of garrulity.  It is
 also much used in cases of extreme poverty.
 %
 ELECTOR, n.  One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man
 of another man's choice.
 %
 ELECTRICITY, n.  The power that causes all natural phenomena not known
 to be caused by something else.  It is the same thing as lightning,
 and its famous attempt to strike Dr. Franklin is one of the most
 picturesque incidents in that great and good man's career.  The memory
 of Dr. Franklin is justly held in great reverence, particularly in
 France, where a waxen effigy of him was recently on exhibition,
 bearing the following touching account of his life and services to
 science:

      "Monsieur Franqulin, inventor of electricity.  This
  illustrious savant, after having made several voyages around the
  world, died on the Sandwich Islands and was devoured by savages,
  of whom not a single fragment was ever recovered."

  Electricity seems destined to play a most important part in the
 arts and industries.  The question of its economical application to
 some purposes is still unsettled, but experiment has already proved
 that it will propel a street car better than a gas jet and give more
 light than a horse.
 %
 ELEGY, n.  A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of
 the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind
 the dampest kind of dejection.  The most famous English example begins
 somewhat like this:

  The cur foretells the knell of parting day;
      The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
  The wise man homeward plods; I only stay
      To fiddle-faddle in a minor key.
 %
 ELOQUENCE, n.  The art of orally persuading fools that white is the
 color that it appears to be.  It includes the gift of making any color
 appear white.
 %
 ELYSIUM, n.  An imaginary delightful country which the ancients
 foolishly believed to be inhabited by the spirits of the good.  This
 ridiculous and mischievous fable was swept off the face of the earth
 by the early Christians--may their souls be happy in Heaven!
 %
 EMANCIPATION, n.  A bondman's change from the tyranny of another to
 the despotism of himself.

  He was a slave:  at word he went and came;
      His iron collar cut him to the bone.
  Then Liberty erased his owner's name,
      Tightened the rivets and inscribed his own.

 G.J.
 %
 EMBALM, v.i.  To cheat vegetation by locking up the gases upon which
 it feeds.  By embalming their dead and thereby deranging the natural
 balance between animal and vegetable life, the Egyptians made their
 once fertile and populous country barren and incapable of supporting
 more than a meagre crew.  The modern metallic burial casket is a step
 in the same direction, and many a dead man who ought now to be
 ornamenting his neighbor's lawn as a tree, or enriching his table as a
 bunch of radishes, is doomed to a long inutility.  We shall get him
 after awhile if we are spared, but in the meantime the violet and rose
 are languishing for a nibble at his _glutoeus maximus_.
 %
 EMOTION, n.  A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the
 heart to the head.  It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge
 of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.
 %
 ENCOMIAST, n.  A special (but not particular) kind of liar.
 %
 END, n.  The position farthest removed on either hand from the
 Interlocutor.

  The man was perishing apace
      Who played the tambourine;
  The seal of death was on his face--
      'Twas pallid, for 'twas clean.

  "This is the end," the sick man said
      In faint and failing tones.
  A moment later he was dead,
      And Tambourine was Bones.

 Tinley Roquot
 %
 ENOUGH, pro.  All there is in the world if you like it.

  Enough is as good as a feast--for that matter
  Enougher's as good as a feast for the platter.

 Arbely C. Strunk
 %
 ENTERTAINMENT, n.  Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of
 death by injection.
 %
 ENTHUSIASM, n.  A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of
 repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
 Byron, who recovered long enough to call it "entuzy-muzy," had a
 relapse, which carried him off--to Missolonghi.
 %
 ENVELOPE, n.  The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a bill; the
 husk of a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.
 %
 ENVY, n.  Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.
 %
 EPAULET, n.  An ornamented badge, serving to distinguish a military
 officer from the enemy--that is to say, from the officer of lower
 rank to whom his death would give promotion.
 %
 EPICURE, n.  An opponent of Epicurus, an abstemious philosopher who,
 holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted no time
 in gratification from the senses.
 %
 EPIGRAM, n.  A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently
 characterized by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom.
 Following are some of the more notable epigrams of the learned and
 ingenious Dr. Jamrach Holobom:

      We know better the needs of ourselves than of others.  To
  serve oneself is economy of administration.

      In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a
  nightingale.  Diversity of character is due to their unequal
  activity.

      There are three sexes; males, females and girls.

      Beauty in women and distinction in men are alike in this:
  they seem to the unthinking a kind of credibility.
      Women in love are less ashamed than men.  They have less to be
  ashamed of.

      While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands
  you are safe, for you can watch both his.
 %
 EPITAPH, n.  An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired
 by death have a retroactive effect.  Following is a touching example:

  Here lie the bones of Parson Platt,
  Wise, pious, humble and all that,
  Who showed us life as all should live it;
  Let that be said--and God forgive it!
 %
 ERUDITION, n.  Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

  So wide his erudition's mighty span,
  He knew Creation's origin and plan
  And only came by accident to grief--
  He thought, poor man, 'twas right to be a thief.

 Romach Pute
 %
 ESOTERIC, adj.  Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult.
 The ancient philosophies were of two kinds,--_exoteric_, those that
 the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and _esoteric_,
 those that nobody could understand.  It is the latter that have most
 profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in
 our time.
 %
 ETHNOLOGY, n.  The science that treats of the various tribes of Man,
 as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and
 ethnologists.
 %
 EUCHARIST, n.  A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi.
  A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as
 to what it was that they ate.  In this controversy some five hundred
 thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.
 %
 EULOGY, n.  Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth
 and power, or the consideration to be dead.
 %
 EVANGELIST, n.  A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious
 sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of
 our neighbors.
 %
 EVERLASTING, adj.  Lasting forever.  It is with no small diffidence
 that I venture to offer this brief and elementary definition, for I am
 not unaware of the existence of a bulky volume by a sometime Bishop of
 Worcester, entitled, _A Partial Definition of the Word "Everlasting,"
 as Used in the Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures_.  His book
 was once esteemed of great authority in the Anglican Church, and is
 still, I understand, studied with pleasure to the mind and profit of
 the soul.
 %
 EXCEPTION, n.  A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other
 things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc.  "The
 exception proves the rule" is an expression constantly upon the lips
 of the ignorant, who parrot it from one another with never a thought
 of its absurdity.  In the Latin, "_Exceptio probat regulam_" means
 that the exception _tests_ the rule, puts it to the proof, not
 _confirms_ it.  The malefactor who drew the meaning from this
 excellent dictum and substituted a contrary one of his own exerted an
 evil power which appears to be immortal.
 %
 EXCESS, n.  In morals, an indulgence that enforces by appropriate
 penalties the law of moderation.

  Hail, high Excess--especially in wine,
      To thee in worship do I bend the knee
      Who preach abstemiousness unto me--
  My skull thy pulpit, as my paunch thy shrine.
  Precept on precept, aye, and line on line,
      Could ne'er persuade so sweetly to agree
      With reason as thy touch, exact and free,
  Upon my forehead and along my spine.
  At thy command eschewing pleasure's cup,
      With the hot grape I warm no more my wit;
      When on thy stool of penitence I sit
  I'm quite converted, for I can't get up.
  Ungrateful he who afterward would falter
  To make new sacrifices at thine altar!
 %
 EXCOMMUNICATION, n.

  This "excommunication" is a word
  In speech ecclesiastical oft heard,
  And means the damning, with bell, book and candle,
  Some sinner whose opinions are a scandal--
  A rite permitting Satan to enslave him
  Forever, and forbidding Christ to save him.

 Gat Huckle
 %
 EXECUTIVE, n.  An officer of the Government, whose duty it is to
 enforce the wishes of the legislative power until such time as the
 judicial department shall be pleased to pronounce them invalid and of
 no effect.  Following is an extract from an old book entitled, _The
 Lunarian Astonished_--Pfeiffer & Co., Boston, 1803:

  LUNARIAN:  Then when your Congress has passed a law it goes
      directly to the Supreme Court in order that it may at once be
      known whether it is constitutional?
  TERRESTRIAN:  O no; it does not require the approval of the
      Supreme Court until having perhaps been enforced for many
      years somebody objects to its operation against himself--I
      mean his client.  The President, if he approves it, begins to
      execute it at once.
  LUNARIAN:  Ah, the executive power is a part of the legislative.
      Do your policemen also have to approve the local ordinances
      that they enforce?
  TERRESTRIAN:  Not yet--at least not in their character of
      constables.  Generally speaking, though, all laws require the
      approval of those whom they are intended to restrain.
  LUNARIAN:  I see.  The death warrant is not valid until signed by
      the murderer.
  TERRESTRIAN:  My friend, you put it too strongly; we are not so
      consistent.
  LUNARIAN:  But this system of maintaining an expensive judicial
      machinery to pass upon the validity of laws only after they
      have long been executed, and then only when brought before the
      court by some private person--does it not cause great
      confusion?
  TERRESTRIAN:  It does.
  LUNARIAN:  Why then should not your laws, previously to being
      executed, be validated, not by the signature of your
      President, but by that of the Chief Justice of the Supreme
      Court?
  TERRESTRIAN:  There is no precedent for any such course.
  LUNARIAN:  Precedent.  What is that?
  TERRESTRIAN:  It has been defined by five hundred lawyers in three
      volumes each.  So how can any one know?
 %
 EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another
 upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.
 %
 EXILE, n.  One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not
 an ambassador.

 An English sea-captain being asked if he had read "The Exile of
 Erin," replied:  "No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it."  Years
 afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of
 unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the
 ship's log that he had kept at the time of his reply:

  Aug. 3d, 1842.  Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin.  Coldly
  received.  War with the whole world!
 %
 EXISTENCE, n.

  A transient, horrible, fantastic dream,
  Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem:
  From which we're wakened by a friendly nudge
  Of our bedfellow Death, and cry:  "O fudge!"
 %
 EXPERIENCE, n.  The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an
 undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

  To one who, journeying through night and fog,
  Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog,
  Experience, like the rising of the dawn,
  Reveals the path that he should not have gone.

 Joel Frad Bink
 %
 EXPOSTULATION, n.  One of the many methods by which fools prefer to
 lose their friends.
 %
 EXTINCTION, n.  The raw material out of which theology created the
 future state.
 %
 FAIRY, n.  A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, that formerly
 inhabited the meadows and forests.  It was nocturnal in its habits,
 and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children.  The
 fairies are now believed by naturalists to be extinct, though a
 clergyman of the Church of England saw three near Colchester as lately
 as 1855, while passing through a park after dining with the lord of
 the manor.  The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected
 that his account of it was incoherent.  In the year 1807 a troop of
 fairies visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a
 peasant, who had been seen to enter it with a bundle of clothing.  The
 son of a wealthy _bourgeois_ disappeared about the same time, but
 afterward returned.  He had seen the abduction and been in pursuit of the
 fairies.  Justinian Gaux, a writer of the fourteenth century, avers
 that so great is the fairies' power of transformation that he saw one
 change itself into two opposing armies and fight a battle with great
 slaughter, and that the next day, after it had resumed its original
 shape and gone away, there were seven hundred bodies of the slain
 which the villagers had to bury.  He does not say if any of the
 wounded recovered.  In the time of Henry III, of England, a law was
 made which prescribed the death penalty for "Kyllynge, wowndynge, or
 mamynge" a fairy, and it was universally respected.
 %
 FAITH, n.  Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks
 without knowledge, of things without parallel.
 %
 FAMOUS, adj.  Conspicuously miserable.

  Done to a turn on the iron, behold
      Him who to be famous aspired.
  Content?  Well, his grill has a plating of gold,
      And his twistings are greatly admired.

 Hassan Brubuddy
 %
 FASHION, n.  A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.

  A king there was who lost an eye
      In some excess of passion;
  And straight his courtiers all did try
      To follow the new fashion.

  Each dropped one eyelid when before
      The throne he ventured, thinking
  'Twould please the king.  That monarch swore
      He'd slay them all for winking.

  What should they do?  They were not hot
      To hazard such disaster;
  They dared not close an eye--dared not
      See better than their master.

  Seeing them lacrymose and glum,
      A leech consoled the weepers:
  He spread small rags with liquid gum
      And covered half their peepers.

  The court all wore the stuff, the flame
      Of royal anger dying.
  That's how court-plaster got its name
      Unless I'm greatly lying.

 Naramy Oof
 %
 FEAST, n.  A festival.  A religious celebration usually signalized by
 gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person
 distinguished for abstemiousness.  In the Roman Catholic Church
 feasts are "movable" and "immovable," but the celebrants are uniformly
 immovable until they are full.  In their earliest development these
 entertainments took the form of feasts for the dead; such were held by
 the Greeks, under the name _Nemeseia_, by the Aztecs and Peruvians,
 as in modern times they are popular with the Chinese; though it is
 believed that the ancient dead, like the modern, were light eaters.
 Among the many feasts of the Romans was the _Novemdiale_, which was
 held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven.
 %
 FELON, n.  A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in
 embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.
 %
 FEMALE, n.  One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.

  The Maker, at Creation's birth,
  With living things had stocked the earth.
  From elephants to bats and snails,
  They all were good, for all were males.
  But when the Devil came and saw
  He said:  "By Thine eternal law
  Of growth, maturity, decay,
  These all must quickly pass away
  And leave untenanted the earth
  Unless Thou dost establish birth"--
  Then tucked his head beneath his wing
  To laugh--he had no sleeve--the thing
  With deviltry did so accord,
  That he'd suggested to the Lord.
  The Master pondered this advice,
  Then shook and threw the fateful dice
  Wherewith all matters here below
  Are ordered, and observed the throw;
  Then bent His head in awful state,
  Confirming the decree of Fate.
  From every part of earth anew
  The conscious dust consenting flew,
  While rivers from their courses rolled
  To make it plastic for the mould.
  Enough collected (but no more,
  For niggard Nature hoards her store)
  He kneaded it to flexible clay,
  While Nick unseen threw some away.
  And then the various forms He cast,
  Gross organs first and finer last;
  No one at once evolved, but all
  By even touches grew and small
  Degrees advanced, till, shade by shade,
  To match all living things He'd made
  Females, complete in all their parts
  Except (His clay gave out) the hearts.
  "No matter," Satan cried; "with speed
  I'll fetch the very hearts they need"--
  So flew away and soon brought back
  The number needed, in a sack.
  That night earth rang with sounds of strife--
  Ten million males each had a wife;
  That night sweet Peace her pinions spread
  O'er Hell--ten million devils dead!

 G.J.
 %
 FIB, n.  A lie that has not cut its teeth.  An habitual liar's nearest
 approach to truth:  the perigee of his eccentric orbit.

  When David said:  "All men are liars," Dave,
      Himself a liar, fibbed like any thief.
      Perhaps he thought to weaken disbelief
  By proof that even himself was not a slave
  To Truth; though I suspect the aged knave
      Had been of all her servitors the chief
      Had he but known a fig's reluctant leaf
  Is more than e'er she wore on land or wave.
  No, David served not Naked Truth when he
      Struck that sledge-hammer blow at all his race;
          Nor did he hit the nail upon the head:
  For reason shows that it could never be,
      And the facts contradict him to his face.
          Men are not liars all, for some are dead.

 Bartle Quinker
 %
 FICKLENESS, n.  The iterated satiety of an enterprising affection.
 %
 FIDDLE, n.  An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a
 horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.

  To Rome said Nero:  "If to smoke you turn
  I shall not cease to fiddle while you burn."
  To Nero Rome replied:  "Pray do your worst,
  'Tis my excuse that you were fiddling first."

 Orm Pludge
 %
 FIDELITY, n.  A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
 %
 FINANCE, n.  The art or science of managing revenues and resources for
 the best advantage of the manager.  The pronunciation of this word
 with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of
 America's most precious discoveries and possessions.
 %
 FLAG, n.  A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and
 ships.  It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one
 sees on vacant lots in London--"Rubbish may be shot here."
 %
 FLESH, n.  The Second Person of the secular Trinity.
 %
 FLOP, v.  Suddenly to change one's opinions and go over to another
 party.  The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus,
 who has been severely criticised as a turn-coat by some of our
 partisan journals.
 %
 FLY-SPECK, n.  The prototype of punctuation.  It is observed by
 Garvinus that the systems of punctuation in use by the various
 literary nations depended originally upon the social habits and
 general diet of the flies infesting the several countries.  These
 creatures, which have always been distinguished for a neighborly and
 companionable familiarity with authors, liberally or niggardly
 embellish the manuscripts in process of growth under the pen,
 according to their bodily habit, bringing out the sense of the work by
 a species of interpretation superior to, and independent of, the
 writer's powers.  The "old masters" of literature--that is to say,
 the early writers whose work is so esteemed by later scribes and
 critics in the same language--never punctuated at all, but worked
 right along free-handed, without that abruption of the thought which
 comes from the use of points.  (We observe the same thing in children
 to-day, whose usage in this particular is a striking and beautiful
 instance of the law that the infancy of individuals reproduces the
 methods and stages of development characterizing the infancy of
 races.)  In the work of these primitive scribes all the punctuation is
 found, by the modern investigator with his optical instruments and
 chemical tests, to have been inserted by the writers' ingenious and
 serviceable collaborator, the common house-fly--_Musca maledicta_.
 In transcribing these ancient MSS, for the purpose of either making
 the work their own or preserving what they naturally regard as divine
 revelations, later writers reverently and accurately copy whatever
 marks they find upon the papyrus or parchment, to the unspeakable
 enhancement of the lucidity of the thought and value of the work.
 Writers contemporary with the copyists naturally avail themselves of
 the obvious advantages of these marks in their own work, and with such
 assistance as the flies of their own household may be willing to
 grant, frequently rival and sometimes surpass the older compositions,
 in respect at least of punctuation, which is no small glory.  Fully to
 understand the important services that flies perform to literature it
 is only necessary to lay a page of some popular novelist alongside a
 saucer of cream-and-molasses in a sunny room and observe "how the wit
 brightens and the style refines" in accurate proportion to the
 duration of exposure.
 %
 FOLLY, n.  That "gift and faculty divine" whose creative and
 controlling energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions and adorns
 his life.

  Folly! although Erasmus praised thee once
      In a thick volume, and all authors known,
      If not thy glory yet thy power have shown,
  Deign to take homage from thy son who hunts
  Through all thy maze his brothers, fool and dunce,
      To mend their lives and to sustain his own,
      However feebly be his arrows thrown,

  Howe'er each hide the flying weapons blunts.
  All-Father Folly! be it mine to raise,
      With lusty lung, here on his western strand
      With all thine offspring thronged from every land,
  Thyself inspiring me, the song of praise.
  And if too weak, I'll hire, to help me bawl,
  Dick Watson Gilder, gravest of us all.

 Aramis Loto Frope
 %
 FOOL, n.  A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation
 and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity.  He is
 omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscient, omnipotent.  He it was
 who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, the
 telegraph, the platitude and the circle of the sciences.  He created
 patriotism and taught the nations war--founded theology, philosophy,
 law, medicine and Chicago.  He established monarchical and republican
 government.  He is from everlasting to everlasting--such as
 creation's dawn beheld he fooleth now.  In the morning of time he sang
 upon primitive hills, and in the noonday of existence headed the
 procession of being.  His grandmotherly hand was warmly tucked-in the
 set sun of civilization, and in the twilight he prepares Man's evening
 meal of milk-and-morality and turns down the covers of the universal
 grave.  And after the rest of us shall have retired for the night of
 eternal oblivion he will sit up to write a history of human
 civilization.
 %
 FORCE, n.

  "Force is but might," the teacher said--
      "That definition's just."
  The boy said naught but thought instead,
  Remembering his pounded head:
      "Force is not might but must!"
 %
 FOREFINGER, n.  The finger commonly used in pointing out two
 malefactors.
 %
 FOREORDINATION, n.  This looks like an easy word to define, but when I
 consider that pious and learned theologians have spent long lives in
 explaining it, and written libraries to explain their explanations;
 when I remember that nations have been divided and bloody battles
 caused by the difference between foreordination and predestination,
 and that millions of treasure have been expended in the effort to
 prove and disprove its compatibility with freedom of the will and the
 efficacy of prayer, praise, and a religious life,--recalling these
 awful facts in the history of the word, I stand appalled before the
 mighty problem of its signification, abase my spiritual eyes, fearing
 to contemplate its portentous magnitude, reverently uncover and humbly
 refer it to His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons and His Grace Bishop Potter.
 %
 FORGETFULNESS, n.  A gift of God bestowed upon doctors in compensation
 for their destitution of conscience.
 %
 FORK, n.  An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead
 animals into the mouth.  Formerly the knife was employed for this
 purpose, and by many worthy persons is still thought to have many
 advantages over the other tool, which, however, they do not altogether
 reject, but use to assist in charging the knife.  The immunity of
 these persons from swift and awful death is one of the most striking
 proofs of God's mercy to those that hate Him.
 %
 FORMA PAUPERIS.  [Latin]  In the character of a poor person--a
 method by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately
 permitted to lose his case.

  When Adam long ago in Cupid's awful court
      (For Cupid ruled ere Adam was invented)
  Sued for Eve's favor, says an ancient law report,
      He stood and pleaded unhabilimented.

  "You sue _in forma pauperis_, I see," Eve cried;
      "Actions can't here be that way prosecuted."
  So all poor Adam's motions coldly were denied:
      He went away--as he had come--nonsuited.

 G.J.
 %
 FRANKALMOIGNE, n.  The tenure by which a religious corporation holds
 lands on condition of praying for the soul of the donor.  In mediaeval
 times many of the wealthiest fraternities obtained their estates in
 this simple and cheap manner, and once when Henry VIII of England sent
 an officer to confiscate certain vast possessions which a fraternity
 of monks held by frankalmoigne, "What!" said the Prior, "would you
 master stay our benefactor's soul in Purgatory?"  "Ay," said the
 officer, coldly, "an ye will not pray him thence for naught he must
 e'en roast."  "But look you, my son," persisted the good man, "this
 act hath rank as robbery of God!"  "Nay, nay, good father, my master
 the king doth but deliver him from the manifold temptations of too
 great wealth."
 %
 FREEBOOTER, n.  A conqueror in a small way of business, whose
 annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
 %
 FREEDOM, n.  Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half
 dozen of restraint's infinite multitude of methods.  A political
 condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual
 monopoly.  Liberty.  The distinction between freedom and liberty is
 not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a
 living specimen of either.

  Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,
      Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
  On every wind, indeed, that blows
          I hear her yell.

  She screams whenever monarchs meet,
      And parliaments as well,
  To bind the chains about her feet
          And toll her knell.

  And when the sovereign people cast
      The votes they cannot spell,
  Upon the pestilential blast
          Her clamors swell.

  For all to whom the power's given
      To sway or to compel,
  Among themselves apportion Heaven
          And give her Hell.

 Blary O'Gary
 %
 FREEMASONS, n.  An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and
 fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II,
 among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the
 dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces
 all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming
 up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of
 Chaos and Formless Void.  The order was founded at different times by
 Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious,
 Thothmes, and Buddha.  Its emblems and symbols have been found in the
 Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the
 Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the
 Egyptian Pyramids--always by a Freemason.
 %
 FRIENDLESS, adj.  Having no favors to bestow.  Destitute of fortune.
 Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.
 %
 FRIENDSHIP, n.  A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but
 only one in foul.

  The sea was calm and the sky was blue;
  Merrily, merrily sailed we two.
      (High barometer maketh glad.)
  On the tipsy ship, with a dreadful shout,
  The tempest descended and we fell out.
      (O the walking is nasty bad!)

 Armit Huff Bettle
 %
 FROG, n.  A reptile with edible legs.  The first mention of frogs in
 profane literature is in Homer's narrative of the war between them and
 the mice.  Skeptical persons have doubted Homer's authorship of the
 work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr. Schliemann has
 set the question forever at rest by uncovering the bones of the slain
 frogs.  One of the forms of moral suasion by which Pharaoh was
 besought to favor the Israelities was a plague of frogs, but Pharaoh,
 who liked them _fricasees_, remarked, with truly oriental stoicism,
 that he could stand it as long as the frogs and the Jews could; so the
 programme was changed.  The frog is a diligent songster, having a good
 voice but no ear.  The libretto of his favorite opera, as written by
 Aristophanes, is brief, simple and effective--"brekekex-koax"; the
 music is apparently by that eminent composer, Richard Wagner.  Horses
 have a frog in each hoof--a thoughtful provision of nature, enabling
 them to shine in a hurdle race.
 %
 FRYING-PAN, n.  One part of the penal apparatus employed in that
 punitive institution, a woman's kitchen.  The frying-pan was invented
 by Calvin, and by him used in cooking span-long infants that had died
 without baptism; and observing one day the horrible torment of a tramp
 who had incautiously pulled a fried babe from the waste-dump and
 devoured it, it occurred to the great divine to rob death of its
 terrors by introducing the frying-pan into every household in Geneva.
 Thence it spread to all corners of the world, and has been of
 invaluable assistance in the propagation of his sombre faith.  The
 following lines (said to be from the pen of his Grace Bishop Potter)
 seem to imply that the usefulness of this utensil is not limited to
 this world; but as the consequences of its employment in this life
 reach over into the life to come, so also itself may be found on the
 other side, rewarding its devotees:

  Old Nick was summoned to the skies.
      Said Peter:  "Your intentions
  Are good, but you lack enterprise
      Concerning new inventions.

  "Now, broiling is an ancient plan
      Of torment, but I hear it
  Reported that the frying-pan
      Sears best the wicked spirit.

  "Go get one--fill it up with fat--
      Fry sinners brown and good in't."
  "I know a trick worth two o' that,"
      Said Nick--"I'll cook their food in't."
 %
 FUNERAL, n.  A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by
 enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure
 that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.

  The savage dies--they sacrifice a horse
  To bear to happy hunting-grounds the corse.
  Our friends expire--we make the money fly
  In hope their souls will chase it to the sky.

 Jex Wopley
 %
 FUTURE, n.  That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our
 friends are true and our happiness is assured.
 %
 GALLOWS, n.  A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which
 the leading actor is translated to heaven.  In this country the
 gallows is chiefly remarkable for the number of persons who escape it.

  Whether on the gallows high
      Or where blood flows the reddest,
  The noblest place for man to die--
      Is where he died the deadest.

 (Old play)
 %
 GARGOYLE, n.  A rain-spout projecting from the eaves of mediaeval
 buildings, commonly fashioned into a grotesque caricature of some
 personal enemy of the architect or owner of the building.  This was
 especially the case in churches and ecclesiastical structures
 generally, in which the gargoyles presented a perfect rogues' gallery
 of local heretics and controversialists.  Sometimes when a new dean
 and chapter were installed the old gargoyles were removed and others
 substituted having a closer relation to the private animosities of the
 new incumbents.
 %
 GARTHER, n.  An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out
 of her stockings and desolating the country.
 %
 GENEROUS, adj.  Originally this word meant noble by birth and was
 rightly applied to a great multitude of persons.  It now means noble
 by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.
 %
 GENEALOGY, n.  An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did
 not particularly care to trace his own.
 %
 GENTEEL, adj.  Refined, after the fashion of a gent.

  Observe with care, my son, the distinction I reveal:
  A gentleman is gentle and a gent genteel.
  Heed not the definitions your "Unabridged" presents,
  For dictionary makers are generally gents.

 G.J.
 %
 GEOGRAPHER, n.  A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between
 the outside of the world and the inside.

  Habeam, geographer of wide reknown,
  Native of Abu-Keber's ancient town,
  In passing thence along the river Zam
  To the adjacent village of Xelam,
  Bewildered by the multitude of roads,
  Got lost, lived long on migratory toads,
  Then from exposure miserably died,
  And grateful travelers bewailed their guide.

 Henry Haukhorn
 %
 GEOLOGY, n.  The science of the earth's crust--to which, doubtless,
 will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come up
 garrulous out of a well.  The geological formations of the globe
 already noted are catalogued thus:  The Primary, or lower one,
 consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners' tools,
 antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors.  The
 Secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles.  The Tertiary
 comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy
 boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage,
 anarchists, snap-dogs and fools.
 %
 GHOST, n.  The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.

          He saw a ghost.
  It occupied--that dismal thing!--
  The path that he was following.
  Before he'd time to stop and fly,
  An earthquake trifled with the eye
          That saw a ghost.
  He fell as fall the early good;
  Unmoved that awful vision stood.
  The stars that danced before his ken
  He wildly brushed away, and then
          He saw a post.

 Jared Macphester


 Accounting for the uncommon behavior of ghosts, Heine mentions
 somebody's ingenious theory to the effect that they are as much
 afraid of us as we of them.  Not quite, if I may judge from such
 tables of comparative speed as I am able to compile from memories of
 my own experience.

 There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts.  A ghost
 never comes naked:  he appears either in a winding-sheet or "in his
 habit as he lived."  To believe in him, then, is to believe that not
 only have the dead the power to make themselves visible after there is
 nothing left of them, but that the same power inheres in textile
 fabrics.  Supposing the products of the loom to have this ability,
 what object would they have in exercising it?  And why does not the
 apparition of a suit of clothes sometimes walk abroad without a ghost
 in it?  These be riddles of significance.  They reach away down and
 get a convulsive grip on the very tap-root of this flourishing faith.
 %
 GHOUL, n.  A demon addicted to the reprehensible habit of devouring
 the dead.  The existence of ghouls has been disputed by that class of
 controversialists who are more concerned to deprive the world of
 comforting beliefs than to give it anything good in their place.  In
 1640 Father Secchi saw one in a cemetery near Florence and frightened
 it away with the sign of the cross.  He describes it as gifted with
 many heads and an uncommon allowance of limbs, and he saw it in more
 than one place at a time.  The good man was coming away from dinner at
 the time and explains that if he had not been "heavy with eating" he
 would have seized the demon at all hazards.  Atholston relates that a
 ghoul was caught by some sturdy peasants in a churchyard at Sudbury
 and ducked in a horsepond.  (He appears to think that so distinguished
 a criminal should have been ducked in a tank of rosewater.)  The water
 turned at once to blood "and so contynues unto ys daye."  The pond has
 since been bled with a ditch.  As late as the beginning of the
 fourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the crypt of the cathedral
 at Amiens and the whole population surrounded the place.  Twenty armed
 men with a priest at their head, bearing a crucifix, entered and
 captured the ghoul, which, thinking to escape by the stratagem, had
 transformed itself to the semblance of a well known citizen, but was
 nevertheless hanged, drawn and quartered in the midst of hideous
 popular orgies.  The citizen whose shape the demon had assumed was so
 affected by the sinister occurrence that he never again showed himself
 in Amiens and his fate remains a mystery.
 %
 GLUTTON, n.  A person who escapes the evils of moderation by
 committing dyspepsia.
 %
 GNOME, n.  In North-European mythology, a dwarfish imp inhabiting the
 interior parts of the earth and having special custody of mineral
 treasures.  Bjorsen, who died in 1765, says gnomes were common enough
 in the southern parts of Sweden in his boyhood, and he frequently saw
 them scampering on the hills in the evening twilight.  Ludwig
 Binkerhoof saw three as recently as 1792, in the Black Forest, and
 Sneddeker avers that in 1803 they drove a party of miners out of a
 Silesian mine.  Basing our computations upon data supplied by these
 statements, we find that the gnomes were probably extinct as early as
 1764.
 %
 GNOSTICS, n.  A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion
 between the early Christians and the Platonists.  The former would not
 go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin
 of the fusion managers.
 %
 GNU, n.  An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state
 resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag.  In its wild condition it is
 something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.

  A hunter from Kew caught a distant view
      Of a peacefully meditative gnu,
  And he said:  "I'll pursue, and my hands imbrue
      In its blood at a closer interview."
  But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw
      O'er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;
  And he said as he flew:  "It is well I withdrew
      Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew
      That really meritorious gnu."

 Jarn Leffer
 %
 GOOD, adj.  Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer.
 Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.
 %
 GOOSE, n.  A bird that supplies quills for writing.  These, by some
 occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various
 degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character,
 so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person
 called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript
 of the fowl's thought and feeling.  The difference in geese, as
 discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable:  many are found
 to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be
 very great geese indeed.
 %
 GORGON, n.

  The Gorgon was a maiden bold
  Who turned to stone the Greeks of old
  That looked upon her awful brow.
  We dig them out of ruins now,
  And swear that workmanship so bad
  Proves all the ancient sculptors mad.
 %
 GOUT, n.  A physician's name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.
 %
 GRACES, n.  Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne,
 who attended upon Venus, serving without salary.  They were at no
 expense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and
 dressed according to the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened to
 be blowing.
 %
 GRAMMAR, n.  A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet
 for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to
 distinction.
 %
 GRAPE, n.

  Hail noble fruit!--by Homer sung,
      Anacreon and Khayyam;
  Thy praise is ever on the tongue
      Of better men than I am.

  The lyre in my hand has never swept,
      The song I cannot offer:
  My humbler service pray accept--
      I'll help to kill the scoffer.
  The water-drinkers and the cranks
      Who load their skins with liquor--
  I'll gladly bear their belly-tanks
      And tap them with my sticker.

  Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools
      When e'er we let the wine rest.
  Here's death to Prohibition's fools,
      And every kind of vine-pest!

 Jamrach Holobom
 %
 GRAPESHOT, n.  An argument which the future is preparing in answer to
 the demands of American Socialism.
 %
 GRAVE, n.  A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of
 the medical student.

  Beside a lonely grave I stood--
      With brambles 'twas encumbered;
  The winds were moaning in the wood,
      Unheard by him who slumbered,

  A rustic standing near, I said:
      "He cannot hear it blowing!"
  "'Course not," said he:  "the feller's dead--
      He can't hear nowt [sic] that's going."

  "Too true," I said; "alas, too true--
      No sound his sense can quicken!"
  "Well, mister, wot is that to you?--
      The deadster ain't a-kickin'."

  I knelt and prayed:  "O Father, smile
      On him, and mercy show him!"
  That countryman looked on the while,
      And said:  "Ye didn't know him."

 Pobeter Dunko
 %
 GRAVITATION, n.  The tendency of all bodies to approach one another
 with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain--
 the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength
 of their tendency to approach one another.  This is a lovely and
 edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B,
 makes B the proof of A.
 %
 GREAT, adj.

  "I'm great," the Lion said--"I reign
  The monarch of the wood and plain!"

  The Elephant replied:  "I'm great--
  No quadruped can match my weight!"

  "I'm great--no animal has half
  So long a neck!" said the Giraffe.

  "I'm great," the Kangaroo said--"see
  My femoral muscularity!"

  The 'Possum said:  "I'm great--behold,
  My tail is lithe and bald and cold!"

  An Oyster fried was understood
  To say:  "I'm great because I'm good!"

  Each reckons greatness to consist
  In that in which he heads the list,

  And Vierick thinks he tops his class
  Because he is the greatest ass.

 Arion Spurl Doke
 %
 GUILLOTINE, n.  A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders
 with good reason.

 In his great work on _Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution_, the
 learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture
 --the shrug--among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles
 and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracting the head inside
 the shell.  It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an
 authority, but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth and
 enforced in my work entitled _Hereditary Emotions_--lib. II, c. XI)
 the shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important a
 theory, for previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown.  I
 have not a doubt that it is directly referable to the terror inspired
 by the guillotine during the period of that instrument's activity.
 %
 GUNPOWDER, n.  An agency employed by civilized nations for the
 settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left
 unadjusted.  By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to
 the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence.  Milton says it
 was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion
 seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels.  Moreover,
 it has the hearty concurrence of the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of
 Agriculture.

 Secretary Wilson became interested in gunpowder through an event
 that occurred on the Government experimental farm in the District of
 Columbia.  One day, several years ago, a rogue imperfectly reverent of
 the Secretary's profound attainments and personal character presented
 him with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the seed of the
 _Flashawful flabbergastor_, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial
 value, admirably adapted to this climate.  The good Secretary was
 instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with
 soil.  This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line
 of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look
 backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a
 lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point.  Contact with the
 earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary
 saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke and
 fierce evolution.  He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless,
 then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himself
 thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators
 along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak
 prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages,
 and audibly refusing to be comforted.  "Great Scott! what is that?"
 cried a surveyor's chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fading
 line of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon.  "That,"
 said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again
 centering his attention upon his instrument, "is the Meridian of
 Washington."
 %
 HABEAS CORPUS.  A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when
 confined for the wrong crime.
 %
 HABIT, n.  A shackle for the free.
 %
 HADES, n.  The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the
 place where the dead live.

 Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our
 Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in
 a very comfortable kind of way.  Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves
 were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris.
 When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of
 evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a
 majority vote on translating the Greek word "Aides" as "Hell"; but a
 conscientious minority member secretly possessed himself of the record
 and struck out the objectional word wherever he could find it.  At the
 next meeting, the Bishop of Salisbury, looking over the work, suddenly
 sprang to his feet and said with considerable excitement:  "Gentlemen,
 somebody has been razing 'Hell' here!"  Years afterward the good
 prelate's death was made sweet by the reflection that he had been the
 means (under Providence) of making an important, serviceable and
 immortal addition to the phraseology of the English tongue.
 %
 HAG, n.  An elderly lady whom you do not happen to like; sometimes
 called, also, a hen, or cat.  Old witches, sorceresses, etc., were
 called hags from the belief that their heads were surrounded by a kind
 of baleful lumination or nimbus--hag being the popular name of that
 peculiar electrical light sometimes observed in the hair.  At one time
 hag was not a word of reproach:  Drayton speaks of a "beautiful hag,
 all smiles," much as Shakespeare said, "sweet wench."  It would not
 now be proper to call your sweetheart a hag--that compliment is
 reserved for the use of her grandchildren.
 %
 HALF, n.  One of two equal parts into which a thing may be divided, or
 considered as divided.  In the fourteenth century a heated discussion
 arose among theologists and philosophers as to whether Omniscience
 could part an object into three halves; and the pious Father
 Aldrovinus publicly prayed in the cathedral at Rouen that God would
 demonstrate the affirmative of the proposition in some signal and
 unmistakable way, and particularly (if it should please Him) upon the
 body of that hardy blasphemer, Manutius Procinus, who maintained the
 negative.  Procinus, however, was spared to die of the bite of a
 viper.
 %
 HALO, n.  Properly, a luminous ring encircling an astronomical body,
 but not infrequently confounded with "aureola," or "nimbus," a
 somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a head-dress by divinities and
 saints.  The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by moisture
 in the air, in the manner of a rainbow; but the aureola is conferred
 as a sign of superior sanctity, in the same way as a bishop's mitre,
 or the Pope's tiara.  In the painting of the Nativity, by Szedgkin, a
 pious artist of Pesth, not only do the Virgin and the Child wear the
 nimbus, but an ass nibbling hay from the sacred manger is similarly
 decorated and, to his lasting honor be it said, appears to bear his
 unaccustomed dignity with a truly saintly grace.
 %
 HAND, n.  A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and
 commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
 %
 HANDKERCHIEF, n.  A small square of silk or linen, used in various
 ignoble offices about the face and especially serviceable at funerals
 to conceal the lack of tears.  The handkerchief is of recent
 invention; our ancestors knew nothing of it and intrusted its duties
 to the sleeve.  Shakespeare's introducing it into the play of
 "Othello" is an anachronism:  Desdemona dried her nose with her skirt,
 as Dr. Mary Walker and other reformers have done with their coattails
 in our own day--an evidence that revolutions sometimes go backward.
 %
 HANGMAN, n.  An officer of the law charged with duties of the highest
 dignity and utmost gravity, and held in hereditary disesteem by a
 populace having a criminal ancestry.  In some of the American States
 his functions are now performed by an electrician, as in New Jersey,
 where executions by electricity have recently been ordered--the
 first instance known to this lexicographer of anybody questioning the
 expediency of hanging Jerseymen.
 %
 HAPPINESS, n.  An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the
 misery of another.
 %
 HARANGUE, n.  A speech by an opponent, who is known as an
 harangue-outang.
 %
 HARBOR, n.  A place where ships taking shelter from storms are exposed
 to the fury of the customs.
 %
 HARMONISTS, n.  A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from
 Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for
 the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.
 %
 HASH, x.  There is no definition for this word--nobody knows what
 hash is.
 %
 HATCHET, n.  A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.

  "O bury the hatchet, irascible Red,
  For peace is a blessing," the White Man said.
      The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred,
  With imposing rites, in the White Man's head.

 John Lukkus
 %
 HATRED, n.  A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
 superiority.
 %
 HEAD-MONEY, n.  A capitation tax, or poll-tax.

  In ancient times there lived a king
  Whose tax-collectors could not wring
  From all his subjects gold enough
  To make the royal way less rough.
  For pleasure's highway, like the dames
  Whose premises adjoin it, claims
  Perpetual repairing.  So
  The tax-collectors in a row
  Appeared before the throne to pray
  Their master to devise some way
  To swell the revenue.  "So great,"
  Said they, "are the demands of state
  A tithe of all that we collect
  Will scarcely meet them.  Pray reflect:
  How, if one-tenth we must resign,
  Can we exist on t'other nine?"
  The monarch asked them in reply:
  "Has it occurred to you to try
  The advantage of economy?"
  "It has," the spokesman said:  "we sold
  All of our gray garrotes of gold;
  With plated-ware we now compress
  The necks of those whom we assess.
  Plain iron forceps we employ
  To mitigate the miser's joy
  Who hoards, with greed that never tires,
  That which your Majesty requires."
  Deep lines of thought were seen to plow
  Their way across the royal brow.
  "Your state is desperate, no question;
  Pray favor me with a suggestion."
  "O King of Men," the spokesman said,
  "If you'll impose upon each head
  A tax, the augmented revenue
  We'll cheerfully divide with you."
  As flashes of the sun illume
  The parted storm-cloud's sullen gloom,
  The king smiled grimly.  "I decree
  That it be so--and, not to be
  In generosity outdone,
  Declare you, each and every one,
  Exempted from the operation
  Of this new law of capitation.
  But lest the people censure me
  Because they're bound and you are free,
  'Twere well some clever scheme were laid
  By you this poll-tax to evade.
  I'll leave you now while you confer
  With my most trusted minister."
  The monarch from the throne-room walked
  And straightway in among them stalked
  A silent man, with brow concealed,
  Bare-armed--his gleaming axe revealed!

 G.J.
 %
 HEARSE, n.  Death's baby-carriage.
 %
 HEART, n.  An automatic, muscular blood-pump.  Figuratively, this
 useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments--a
 very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once
 universal belief.  It is now known that the sentiments and emotions
 reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of
 the gastric fluid.  The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a
 feeling--tender or not, according to the age of the animal from
 which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a
 caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a
 pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a
 hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh
 of sensibility--these things have been patiently ascertained by M.
 Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity.  (See, also,
 my monograph, _The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and
 Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion_--4to, 687 pp.)  In a
 scientific work entitled, I believe, _Delectatio Demonorum_ (John
 Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a
 striking illustration; and for further light consult Professor Dam's
 famous treatise on _Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration_.
 %
 HEAT, n.

  Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode
      Of motion, but I know now how he's proving
  His point; but this I know--hot words bestowed
      With skill will set the human fist a-moving,
  And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
  _Crede expertum_--I have seen them, child.

 Gorton Swope
 %
 HEATHEN, n.  A benighted creature who has the folly to worship
 something that he can see and feel.  According to Professor Howison,
 of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.

  "The Hebrews are heathens!" says Howison.  He's
      A Christian philosopher.  I'm
  A scurril agnostical chap, if you please,
      Addicted too much to the crime
      Of religious discussion in my rhyme.

  Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree
      On a _modus vivendi_--not they!--
  Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,
      And I haven't been reared in a way
      To joy in the thick of the fray.

  For this of my creed is the soul and the gist,
      And the truth of it I aver:
  Who differs from me in his faith is an 'ist,
      And 'ite, an 'ie, or an 'er--
      And I'm down upon him or her!

  Let Howison urge with perfunctory chin
      Toleration--that's all very well,
  But a roast is "nuts" to his nostril thin,
      And he's running--I know by the smell--
      A secret and personal Hell!

 Bissell Gip
 %
 HEAVEN, n.  A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with
 talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention
 while you expound your own.
 %
 HEBREW, n.  A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an
 altogether superior creation.
 %
 HELPMATE, n.  A wife, or bitter half.

  "Now, why is yer wife called a helpmate, Pat?"
      Says the priest.  "Since the time 'o yer wooin'
  She's niver [sic] assisted in what ye were at--
      For it's naught ye are ever doin'."

  "That's true of yer Riverence [sic]," Patrick replies,
      And no sign of contrition envices;
  "But, bedad, it's a fact which the word implies,
      For she helps to mate the expinses [sic]!"

 Marley Wottel
 %
 HEMP, n.  A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of
 neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open
 air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.
 %
 HERMIT, n.  A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.
 %
 HERS, pron.  His.
 %
 HIBERNATE, v.i.  To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion.
 There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of
 various animals.  Many believe that the bear hibernates during the
 whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking its paws.  It is
 admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so lean
 that it had to try twice before it can cast a shadow.  Three or four
 centuries ago, in England, no fact was better attested than that
 swallows passed the winter months in the mud at the bottom of their
 brooks, clinging together in globular masses.  They have apparently
 been compelled to give up the custom on account of the foulness of
 the brooks.  Sotus Ecobius discovered in Central Asia a whole nation
 of people who hibernate.  By some investigators, the fasting of Lent
 is supposed to have been originally a modified form of hibernation, to
 which the Church gave a religious significance; but this view was
 strenuously opposed by that eminent authority, Bishop Kip, who did not
 wish any honors denied to the memory of the Founder of his family.
 %
 HIPPOGRIFF, n.  An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half
 griffin.  The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and
 half eagle.  The hippogriff was actually, therefore, a one-quarter
 eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold.  The study of
 zoology is full of surprises.
 %
 HISTORIAN, n.  A broad-gauge gossip.
 %
 HISTORY, n.  An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant,
 which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly
 fools.

  Of Roman history, great Niebuhr's shown
  'Tis nine-tenths lying.  Faith, I wish 'twere known,
  Ere we accept great Niebuhr as a guide,
  Wherein he blundered and how much he lied.

 Salder Bupp
 %
 HOG, n.  A bird remarkable for the catholicity of its appetite and
 serving to illustrate that of ours.  Among the Mahometans and Jews,
 the hog is not in favor as an article of diet, but is respected for
 the delicacy and the melody of its voice.  It is chiefly as a songster
 that the fowl is esteemed; the cage of him in full chorus has been
 known to draw tears from two persons at once.  The scientific name of
 this dicky-bird is _Porcus Rockefelleri_.  Mr. Rockefeller did not
 discover the hog, but it is considered his by right of resemblance.
 %
 HOMOEOPATHIST, n.  The humorist of the medical profession.
 %
 HOMOEOPATHY, n.  A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and
 Christian Science.  To the last both the others are distinctly
 inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they
 can not.
 %
 HOMICIDE, n.  The slaying of one human being by another.  There are
 four kinds of homocide:  felonious, excusable, justifiable, and
 praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain
 whether he fell by one kind or another--the classification is for
 advantage of the lawyers.
 %
 HOMILETICS, n.  The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual
 needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.

  So skilled the parson was in homiletics
  That all his normal purges and emetics
  To medicine the spirit were compounded
  With a most just discrimination founded
  Upon a rigorous examination
  Of tongue and pulse and heart and respiration.
  Then, having diagnosed each one's condition,
  His scriptural specifics this physician
  Administered--his pills so efficacious
  And pukes of disposition so vivacious
  That souls afflicted with ten kinds of Adam
  Were convalescent ere they knew they had 'em.
  But Slander's tongue--itself all coated--uttered
  Her bilious mind and scandalously muttered
  That in the case of patients having money
  The pills were sugar and the pukes were honey.

 _Biography of Bishop Potter_
 %
 HONORABLE, adj.  Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach.  In
 legislative bodies it is customary to mention all members as
 honorable; as, "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
 %
 HOPE, n.  Desire and expectation rolled into one.

  Delicious Hope! when naught to man is left--
  Of fortune destitute, of friends bereft;
  When even his dog deserts him, and his goat
  With tranquil disaffection chews his coat
  While yet it hangs upon his back; then thou,
  The star far-flaming on thine angel brow,
  Descendest, radiant, from the skies to hint
  The promise of a clerkship in the Mint.

 Fogarty Weffing
 %
 HOSPITALITY, n.  The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain
 persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
 %
 HOSTILITY, n.  A peculiarly sharp and specially applied sense of the
 earth's overpopulation.  Hostility is classified as active and
 passive; as (respectively) the feeling of a woman for her female
 friends, and that which she entertains for all the rest of her sex.
 %
 HOURI, n.  A comely female inhabiting the Mohammedan Paradise to make
 things cheery for the good Mussulman, whose belief in her existence
 marks a noble discontent with his earthly spouse, whom he denies a
 soul.  By that good lady the Houris are said to be held in deficient
 esteem.
 %
 HOUSE, n.  A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat,
 mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus and microbe.
 _House of Correction_, a place of reward for political and personal
 service, and for the detention of offenders and appropriations.
 _House of God_, a building with a steeple and a mortgage on it.
 _House-dog_, a pestilent beast kept on domestic premises to insult
 persons passing by and appal the hardy visitor.  _House-maid_, a
 youngerly person of the opposing sex employed to be variously
 disagreeable and ingeniously unclean in the station in which it has
 pleased God to place her.
 %
 HOUSELESS, adj.  Having paid all taxes on household goods.
 %
 HOVEL, n.  The fruit of a flower called the Palace.

      Twaddle had a hovel,
          Twiddle had a palace;
      Twaddle said:  "I'll grovel
          Or he'll think I bear him malice"--
  A sentiment as novel
      As a castor on a chalice.

      Down upon the middle
          Of his legs fell Twaddle
      And astonished Mr. Twiddle,
          Who began to lift his noddle.
      Feed upon the fiddle-
          Faddle flummery, unswaddle
  A new-born self-sufficiency and think himself a [mockery.]

 G.J.
 %
 HUMANITY, n.  The human race, collectively, exclusive of the
 anthropoid poets.
 %
 HUMORIST, n.  A plague that would have softened down the hoar
 austerity of Pharaoh's heart and persuaded him to dismiss Israel with
 his best wishes, cat-quick.

  Lo! the poor humorist, whose tortured mind
  See jokes in crowds, though still to gloom inclined--
  Whose simple appetite, untaught to stray,
  His brains, renewed by night, consumes by day.
  He thinks, admitted to an equal sty,
  A graceful hog would bear his company.

 Alexander Poke
 %
 HURRICANE, n.  An atmospheric demonstration once very common but now
 generally abandoned for the tornado and cyclone.  The hurricane is
 still in popular use in the West Indies and is preferred by certain
 old-fashioned sea-captains.  It is also used in the construction of
 the upper decks of steamboats, but generally speaking, the hurricane's
 usefulness has outlasted it.
 %
 HURRY, n.  The dispatch of bunglers.
 %
 HUSBAND, n.  One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the
 plate.
 %
 HYBRID, n.  A pooled issue.
 %
 HYDRA, n.  A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many
 heads.
 %
 HYENA, n.  A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its
 habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead.  But the
 medical student does that.
 %
 HYPOCHONDRIASIS, n.  Depression of one's own spirits.

  Some heaps of trash upon a vacant lot
  Where long the village rubbish had been shot
  Displayed a sign among the stuff and stumps--
  "Hypochondriasis."  It meant The Dumps.

 Bogul S. Purvy
 %
 HYPOCRITE, n.  One who, professing virtues that he does not respect
 secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.
 %
 I is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language,
 the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection.  In
 grammar it is a pronoun of the first person and singular number.  Its
 plural is said to be _We_, but how there can be more than one myself
 is doubtless clearer to the grammarians than it is to the author of this
 incomparable dictionary.  Conception of two myselfs is difficult, but
 fine.  The frank yet graceful use of "I" distinguishes a good writer
 from a bad; the latter carries it with the manner of a thief trying to
 cloak his loot.
 %
 ICHOR, n.  A fluid that serves the gods and goddesses in place of
 blood.

  Fair Venus, speared by Diomed,
  Restrained the raging chief and said:
  "Behold, rash mortal, whom you've bled--
  Your soul's stained white with ichorshed!"

 Mary Doke
 %
 ICONOCLAST, n.  A breaker of idols, the worshipers whereof are
 imperfectly gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest
 that he unbuildeth but doth not reedify, that he pulleth down but
 pileth not up.  For the poor things would have other idols in place of
 those he thwacketh upon the mazzard and dispelleth.  But the
 iconoclast saith:  "Ye shall have none at all, for ye need them not;
 and if the rebuilder fooleth round hereabout, behold I will depress
 the head of him and sit thereon till he squawk it."
 %
 IDIOT, n.  A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in
 human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.  The Idiot's
 activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action,
 but "pervades and regulates the whole."  He has the last word in
 everything; his decision is unappealable.  He sets the fashions and
 opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes
 conduct with a dead-line.
 %
 IDLENESS, n.  A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of
 new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.
 %
 IGNORAMUS, n.  A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge
 familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know
 nothing about.

  Dumble was an ignoramus,
  Mumble was for learning famous.
  Mumble said one day to Dumble:
  "Ignorance should be more humble.
  Not a spark have you of knowledge
  That was got in any college."
  Dumble said to Mumble:  "Truly
  You're self-satisfied unduly.
  Of things in college I'm denied
  A knowledge--you of all beside."

 Borelli
 %
 ILLUMINATI, n.  A sect of Spanish heretics of the latter part of the
 sixteenth century; so called because they were light weights--
 _cunctationes illuminati_.
 %
 ILLUSTRIOUS, adj.  Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and
 detraction.
 %
 IMAGINATION, n.  A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint
 ownership.
 %
 IMBECILITY, n.  A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting
 censorious critics of this dictionary.
 %
 IMMIGRANT, n.  An unenlightened person who thinks one country better
 than another.
 %
 IMMODEST, adj.  Having a strong sense of one's own merit, coupled with
 a feeble conception of worth in others.

  There was once a man in Ispahan
      Ever and ever so long ago,
  And he had a head, the phrenologists said,
      That fitted him for a show.

  For his modesty's bump was so large a lump
      (Nature, they said, had taken a freak)
  That its summit stood far above the wood
      Of his hair, like a mountain peak.

  So modest a man in all Ispahan,
      Over and over again they swore--
  So humble and meek, you would vainly seek;
      None ever was found before.

  Meantime the hump of that awful bump
      Into the heavens contrived to get
  To so great a height that they called the wight
      The man with the minaret.

  There wasn't a man in all Ispahan
      Prouder, or louder in praise of his chump:
  With a tireless tongue and a brazen lung
      He bragged of that beautiful bump

  Till the Shah in a rage sent a trusty page
      Bearing a sack and a bow-string too,
  And that gentle child explained as he smiled:
      "A little present for you."

  The saddest man in all Ispahan,
      Sniffed at the gift, yet accepted the same.
  "If I'd lived," said he, "my humility
      Had given me deathless fame!"

 Sukker Uffro
 %
 IMMORAL, adj.  Inexpedient.  Whatever in the long run and with regard
 to the greater number of instances men find to be generally
 inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.  If man's
 notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of
 expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other
 way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from, and
 nowise dependent on, their consequences--then all philosophy is a
 lie and reason a disorder of the mind.
 %
 IMMORTALITY, n.

  A toy which people cry for,
  And on their knees apply for,
  Dispute, contend and lie for,
      And if allowed
      Would be right proud
  Eternally to die for.

 G.J.
 %
 IMPALE, v.t.  In popular usage to pierce with any weapon which remains
 fixed in the wound.  This, however, is inaccurate; to impale is,
 properly, to put to death by thrusting an upright sharp stake into the
 body, the victim being left in a sitting position.  This was a common
 mode of punishment among many of the nations of antiquity, and is
 still in high favor in China and other parts of Asia.  Down to the
 beginning of the fifteenth century it was widely employed in
 "churching" heretics and schismatics.  Wolecraft calls it the "stoole
 of repentynge," and among the common people it was jocularly known as
 "riding the one legged horse."  Ludwig Salzmann informs us that in
 Thibet impalement is considered the most appropriate punishment for
 crimes against religion; and although in China it is sometimes awarded
 for secular offences, it is most frequently adjudged in cases of
 sacrilege.  To the person in actual experience of impalement it must
 be a matter of minor importance by what kind of civil or religious
 dissent he was made acquainted with its discomforts; but doubtless he
 would feel a certain satisfaction if able to contemplate himself in
 the character of a weather-cock on the spire of the True Church.
 %
 IMPARTIAL, adj.  Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage
 from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
 conflicting opinions.
 %
 IMPENITENCE, n.  A state of mind intermediate in point of time between
 sin and punishment.
 %
 IMPIETY, n.  Your irreverence toward my deity.
 %
 IMPOSITION, n.  The act of blessing or consecrating by the laying on
 of hands--a ceremony common to many ecclesiastical systems, but
 performed with the frankest sincerity by the sect known as Thieves.

  "Lo! by the laying on of hands,"
      Say parson, priest and dervise,
  "We consecrate your cash and lands
      To ecclesiastical service.
  No doubt you'll swear till all is blue
  At such an imposition.  Do."

 Pollo Doncas
 %
 IMPOSTOR n.  A rival aspirant to public honors.
 %
 IMPROBABILITY, n.

  His tale he told with a solemn face
  And a tender, melancholy grace.
      Improbable 'twas, no doubt,
      When you came to think it out,
      But the fascinated crowd
      Their deep surprise avowed
  And all with a single voice averred
  'Twas the most amazing thing they'd heard--
  All save one who spake never a word,
      But sat as mum
      As if deaf and dumb,
  Serene, indifferent and unstirred.
      Then all the others turned to him
      And scrutinized him limb from limb--
      Scanned him alive;
      But he seemed to thrive
      And tranquiler grow each minute,
      As if there were nothing in it.
  "What! what!" cried one, "are you not amazed
  At what our friend has told?"  He raised
  Soberly then his eyes and gazed
      In a natural way
      And proceeded to say,
  As he crossed his feet on the mantel-shelf:
  "O no--not at all; I'm a liar myself."
 %
 IMPROVIDENCE, n.  Provision for the needs of to-day from the revenues
 of to-morrow.
 %
 IMPUNITY, n.  Wealth.
 %
 INADMISSIBLE, adj.  Not competent to be considered.  Said of certain
 kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be
 entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of
 proceedings before themselves alone.  Hearsay evidence is inadmissible
 because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for
 examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political,
 commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay
 evidence.  There is no religion in the world that has any other basis
 than hearsay evidence.  Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the
 Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long
 dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known
 to have been sworn in any sense.  Under the rules of evidence as they
 now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its
 support any evidence admissible in a court of law.  It cannot be
 proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was
 such as person as Julius Caesar, such an empire as Assyria.

 But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily
 be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were
 a scourge to mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which
 certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a
 flaw; it is still unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based on it
 were sound in logic and in law.  Nothing in any existing court was
 ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery
 for which so many suffered death.  If there were no witches, human
 testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
 %
 INAUSPICIOUSLY, adv.  In an unpromising manner, the auspices being
 unfavorable.  Among the Romans it was customary before undertaking any
 important action or enterprise to obtain from the augurs, or state
 prophets, some hint of its probable outcome; and one of their favorite
 and most trustworthy modes of divination consisted in observing the
 flight of birds--the omens thence derived being called _auspices_.
 Newspaper reporters and certain miscreant lexicographers have decided
 that the word--always in the plural--shall mean "patronage" or
 "management"; as, "The festivities were under the auspices of the
 Ancient and Honorable Order of Body-Snatchers"; or, "The hilarities
 were auspicated by the Knights of Hunger."

  A Roman slave appeared one day
  Before the Augur.  "Tell me, pray,
  If--" here the Augur, smiling, made
  A checking gesture and displayed
  His open palm, which plainly itched,
  For visibly its surface twitched.
  A _denarius_ (the Latin nickel)
  Successfully allayed the tickle,
  And then the slave proceeded:  "Please
  Inform me whether Fate decrees
  Success or failure in what I
  To-night (if it be dark) shall try.
  Its nature?  Never mind--I think
  'Tis writ on this"--and with a wink
  Which darkened half the earth, he drew
  Another denarius to view,
  Its shining face attentive scanned,
  Then slipped it into the good man's hand,
  Who with great gravity said:  "Wait
  While I retire to question Fate."
  That holy person then withdrew
  His scared clay and, passing through
  The temple's rearward gate, cried "Shoo!"
  Waving his robe of office.  Straight
  Each sacred peacock and its mate
  (Maintained for Juno's favor) fled
  With clamor from the trees o'erhead,
  Where they were perching for the night.
  The temple's roof received their flight,
  For thither they would always go,
  When danger threatened them below.
  Back to the slave the Augur went:
  "My son, forecasting the event
  By flight of birds, I must confess
  The auspices deny success."
  That slave retired, a sadder man,
  Abandoning his secret plan--
  Which was (as well the craft seer
  Had from the first divined) to clear
  The wall and fraudulently seize
  On Juno's poultry in the trees.

 G.J.
 %
 INCOME, n.  The natural and rational gauge and measure of
 respectability, the commonly accepted standards being artificial,
 arbitrary and fallacious; for, as "Sir Sycophas Chrysolater" in the
 play has justly remarked, "the true use and function of property (in
 whatsoever it consisteth--coins, or land, or houses, or merchant-stuff,
 or anything which may be named as holden of right to one's own
 subservience) as also of honors, titles, preferments and place, and
 all favor and acquaintance of persons of quality or ableness, are but
 to get money.  Hence it followeth that all things are truly to be
 rated as of worth in measure of their serviceableness to that end; and
 their possessors should take rank in agreement thereto, neither the
 lord of an unproducing manor, howsoever broad and ancient, nor he who
 bears an unremunerate dignity, nor yet the pauper favorite of a king,
 being esteemed of level excellency with him whose riches are of daily
 accretion; and hardly should they whose wealth is barren claim and
 rightly take more honor than the poor and unworthy."
 %
 INCOMPATIBILITY, n.  In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly
 the taste for domination.  Incompatibility may, however, consist of a
 meek-eyed matron living just around the corner.  It has even been
 known to wear a moustache.
 %
 INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj.  Unable to exist if something else exists.  Two
 things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for
 one of them, but not enough for both--as Walt Whitman's poetry and
 God's mercy to man.  Incompossibility, it will be seen, is only
 incompatibility let loose.  Instead of such low language as "Go heel
 yourself--I mean to kill you on sight," the words, "Sir, we are
 incompossible," would convey an equally significant intimation and in
 stately courtesy are altogether superior.
 %
 INCUBUS, n.  One of a race of highly improper demons who, though
 probably not wholly extinct, may be said to have seen their best
 nights.  For a complete account of _incubi_ and _succubi_, including
 _incubae_ and _succubae_, see the _Liber Demonorum_ of Protassus
 (Paris, 1328), which contains much curious information that would be
 out of place in a dictionary intended as a text-book for the public
 schools.

 Victor Hugo relates that in the Channel Islands Satan himself--
 tempted more than elsewhere by the beauty of the women, doubtless--
 sometimes plays at _incubus_, greatly to the inconvenience and alarm
 of the good dames who wish to be loyal to their marriage vows,
 generally speaking.  A certain lady applied to the parish priest to
 learn how they might, in the dark, distinguish the hardy intruder from
 their husbands.  The holy man said they must feel his brow for horns;
 but Hugo is ungallant enough to hint a doubt of the efficacy of the
 test.
 %
 INCUMBENT, n.  A person of the liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
 %
 INDECISION, n.  The chief element of success; "for whereas," saith Sir
 Thomas Brewbold, "there is but one way to do nothing and divers way to
 do something, whereof, to a surety, only one is the right way, it
 followeth that he who from indecision standeth still hath not so many
 chances of going astray as he who pusheth forwards"--a most clear
 and satisfactory exposition of the matter.

 "Your prompt decision to attack," said General Grant on a certain
 occasion to General Gordon Granger, "was admirable; you had but five
 minutes to make up your mind in."

 "Yes, sir," answered the victorious subordinate, "it is a great
 thing to know exactly what to do in an emergency.  When in doubt
 whether to attack or retreat I never hesitate a moment--I toss up a
 copper."

 "Do you mean to say that's what you did this time?"

 "Yes, General; but for Heaven's sake don't reprimand me:  I
 disobeyed the coin."
 %
 INDIFFERENT, adj.  Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.

  "You tiresome man!" cried Indolentio's wife,
  "You've grown indifferent to all in life."
  "Indifferent?" he drawled with a slow smile;
  "I would be, dear, but it is not worth while."

 Apuleius M. Gokul
 %
 INDIGESTION, n.  A disease which the patient and his friends
 frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the
 salvation of mankind.  As the simple Red Man of the western wild put
 it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force:  "Plenty well, no
 pray; big bellyache, heap God."
 %
 INDISCRETION, n.  The guilt of woman.
 %
 INEXPEDIENT, adj.  Not calculated to advance one's interests.
 %
 INFANCY, n.  The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth,
 "Heaven lies about us."  The world begins lying about us pretty soon
 afterward.
 %
 INFERIAE, n.  [Latin]  Among the Greeks and Romans, sacrifices for
 propitiation of the _Dii Manes_, or souls of the dead heroes; for the
 pious ancients could not invent enough gods to satisfy their spiritual
 needs, and had to have a number of makeshift deities, or, as a sailor
 might say, jury-gods, which they made out of the most unpromising
 materials.  It was while sacrificing a bullock to the spirit of
 Agamemnon that Laiaides, a priest of Aulis, was favored with an
 audience of that illustrious warrior's shade, who prophetically
 recounted to him the birth of Christ and the triumph of Christianity,
 giving him also a rapid but tolerably complete review of events down
 to the reign of Saint Louis.  The narrative ended abruptly at that
 point, owing to the inconsiderate crowing of a cock, which compelled
 the ghosted King of Men to scamper back to Hades.  There is a fine
 mediaeval flavor to this story, and as it has not been traced back
 further than Pere Brateille, a pious but obscure writer at the court
 of Saint Louis, we shall probably not err on the side of presumption
 in considering it apocryphal, though Monsignor Capel's judgment of the
 matter might be different; and to that I bow--wow.
 %
 INFIDEL, n.  In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian
 religion; in Constantinople, one who does.  (See GIAOUR.)  A kind of
 scoundrel imperfectly reverent of, and niggardly contributory to,
 divines, ecclesiastics, popes, parsons, canons, monks, mollahs,
 voodoos, presbyters, hierophants, prelates, obeah-men, abbes, nuns,
 missionaries, exhorters, deacons, friars, hadjis, high-priests,
 muezzins, brahmins, medicine-men, confessors, eminences, elders,
 primates, prebendaries, pilgrims, prophets, imaums, beneficiaries,
 clerks, vicars-choral, archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors,
 preachers, padres, abbotesses, caloyers, palmers, curates, patriarchs,
 bonezs, santons, beadsmen, canonesses, residentiaries, diocesans,
 deans, subdeans, rural deans, abdals, charm-sellers, archdeacons,
 hierarchs, class-leaders, incumbents, capitulars, sheiks, talapoins,
 postulants, scribes, gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers, sextons,
 reverences, revivalists, cenobites, perpetual curates, chaplains,
 mudjoes, readers, novices, vicars, pastors, rabbis, ulemas, lamas,
 sacristans, vergers, dervises, lectors, church wardens, cardinals,
 prioresses, suffragans, acolytes, rectors, cures, sophis, mutifs and
 pumpums.
 %
 INFLUENCE, n.  In politics, a visionary _quo_ given in exchange for a
 substantial _quid_.
 %
 INFRALAPSARIAN, n.  One who ventures to believe that Adam need not have
 sinned unless he had a mind to--in opposition to the Supralapsarians,
 who hold that that luckless person's fall was decreed from the
 beginning.  Infralapsarians are sometimes called Sublapsarians without
 material effect upon the importance and lucidity of their views about
 Adam.

  Two theologues once, as they wended their way
  To chapel, engaged in colloquial fray--
  An earnest logomachy, bitter as gall,
  Concerning poor Adam and what made him fall.
  "'Twas Predestination," cried one--"for the Lord
  Decreed he should fall of his own accord."
  "Not so--'twas Free will," the other maintained,
  "Which led him to choose what the Lord had ordained."
  So fierce and so fiery grew the debate
  That nothing but bloodshed their dudgeon could sate;
  So off flew their cassocks and caps to the ground
  And, moved by the spirit, their hands went round.
  Ere either had proved his theology right
  By winning, or even beginning, the fight,
  A gray old professor of Latin came by,
  A staff in his hand and a scowl in his eye,
  And learning the cause of their quarrel (for still
  As they clumsily sparred they disputed with skill
  Of foreordinational freedom of will)
  Cried:  "Sirrahs! this reasonless warfare compose:
  Atwixt ye's no difference worthy of blows.
  The sects ye belong to--I'm ready to swear
  Ye wrongly interpret the names that they bear.
  _You_--Infralapsarian son of a clown!--
  Should only contend that Adam slipped down;
  While _you_--you Supralapsarian pup!--
  Should nothing aver but that Adam slipped up.
  It's all the same whether up or down
  You slip on a peel of banana brown.
  Even Adam analyzed not his blunder,
  But thought he had slipped on a peal of thunder!

 G.J.
 %
 INGRATE, n.  One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise
 an object of charity.

  "All men are ingrates," sneered the cynic.  "Nay,"
      The good philanthropist replied;
  "I did great service to a man one day
  Who never since has cursed me to repay,
              Nor vilified."

  "Ho!" cried the cynic, "lead me to him straight--
      With veneration I am overcome,
  And fain would have his blessing."  "Sad your fate--
  He cannot bless you, for I grieve to state
              This man is dumb."

 Ariel Selp
 %
 INJURY, n.  An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight.
 %
 INJUSTICE, n.  A burden which of all those that we load upon others
 and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the
 back.
 %
 INK, n.  A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic and
 water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
 intellectual crime.  The properties of ink are peculiar and
 contradictory:  it may be used to make reputations and unmake them; to
 blacken them and to make them white; but it is most generally and
 acceptably employed as a mortar to bind together the stones of an
 edifice of fame, and as a whitewash to conceal afterward the rascal
 quality of the material.  There are men called journalists who have
 established ink baths which some persons pay money to get into, others
 to get out of.  Not infrequently it occurs that a person who has paid
 to get in pays twice as much to get out.
 %
 INNATE, adj.  Natural, inherent--as innate ideas, that is to say,
 ideas that we are born with, having had them previously imparted to
 us.  The doctrine of innate ideas is one of the most admirable faiths
 of philosophy, being itself an innate idea and therefore inaccessible
 to disproof, though Locke foolishly supposed himself to have given it
 "a black eye."  Among innate ideas may be mentioned the belief in
 one's ability to conduct a newspaper, in the greatness of one's
 country, in the superiority of one's civilization, in the importance
 of one's personal affairs and in the interesting nature of one's
 diseases.
 %
 IN'ARDS, n.  The stomach, heart, soul and other bowels.  Many eminent
 investigators do not class the soul as an in'ard, but that acute
 observer and renowned authority, Dr. Gunsaulus, is persuaded that the
 mysterious organ known as the spleen is nothing less than our
 immortal part.  To the contrary, Professor Garrett P. Servis holds
 that man's soul is that prolongation of his spinal marrow which forms
 the pith of his no tail; and for demonstration of his faith points
 confidently to the fact that tailed animals have no souls.
 Concerning these two theories, it is best to suspend judgment by
 believing both.
 %
 INSCRIPTION, n.  Something written on another thing.  Inscriptions are
 of many kinds, but mostly memorial, intended to commemorate the fame
 of some illustrious person and hand down to distant ages the record of
 his services and virtues.  To this class of inscriptions belongs the
 name of John Smith, penciled on the Washington monument.  Following
 are examples of memorial inscriptions on tombstones:  (See EPITAPH.)

  "In the sky my soul is found,
  And my body in the ground.
  By and by my body'll rise
  To my spirit in the skies,
  Soaring up to Heaven's gate.
          1878."

  "Sacred to the memory of Jeremiah Tree.  Cut down May 9th, 1862,
 aged 27 yrs. 4 mos. and 12 ds.  Indigenous."

      "Affliction sore long time she boar,
          Phisicians was in vain,
      Till Deth released the dear deceased
          And left her a remain.
  Gone to join Ananias in the regions of bliss."

  "The clay that rests beneath this stone
  As Silas Wood was widely known.
  Now, lying here, I ask what good
  It was to let me be S. Wood.
  O Man, let not ambition trouble you,
  Is the advice of Silas W."

  "Richard Haymon, of Heaven.  Fell to Earth Jan. 20, 1807, and had
 the dust brushed off him Oct. 3, 1874."
 %
 INSECTIVORA, n.

  "See," cries the chorus of admiring preachers,
  "How Providence provides for all His creatures!"
  "His care," the gnat said, "even the insects follows:
  For us He has provided wrens and swallows."

 Sempen Railey
 %
 INSURANCE, n.  An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player
 is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating
 the man who keeps the table.

  INSURANCE AGENT:  My dear sir, that is a fine house--pray let me
      insure it.
  HOUSE OWNER:  With pleasure.  Please make the annual premium so
      low that by the time when, according to the tables of your
      actuary, it will probably be destroyed by fire I will have
      paid you considerably less than the face of the policy.
  INSURANCE AGENT:  O dear, no--we could not afford to do that.
      We must fix the premium so that you will have paid more.
  HOUSE OWNER:  How, then, can _I_ afford _that_?
  INSURANCE AGENT:  Why, your house may burn down at any time.
      There was Smith's house, for example, which--
  HOUSE OWNER:  Spare me--there were Brown's house, on the
      contrary, and Jones's house, and Robinson's house, which--
  INSURANCE AGENT:  Spare _me_!
  HOUSE OWNER:  Let us understand each other.  You want me to pay
      you money on the supposition that something will occur
      previously to the time set by yourself for its occurrence.  In
      other words, you expect me to bet that my house will not last
      so long as you say that it will probably last.
  INSURANCE AGENT:  But if your house burns without insurance it
      will be a total loss.
  HOUSE OWNER:  Beg your pardon--by your own actuary's tables I
      shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I
      would otherwise have paid to you--amounting to more than the
      face of the policy they would have bought.  But suppose it to
      burn, uninsured, before the time upon which your figures are
      based.  If I could not afford that, how could you if it were
      insured?
  INSURANCE AGENT:  O, we should make ourselves whole from our
      luckier ventures with other clients.  Virtually, they pay your
      loss.
  HOUSE OWNER:  And virtually, then, don't I help to pay their
      losses?  Are not their houses as likely as mine to burn before
      they have paid you as much as you must pay them?  The case
      stands this way:  you expect to take more money from your
      clients than you pay to them, do you not?
  INSURANCE AGENT:  Certainly; if we did not--
  HOUSE OWNER:  I would not trust you with my money.  Very well
      then.  If it is _certain_, with reference to the whole body of
      your clients, that they lose money on you it is _probable_,
      with reference to any one of them, that _he_ will.  It is
      these individual probabilities that make the aggregate
      certainty.
  INSURANCE AGENT:  I will not deny it--but look at the figures in
      this pamph--
  HOUSE OWNER:  Heaven forbid!
  INSURANCE AGENT:  You spoke of saving the premiums which you would
      otherwise pay to me.  Will you not be more likely to squander
      them?  We offer you an incentive to thrift.
  HOUSE OWNER:  The willingness of A to take care of B's money is
      not peculiar to insurance, but as a charitable institution you
      command esteem.  Deign to accept its expression from a
      Deserving Object.
 %
 INSURRECTION, n.  An unsuccessful revolution.  Disaffection's failure
 to substitute misrule for bad government.
 %
 INTENTION, n.  The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of
 influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence,
 immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
 %
 INTERPRETER, n.  One who enables two persons of different languages to
 understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
 the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
 %
 INTERREGNUM, n.  The period during which a monarchical country is
 governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne.  The experiment
 of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most
 unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to make it warm
 again.
 %
 INTIMACY, n.  A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for
 their mutual destruction.

  Two Seidlitz powders, one in blue
  And one in white, together drew
  And having each a pleasant sense
  Of t'other powder's excellence,
  Forsook their jackets for the snug
  Enjoyment of a common mug.
  So close their intimacy grew
  One paper would have held the two.
  To confidences straight they fell,
  Less anxious each to hear than tell;
  Then each remorsefully confessed
  To all the virtues he possessed,
  Acknowledging he had them in
  So high degree it was a sin.
  The more they said, the more they felt
  Their spirits with emotion melt,
  Till tears of sentiment expressed
  Their feelings.  Then they effervesced!
  So Nature executes her feats
  Of wrath on friends and sympathetes
  The good old rule who won't apply,
  That you are you and I am I.
 %
 INTRODUCTION, n.  A social ceremony invented by the devil for the
 gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies.  The
 introduction attains its most malevolent development in this country,
 being, indeed, closely related to our political system.  Every
 American being the equal of every other American, it follows that
 everybody has the right to know everybody else, which implies the
 right to introduce without request or permission.  The Declaration of
 Independence should have read thus:

      "We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all men are
  created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
  inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right to
  make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an
  incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly the
  liberty to introduce persons to one another without first
  ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies; and
  the pursuit of another's happiness with a running pack of
  strangers."
 %
 INVENTOR, n.  A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels,
 levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
 %
 IRRELIGION, n.  The principal one of the great faiths of the world.
 %
 ITCH, n.  The patriotism of a Scotchman.
 %
 J is a consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel--
 than which nothing could be more absurd.  Its original form, which has
 been but slightly modified, was that of the tail of a subdued dog, and
 it was not a letter but a character, standing for a Latin verb,
 _jacere_, "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the
 dog's tail assumes that shape.  This is the origin of the letter, as
 expounded by the renowned Dr. Jocolpus Bumer, of the University of
 Belgrade, who established his conclusions on the subject in a work of
 three quarto volumes and committed suicide on being reminded that the
 %
 j in the Roman alphabet had originally no curl.
 %
 JEALOUS, adj.  Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which
 can be lost only if not worth keeping.
 %
 JESTER, n.  An officer formerly attached to a king's household, whose
 business it was to amuse the court by ludicrous actions and
 utterances, the absurdity being attested by his motley costume.  The
 king himself being attired with dignity, it took the world some
 centuries to discover that his own conduct and decrees were
 sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of
 all mankind.  The jester was commonly called a fool, but the poets and
 romancers have ever delighted to represent him as a singularly wise
 and witty person.  In the circus of to-day the melancholy ghost of the
 court fool effects the dejection of humbler audiences with the same
 jests wherewith in life he gloomed the marble hall, panged the
 patrician sense of humor and tapped the tank of royal tears.

  The widow-queen of Portugal
      Had an audacious jester
  Who entered the confessional
      Disguised, and there confessed her.

  "Father," she said, "thine ear bend down--
      My sins are more than scarlet:
  I love my fool--blaspheming clown,
      And common, base-born varlet."

  "Daughter," the mimic priest replied,
      "That sin, indeed, is awful:
  The church's pardon is denied
      To love that is unlawful.
  "But since thy stubborn heart will be
      For him forever pleading,
  Thou'dst better make him, by decree,
      A man of birth and breeding."

  She made the fool a duke, in hope
      With Heaven's taboo to palter;
  Then told a priest, who told the Pope,
      Who damned her from the altar!

 Barel Dort
 %
 JEWS-HARP, n.  An unmusical instrument, played by holding it fast with
 the teeth and trying to brush it away with the finger.
 %
 JOSS-STICKS, n.  Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan
 tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.
 %
 JUSTICE, n.  A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition
 the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes
 and personal service.
 %
 K is a consonant that we get from the Greeks, but it can be traced
 away back beyond them to the Cerathians, a small commercial nation
 inhabiting the peninsula of Smero.  In their tongue it was called
 _Klatch_, which means "destroyed."  The form of the letter was
 originally precisely that of our H, but the erudite Dr. Snedeker
 explains that it was altered to its present shape to commemorate the
 destruction of the great temple of Jarute by an earthquake, _circa_
 730 B.C.  This building was famous for the two lofty columns of its
 portico, one of which was broken in half by the catastrophe, the other
 remaining intact.  As the earlier form of the letter is supposed to
 have been suggested by these pillars, so, it is thought by the great
 antiquary, its later was adopted as a simple and natural--not to say
 touching--means of keeping the calamity ever in the national memory.
 It is not known if the name of the letter was altered as an additional
 mnemonic, or if the name was always _Klatch_ and the destruction one
 of nature's puns.  As each theory seems probable enough, I see no
 objection to believing both--and Dr. Snedeker arrayed himself on
 that side of the question.
 %
 KEEP, v.t.

  He willed away his whole estate,
      And then in death he fell asleep,
  Murmuring:  "Well, at any rate,
      My name unblemished I shall keep."
  But when upon the tomb 'twas wrought
  Whose was it?--for the dead keep naught.

 Durang Gophel Arn
 %
 KILL, v.t.  To create a vacancy without nominating a successor.
 %
 KILT, n.  A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and
 Americans in Scotland.
 %
 KINDNESS, n.  A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.
 %
 KING, n.  A male person commonly known in America as a "crowned head,"
 although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of.

  A king, in times long, long gone by,
      Said to his lazy jester:
  "If I were you and you were I
  My moments merrily would fly--
      Nor care nor grief to pester."

  "The reason, Sire, that you would thrive,"
      The fool said--"if you'll hear it--
  Is that of all the fools alive
  Who own you for their sovereign, I've
      The most forgiving spirit."

 Oogum Bem
 %
 KING'S EVIL, n.  A malady that was formerly cured by the touch of the
 sovereign, but has now to be treated by the physicians.  Thus "the
 most pious Edward" of England used to lay his royal hand upon the
 ailing subjects and make them whole--

                  a crowd of wretched souls
  That stay his cure:  their malady convinces
  The great essay of art; but at his touch,
  Such sanctity hath Heaven given his hand,
  They presently amend,

 as the "Doctor" in _Macbeth_ hath it.  This useful property of the
 royal hand could, it appears, be transmitted along with other crown
 properties; for according to "Malcolm,"

                          'tis spoken
  To the succeeding royalty he leaves
  The healing benediction.

 But the gift somewhere dropped out of the line of succession:  the
 later sovereigns of England have not been tactual healers, and the
 disease once honored with the name "king's evil" now bears the humbler
 one of "scrofula," from _scrofa_, a sow.  The date and author of the
 following epigram are known only to the author of this dictionary, but
 it is old enough to show that the jest about Scotland's national
 disorder is not a thing of yesterday.

  Ye Kynge his evill in me laye,
  Wh. he of Scottlande charmed awaye.
  He layde his hand on mine and sayd:
  "Be gone!"  Ye ill no longer stayd.
  But O ye wofull plyght in wh.
  I'm now y-pight:  I have ye itche!

 The superstition that maladies can be cured by royal taction is
 dead, but like many a departed conviction it has left a monument of
 custom to keep its memory green.  The practice of forming a line and
 shaking the President's hand had no other origin, and when that great
 dignitary bestows his healing salutation on

                      strangely visited people,
  All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
  The mere despair of surgery,

 he and his patients are handing along an extinguished torch which once
 was kindled at the altar-fire of a faith long held by all classes of
 men.  It is a beautiful and edifying "survival"--one which brings
 the sainted past close home in our "business and bosoms."
 %
 KISS, n.  A word invented by the poets as a rhyme for "bliss."  It is
 supposed to signify, in a general way, some kind of rite or ceremony
 appertaining to a good understanding; but the manner of its
 performance is unknown to this lexicographer.
 %
 KLEPTOMANIAC, n.  A rich thief.
 %
 KNIGHT, n.

  Once a warrior gentle of birth,
  Then a person of civic worth,
  Now a fellow to move our mirth.
  Warrior, person, and fellow--no more:
  We must knight our dogs to get any lower.
  Brave Knights Kennelers then shall be,
  Noble Knights of the Golden Flea,
  Knights of the Order of St. Steboy,
  Knights of St. Gorge and Sir Knights Jawy.
  God speed the day when this knighting fad
  Shall go to the dogs and the dogs go mad.
 %
 KORAN, n.  A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been
 written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a
 wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.
 %
 LABOR, n.  One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
 %
 LAND, n.  A part of the earth's surface, considered as property.  The
 theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control
 is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the
 superstructure.  Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some
 have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own
 implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass
 are enacted wherever property in land is recognized.  It follows that
 if the whole area of _terra firma_ is owned by A, B and C, there will
 be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to
 exist.

  A life on the ocean wave,
      A home on the rolling deep,
  For the spark that nature gave
      I have there the right to keep.

  They give me the cat-o'-nine
      Whenever I go ashore.
  Then ho! for the flashing brine--
      I'm a natural commodore!

 Dodle
 %
 LANGUAGE, n.  The music with which we charm the serpents guarding
 another's treasure.
 %
 LAOCOON, n.  A famous piece of antique scripture representing a priest
 of that name and his two sons in the folds of two enormous serpents.
 The skill and diligence with which the old man and lads support the
 serpents and keep them up to their work have been justly regarded as
 one of the noblest artistic illustrations of the mastery of human
 intelligence over brute inertia.
 %
 LAP, n.  One of the most important organs of the female system--an
 admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly
 useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and
 heads of adult males.  The male of our species has a rudimentary lap,
 imperfectly developed and in no way contributing to the animal's
 substantial welfare.
 %
 LAST, n.  A shoemaker's implement, named by a frowning Providence as
 opportunity to the maker of puns.

  Ah, punster, would my lot were cast,
      Where the cobbler is unknown,
  So that I might forget his last
      And hear your own.

 Gargo Repsky
 %
 LAUGHTER, n.  An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the
 features and accompanied by inarticulate noises.  It is infectious
 and, though intermittent, incurable.  Liability to attacks of laughter
 is one of the characteristics distinguishing man from the animals--
 these being not only inaccessible to the provocation of his example,
 but impregnable to the microbes having original jurisdiction in
 bestowal of the disease.  Whether laughter could be imparted to
 animals by inoculation from the human patient is a question that has
 not been answered by experimentation.  Dr. Meir Witchell holds that
 the infectious character of laughter is due to the instantaneous
 fermentation of _sputa_ diffused in a spray.  From this peculiarity he
 names the disorder _Convulsio spargens_.
 %
 LAUREATE, adj.  Crowned with leaves of the laurel.  In England the
 Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's court, acting as
 dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal
 funeral.  Of all incumbents of that high office, Robert Southey had
 the most notable knack at drugging the Samson of public joy and
 cutting his hair to the quick; and he had an artistic color-sense
 which enabled him so to blacken a public grief as to give it the
 aspect of a national crime.
 %
 LAUREL, n.  The _laurus_, a vegetable dedicated to Apollo, and
 formerly defoliated to wreathe the brows of victors and such poets as
 had influence at court.  (_Vide supra._)
 %
 LAW, n.

  Once Law was sitting on the bench,
      And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
  "Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
      Nor come before me creeping.
  Upon your knees if you appear,
  'Tis plain your have no standing here."

  Then Justice came.  His Honor cried:
      "_Your_ status?--devil seize you!"
  "_Amica curiae,_" she replied--
      "Friend of the court, so please you."
  "Begone!" he shouted--"there's the door--
  I never saw your face before!"

 G.J.
 %
 LAWFUL, adj.  Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.
 %
 LAWYER, n.  One skilled in circumvention of the law.
 %
 LAZINESS, n.  Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
 %
 LEAD, n.  A heavy blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to
 light lovers--particularly to those who love not wisely but other
 men's wives.  Lead is also of great service as a counterpoise to an
 argument of such weight that it turns the scale of debate the wrong
 way.  An interesting fact in the chemistry of international
 controversy is that at the point of contact of two patriotisms lead is
 precipitated in great quantities.

  Hail, holy Lead!--of human feuds the great
      And universal arbiter; endowed
      With penetration to pierce any cloud
  Fogging the field of controversial hate,
  And with a swift, inevitable, straight,
      Searching precision find the unavowed
      But vital point.  Thy judgment, when allowed
  By the chirurgeon, settles the debate.
  O useful metal!--were it not for thee
      We'd grapple one another's ears alway:
  But when we hear thee buzzing like a bee
      We, like old Muhlenberg, "care not to stay."
  And when the quick have run away like pellets
  Jack Satan smelts the dead to make new bullets.
 %
 LEARNING, n.  The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
 %
 LECTURER, n.  One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear
 and his faith in your patience.
 %
 LEGACY, n.  A gift from one who is legging it out of this vale of
 tears.
 %
 LEONINE, adj.  Unlike a menagerie lion.  Leonine verses are those in
 which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end, as
 in this famous passage from Bella Peeler Silcox:

  The electric light invades the dunnest deep of Hades.
  Cries Pluto, 'twixt his snores:  "O tempora! O mores!"

 It should be explained that Mrs. Silcox does not undertake to
 teach pronunciation of the Greek and Latin tongues.  Leonine verses
 are so called in honor of a poet named Leo, whom prosodists appear to
 find a pleasure in believing to have been the first to discover that a
 rhyming couplet could be run into a single line.
 %
 LETTUCE, n.  An herb of the genus _Lactuca_, "Wherewith," says that
 pious gastronome, Hengist Pelly, "God has been pleased to reward the
 good and punish the wicked.  For by his inner light the righteous man
 has discerned a manner of compounding for it a dressing to the
 appetency whereof a multitude of gustible condiments conspire, being
 reconciled and ameliorated with profusion of oil, the entire
 comestible making glad the heart of the godly and causing his face to
 shine.  But the person of spiritual unworth is successfully tempted to
 the Adversary to eat of lettuce with destitution of oil, mustard, egg,
 salt and garlic, and with a rascal bath of vinegar polluted with
 sugar.  Wherefore the person of spiritual unworth suffers an
 intestinal pang of strange complexity and raises the song."
 %
 LEVIATHAN, n.  An enormous aquatic animal mentioned by Job.  Some
 suppose it to have been the whale, but that distinguished
 ichthyologer, Dr. Jordan, of Stanford University, maintains with
 considerable heat that it was a species of gigantic Tadpole (_Thaddeus
 Polandensis_) or Polliwig--_Maria pseudo-hirsuta_.  For an
 exhaustive description and history of the Tadpole consult the famous
 monograph of Jane Potter, _Thaddeus of Warsaw_.
 %
 LEXICOGRAPHER, n.  A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of
 recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does
 what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and
 mechanize its methods.  For your lexicographer, having written his
 dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas
 his function is only to make a record, not to give a law.  The natural
 servility of the human understanding having invested him with judicial
 power, surrenders its right of reason and submits itself to a
 chronicle as if it were a statute.  Let the dictionary (for example)
 mark a good word as "obsolete" or "obsolescent" and few men
 thereafter venture to use it, whatever their need of it and however
 desirable its restoration to favor--whereby the process of
 impoverishment is accelerated and speech decays.
 On the contrary, the bold and discerning writer who,
 recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow
 at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense, has
 no following and is tartly reminded that "it isn't in the dictionary"
 --although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven
 forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that _was_ in the
 dictionary.  In the golden prime and high noon of English speech; when
 from the lips of the great Elizabethans fell words that made their own
 meaning and carried it in their very sound; when a Shakespeare and a
 Bacon were possible, and the language now rapidly perishing at one end
 and slowly renewed at the other was in vigorous growth and hardy
 preservation--sweeter than honey and stronger than a lion--the
 lexicographer was a person unknown, the dictionary a creation which
 his Creator had not created him to create.

  God said:  "Let Spirit perish into Form,"
  And lexicographers arose, a swarm!
  Thought fled and left her clothing, which they took,
  And catalogued each garment in a book.
  Now, from her leafy covert when she cries:
  "Give me my clothes and I'll return," they rise
  And scan the list, and say without compassion:
  "Excuse us--they are mostly out of fashion."

 Sigismund Smith
 %
 LIAR, n.  A lawyer with a roving commission.
 %
 LIBERTY, n.  One of Imagination's most precious possessions.

  The rising People, hot and out of breath,
  Roared around the palace:  "Liberty or death!"
  "If death will do," the King said, "let me reign;
  You'll have, I'm sure, no reason to complain."

 Martha Braymance
 %
 LICKSPITTLE, n.  A useful functionary, not infrequently found editing
 a newspaper.  In his character of editor he is closely allied to the
 blackmailer by the tie of occasional identity; for in truth the
 lickspittle is only the blackmailer under another aspect, although the
 latter is frequently found as an independent species.  Lickspittling
 is more detestable than blackmailing, precisely as the business of a
 confidence man is more detestable than that of a highway robber; and
 the parallel maintains itself throughout, for whereas few robbers will
 cheat, every sneak will plunder if he dare.
 %
 LIFE, n.  A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.  We live
 in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed.
 The question, "Is life worth living?" has been much discussed;
 particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written
 at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of
 the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of
 successful controversy.

  "Life's not worth living, and that's the truth,"
  Carelessly caroled the golden youth.
  In manhood still he maintained that view
  And held it more strongly the older he grew.
  When kicked by a jackass at eighty-three,
  "Go fetch me a surgeon at once!" cried he.

 Han Soper
 %
 LIGHTHOUSE, n.  A tall building on the seashore in which the
 government maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.
 %
 LIMB, n.  The branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.

  'Twas a pair of boots that the lady bought,
      And the salesman laced them tight
      To a very remarkable height--
  Higher, indeed, than I think he ought--
      Higher than _can_ be right.
  For the Bible declares--but never mind:
      It is hardly fit
  To censure freely and fault to find
  With others for sins that I'm not inclined
      Myself to commit.
  Each has his weakness, and though my own
      Is freedom from every sin,
      It still were unfair to pitch in,
  Discharging the first censorious stone.
  Besides, the truth compels me to say,
  The boots in question were _made_ that way.
  As he drew the lace she made a grimace,
      And blushingly said to him:
  "This boot, I'm sure, is too high to endure,
  It hurts my--hurts my--limb."
  The salesman smiled in a manner mild,
  Like an artless, undesigning child;
  Then, checking himself, to his face he gave
  A look as sorrowful as the grave,
      Though he didn't care two figs
  For her pains and throes,
  As he stroked her toes,
  Remarking with speech and manner just
  Befitting his calling:  "Madam, I trust
      That it doesn't hurt your twigs."

 B. Percival Dike
 %
 LINEN, n.  "A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp,
 entails a great waste of hemp."--Calcraft the Hangman.
 %
 LITIGANT, n.  A person about to give up his skin for the hope of
 retaining his bones.
 %
 LITIGATION, n.  A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of
 as a sausage.
 %
 LIVER, n.  A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be
 bilious with.  The sentiments and emotions which every literary
 anatomist now knows to haunt the heart were anciently believed to
 infest the liver; and even Gascoygne, speaking of the emotional side
 of human nature, calls it "our hepaticall parte."  It was at one time
 considered the seat of life; hence its name--liver, the thing we
 live with.  The liver is heaven's best gift to the goose; without it
 that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg _pate_.
 %
 LL.D.  Letters indicating the degree _Legumptionorum Doctor_, one
 learned in laws, gifted with legal gumption.  Some suspicion is cast
 upon this derivation by the fact that the title was formerly _LL.d._,
 and conferred only upon gentlemen distinguished for their wealth.  At
 the date of this writing Columbia University is considering the
 expediency of making another degree for clergymen, in place of the old
 D.D.--_Damnator Diaboli_.  The new honor will be known as _Sanctorum
 Custus_, and written _$$c_.  The name of the Rev. John Satan has been
 suggested as a suitable recipient by a lover of consistency, who
 points out that Professor Harry Thurston Peck has long enjoyed the
 advantage of a degree.
 %
 LOCK-AND-KEY, n.  The distinguishing device of civilization and
 enlightenment.
 %
 LODGER, n.  A less popular name for the Second Person of that
 delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.
 %
 LOGIC, n.  The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with
 the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.  The
 basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor
 premise and a conclusion--thus:

 _Major Premise_:  Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as
 quickly as one man.

 _Minor Premise_:  One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds;
 therefore--

 _Conclusion_:  Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

 This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by
 combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are
 twice blessed.
 %
 LOGOMACHY, n.  A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds
 punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem--a kind of contest in
 which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is
 denied the reward of success.

  'Tis said by divers of the scholar-men
  That poor Salmasius died of Milton's pen.
  Alas! we cannot know if this is true,
  For reading Milton's wit we perish too.
 %
 LONGANIMITY, n.  The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance
 while maturing a plan of revenge.
 %
 LONGEVITY, n.  Uncommon extension of the fear of death.
 %
 LOOKING-GLASS, n.  A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting
 show for man's disillusion given.

 The King of Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso
 looked saw, not his own image, but only that of the king.  A certain
 courtier who had long enjoyed the king's favor and was thereby
 enriched beyond any other subject of the realm, said to the king:
 "Give me, I pray, thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of
 thine august presence I may yet do homage before thy visible shadow,
 prostrating myself night and morning in the glory of thy benign
 countenance, as which nothing has so divine splendor, O Noonday Sun of
 the Universe!"

 Please with the speech, the king commanded that the mirror be
 conveyed to the courtier's palace; but after, having gone thither
 without apprisal, he found it in an apartment where was naught but
 idle lumber.  And the mirror was dimmed with dust and overlaced with
 cobwebs.  This so angered him that he fisted it hard, shattering the
 glass, and was sorely hurt.  Enraged all the more by this mischance,
 he commanded that the ungrateful courtier be thrown into prison, and
 that the glass be repaired and taken back to his own palace; and this
 was done.  But when the king looked again on the mirror he saw not his
 image as before, but only the figure of a crowned ass, having a bloody
 bandage on one of its hinder hooves--as the artificers and all who
 had looked upon it had before discerned but feared to report.  Taught
 wisdom and charity, the king restored his courtier to liberty, had the
 mirror set into the back of the throne and reigned many years with
 justice and humility; and one day when he fell asleep in death while
 on the throne, the whole court saw in the mirror the luminous figure
 of an angel, which remains to this day.
 %
 LOQUACITY, n.  A disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb
 his tongue when you wish to talk.
 %
 LORD, n.  In American society, an English tourist above the state of a
 costermonger, as, lord 'Aberdasher, Lord Hartisan and so forth.  The
 traveling Briton of lesser degree is addressed as "Sir," as, Sir 'Arry
 Donkiboi, or 'Amstead 'Eath.  The word "Lord" is sometimes used, also,
 as a title of the Supreme Being; but this is thought to be rather
 flattery than true reverence.

  Miss Sallie Ann Splurge, of her own accord,
  Wedded a wandering English lord--
  Wedded and took him to dwell with her "paw,"
  A parent who throve by the practice of Draw.
  Lord Cadde I don't hesitate to declare
  Unworthy the father-in-legal care
  Of that elderly sport, notwithstanding the truth
  That Cadde had renounced all the follies of youth;
  For, sad to relate, he'd arrived at the stage
  Of existence that's marked by the vices of age.
  Among them, cupidity caused him to urge
  Repeated demands on the pocket of Splurge,
  Till, wrecked in his fortune, that gentleman saw
  Inadequate aid in the practice of Draw,
  And took, as a means of augmenting his pelf,
  To the business of being a lord himself.
  His neat-fitting garments he wilfully shed
  And sacked himself strangely in checks instead;
  Denuded his chin, but retained at each ear
  A whisker that looked like a blasted career.
  He painted his neck an incarnadine hue
  Each morning and varnished it all that he knew.
  The moony monocular set in his eye
  Appeared to be scanning the Sweet Bye-and-Bye.
  His head was enroofed with a billycock hat,
  And his low-necked shoes were aduncous and flat.
  In speech he eschewed his American ways,
  Denying his nose to the use of his A's
  And dulling their edge till the delicate sense
  Of a babe at their temper could take no offence.
  His H's--'twas most inexpressibly sweet,
  The patter they made as they fell at his feet!
  Re-outfitted thus, Mr. Splurge without fear
  Began as Lord Splurge his recouping career.
  Alas, the Divinity shaping his end
  Entertained other views and decided to send
  His lordship in horror, despair and dismay
  From the land of the nobleman's natural prey.
  For, smit with his Old World ways, Lady Cadde
  Fell--suffering Caesar!--in love with her dad!

 G.J.
 %
 LORE, n.  Learning--particularly that sort which is not derived from
 a regular course of instruction but comes of the reading of occult
 books, or by nature.  This latter is commonly designated as folk-lore
 and embraces popularly myths and superstitions.  In Baring-Gould's
 _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_ the reader will find many of these
 traced backward, through various people on converging lines, toward a
 common origin in remote antiquity.  Among these are the fables of
 "Teddy the Giant Killer," "The Sleeping John Sharp Williams," "Little
 Red Riding Hood and the Sugar Trust," "Beauty and the Brisbane," "The
 Seven Aldermen of Ephesus," "Rip Van Fairbanks," and so forth.  The
 fable which Goethe so affectingly relates under the title of "The
 Erl-King" was known two thousand years ago in Greece as "The Demos and
 the Infant Industry."  One of the most general and ancient of these
 myths is that Arabian tale of "Ali Baba and the Forty Rockefellers."
 %
 LOSS, n.  Privation of that which we had, or had not.  Thus, in the
 latter sense, it is said of a defeated candidate that he "lost his
 election"; and of that eminent man, the poet Gilder, that he has "lost
 his mind."  It is in the former and more legitimate sense, that the
 word is used in the famous epitaph:

  Here Huntington's ashes long have lain
  Whose loss is our eternal gain,
  For while he exercised all his powers
  Whatever he gained, the loss was ours.
 %
 LOVE, n.  A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of
 the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.
 This disease, like _caries_ and many other ailments, is prevalent only
 among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous
 nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from
 its ravages.  It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the
 physician than to the patient.
 %
 LOW-BRED, adj.  "Raised" instead of brought up.
 %
 LUMINARY, n.  One who throws light upon a subject; as an editor by not
 writing about it.
 %
 LUNARIAN, n.  An inhabitant of the moon, as distinguished from
 Lunatic, one whom the moon inhabits.  The Lunarians have been
 described by Lucian, Locke and other observers, but without much
 agreement.  For example, Bragellos avers their anatomical identity
 with Man, but Professor Newcomb says they are more like the hill
 tribes of Vermont.
 %
 LYRE, n.  An ancient instrument of torture.  The word is now used in a
 figurative sense to denote the poetic faculty, as in the following
 fiery lines of our great poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

  I sit astride Parnassus with my lyre,
  And pick with care the disobedient wire.
  That stupid shepherd lolling on his crook
  With deaf attention scarcely deigns to look.
  I bide my time, and it shall come at length,
  When, with a Titan's energy and strength,
  I'll grab a fistful of the strings, and O,
  The word shall suffer when I let them go!

 Farquharson Harris
 %
 MACE, n.  A staff of office signifying authority.  Its form, that of a
 heavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading from
 dissent.
 %
 MACHINATION, n.  The method employed by one's opponents in baffling
 one's open and honorable efforts to do the right thing.

  So plain the advantages of machination
  It constitutes a moral obligation,
  And honest wolves who think upon't with loathing
  Feel bound to don the sheep's deceptive clothing.
  So prospers still the diplomatic art,
  And Satan bows, with hand upon his heart.

 R.S.K.
 %
 MACROBIAN, n.  One forgotten of the gods and living to a great age.
 History is abundantly supplied with examples, from Methuselah to Old
 Parr, but some notable instances of longevity are less well known.  A
 Calabrian peasant named Coloni, born in 1753, lived so long that he
 had what he considered a glimpse of the dawn of universal peace.
 Scanavius relates that he knew an archbishop who was so old that he
 could remember a time when he did not deserve hanging.  In 1566 a
 linen draper of Bristol, England, declared that he had lived five
 hundred years, and that in all that time he had never told a lie.
 There are instances of longevity (_macrobiosis_) in our own country.
 Senator Chauncey Depew is old enough to know better.  The editor of
 _The American_, a newspaper in New York City, has a memory that goes
 back to the time when he was a rascal, but not to the fact.  The
 President of the United States was born so long ago that many of the
 friends of his youth have risen to high political and military
 preferment without the assistance of personal merit.  The verses
 following were written by a macrobian:

  When I was young the world was fair
      And amiable and sunny.
  A brightness was in all the air,
      In all the waters, honey.
      The jokes were fine and funny,
  The statesmen honest in their views,
      And in their lives, as well,
  And when you heard a bit of news
      'Twas true enough to tell.
  Men were not ranting, shouting, reeking,
  Nor women "generally speaking."

  The Summer then was long indeed:
      It lasted one whole season!
  The sparkling Winter gave no heed
      When ordered by Unreason
      To bring the early peas on.
  Now, where the dickens is the sense
      In calling that a year
  Which does no more than just commence
      Before the end is near?
  When I was young the year extended
  From month to month until it ended.
  I know not why the world has changed
      To something dark and dreary,
  And everything is now arranged
      To make a fellow weary.
      The Weather Man--I fear he
  Has much to do with it, for, sure,
      The air is not the same:
  It chokes you when it is impure,
      When pure it makes you lame.
  With windows closed you are asthmatic;
  Open, neuralgic or sciatic.

  Well, I suppose this new regime
      Of dun degeneration
  Seems eviler than it would seem
      To a better observation,
      And has for compensation
  Some blessings in a deep disguise
      Which mortal sight has failed
  To pierce, although to angels' eyes
      They're visible unveiled.
  If Age is such a boon, good land!
  He's costumed by a master hand!

 Venable Strigg
 %
 MAD, adj.  Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence;
 not conforming to standards of thought, speech and action derived by
 the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority;
 in short, unusual.  It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad
 by officials destitute of evidence that themselves are sane.  For
 illustration, this present (and illustrious) lexicographer is no
 firmer in the faith of his own sanity than is any inmate of any
 madhouse in the land; yet for aught he knows to the contrary, instead
 of the lofty occupation that seems to him to be engaging his powers he
 may really be beating his hands against the window bars of an asylum
 and declaring himself Noah Webster, to the innocent delight of many
 thoughtless spectators.
 %
 MAGDALENE, n.  An inhabitant of Magdala.  Popularly, a woman found
 out.  This definition of the word has the authority of ignorance, Mary
 of Magdala being another person than the penitent woman mentioned by
 St. Luke.  It has also the official sanction of the governments of
 Great Britain and the United States.  In England the word is
 pronounced Maudlin, whence maudlin, adjective, unpleasantly
 sentimental.  With their Maudlin for Magdalene, and their Bedlam for
 Bethlehem, the English may justly boast themselves the greatest of
 revisers.
 %
 MAGIC, n.  An art of converting superstition into coin.  There are
 other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet
 lexicographer does not name them.
 %
 MAGNET, n.  Something acted upon by magnetism.
 %
 MAGNETISM, n.  Something acting upon a magnet.

 The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the
 works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the
 subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of
 human knowledge.
 %
 MAGNIFICENT, adj.  Having a grandeur or splendor superior to that to
 which the spectator is accustomed, as the ears of an ass, to a rabbit,
 or the glory of a glowworm, to a maggot.
 %
 MAGNITUDE, n.  Size.  Magnitude being purely relative, nothing is
 large and nothing small.  If everything in the universe were increased
 in bulk one thousand diameters nothing would be any larger than it was
 before, but if one thing remain unchanged all the others would be
 larger than they had been.  To an understanding familiar with the
 relativity of magnitude and distance the spaces and masses of the
 astronomer would be no more impressive than those of the microscopist.
 For anything we know to the contrary, the visible universe may be a
 small part of an atom, with its component ions, floating in the
 life-fluid (luminiferous ether) of some animal.  Possibly the wee
 creatures peopling the corpuscles of our own blood are overcome with the
 proper emotion when contemplating the unthinkable distance from one of
 these to another.
 %
 MAGPIE, n.  A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone
 that it might be taught to talk.
 %
 MAIDEN, n.  A young person of the unfair sex addicted to clewless
 conduct and views that madden to crime.  The genus has a wide
 geographical distribution, being found wherever sought and deplored
 wherever found.  The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye,
 nor (without her piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, though
 in respect to comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, with
 regard to the part of her that is audible, bleaten out of the field
 by the canary--which, also, is more portable.

  A lovelorn maiden she sat and sang--
      This quaint, sweet song sang she;
  "It's O for a youth with a football bang
      And a muscle fair to see!
              The Captain he
              Of a team to be!
  On the gridiron he shall shine,
  A monarch by right divine,
      And never to roast on it--me!"

 Opoline Jones
 %
 MAJESTY, n.  The state and title of a king.  Regarded with a just
 contempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, Great
 Incohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable orders
 of republican America.
 %
 MALE, n.  A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex.  The male
 of the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man.  The
 genus has two varieties:  good providers and bad providers.
 %
 MALEFACTOR, n.  The chief factor in the progress of the human race.
 %
 MALTHUSIAN, adj.  Pertaining to Malthus and his doctrines.  Malthus
 believed in artificially limiting population, but found that it could
 not be done by talking.  One of the most practical exponents of the
 Malthusian idea was Herod of Judea, though all the famous soldiers
 have been of the same way of thinking.
 %
 MAMMALIA, n.pl.  A family of vertebrate animals whose females in a
 state of nature suckle their young, but when civilized and enlightened
 put them out to nurse, or use the bottle.
 %
 MAMMON, n.  The god of the world's leading religion.  The chief temple
 is in the holy city of New York.

  He swore that all other religions were gammon,
  And wore out his knees in the worship of Mammon.

 Jared Oopf
 %
 MAN, n.  An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he
 thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.  His
 chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own
 species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to
 infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.

  When the world was young and Man was new,
      And everything was pleasant,
  Distinctions Nature never drew
      'Mongst kings and priest and peasant.
      We're not that way at present,
  Save here in this Republic, where
      We have that old regime,
  For all are kings, however bare
      Their backs, howe'er extreme
  Their hunger.  And, indeed, each has a voice
  To accept the tyrant of his party's choice.

  A citizen who would not vote,
      And, therefore, was detested,
  Was one day with a tarry coat
      (With feathers backed and breasted)
      By patriots invested.
  "It is your duty," cried the crowd,
      "Your ballot true to cast
  For the man o' your choice."  He humbly bowed,
      And explained his wicked past:
  "That's what I very gladly would have done,
  Dear patriots, but he has never run."

 Apperton Duke
 %
 MANES, n.  The immortal parts of dead Greeks and Romans.  They were in
 a state of dull discomfort until the bodies from which they had
 exhaled were buried and burned; and they seem not to have been
 particularly happy afterward.
 %
 MANICHEISM, n.  The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare
 between Good and Evil.  When Good gave up the fight the Persians
 joined the victorious Opposition.
 %
 MANNA, n.  A food miraculously given to the Israelites in the
 wilderness.  When it was no longer supplied to them they settled
 down and tilled the soil, fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodies
 of the original occupants.
 %
 MARRIAGE, n.  The state or condition of a community consisting of a
 master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
 %
 MARTYR, n.  One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a
 desired death.
 %
 MATERIAL, adj.  Having an actual existence, as distinguished from an
 imaginary one.  Important.

  Material things I know, or feel, or see;
  All else is immaterial to me.

 Jamrach Holobom
 %
 MAUSOLEUM, n.  The final and funniest folly of the rich.
 %
 MAYONNAISE, n.  One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a
 state religion.
 %
 ME, pro.  The objectionable case of I.  The personal pronoun in
 English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the
 oppressive.  Each is all three.
 %
 MEANDER, n.  To proceed sinuously and aimlessly.  The word is the
 ancient name of a river about one hundred and fifty miles south of
 Troy, which turned and twisted in the effort to get out of hearing
 when the Greeks and Trojans boasted of their prowess.
 %
 MEDAL, n.  A small metal disk given as a reward for virtues,
 attainments or services more or less authentic.

 It is related of Bismark, who had been awarded a medal for
 gallantly rescuing a drowning person, that, being asked the meaning of
 the medal, he replied:  "I save lives sometimes."  And sometimes he
 didn't.
 %
 MEDICINE, n.  A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway.
 %
 MEEKNESS, n.  Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth
 while.

  M is for Moses,
      Who slew the Egyptian.
  As sweet as a rose is
  The meekness of Moses.
  No monument shows his
      Post-mortem inscription,
  But M is for Moses
      Who slew the Egyptian.

 _The Biographical Alphabet_
 %
 MEERSCHAUM, n.  (Literally, seafoam, and by many erroneously supposed
 to be made of it.)  A fine white clay, which for convenience in
 coloring it brown is made into tobacco pipes and smoked by the workmen
 engaged in that industry.  The purpose of coloring it has not been
 disclosed by the manufacturers.

  There was a youth (you've heard before,
      This woeful tale, may be),
  Who bought a meerschaum pipe and swore
      That color it would he!

  He shut himself from the world away,
      Nor any soul he saw.
  He smoked by night, he smoked by day,
      As hard as he could draw.

  His dog died moaning in the wrath
      Of winds that blew aloof;
  The weeds were in the gravel path,
      The owl was on the roof.

  "He's gone afar, he'll come no more,"
      The neighbors sadly say.
  And so they batter in the door
      To take his goods away.

  Dead, pipe in mouth, the youngster lay,
      Nut-brown in face and limb.
  "That pipe's a lovely white," they say,
      "But it has colored him!"

  The moral there's small need to sing--
      'Tis plain as day to you:
  Don't play your game on any thing
      That is a gamester too.

 Martin Bulstrode
 %
 MENDACIOUS, adj.  Addicted to rhetoric.
 %
 MERCHANT, n.  One engaged in a commercial pursuit.  A commercial
 pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.
 %
 MERCY, n.  An attribute beloved of detected offenders.
 %
 MESMERISM, n.  Hypnotism before it wore good clothes, kept a carriage
 and asked Incredulity to dinner.
 %
 METROPOLIS, n.  A stronghold of provincialism.
 %
 MILLENNIUM, n.  The period of a thousand years when the lid is to be
 screwed down, with all reformers on the under side.
 %
 MIND, n.  A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain.  Its
 chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature,
 the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing
 but itself to know itself with.  From the Latin _mens_, a fact unknown
 to that honest shoe-seller, who, observing that his learned competitor
 over the way had displayed the motto "_Mens conscia recti_,"
 emblazoned his own front with the words "Men's, women's and children's
 conscia recti."
 %
 MINE, adj.  Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.
 %
 MINISTER, n.  An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility.
 In diplomacy an officer sent into a foreign country as the visible
 embodiment of his sovereign's hostility.  His principal qualification
 is a degree of plausible inveracity next below that of an ambassador.
 %
 MINOR, adj.  Less objectionable.
 %
 MINSTREL, adj.  Formerly a poet, singer or musician; now a nigger with
 a color less than skin deep and a humor more than flesh and blood can
 bear.
 %
 MIRACLE, n.  An act or event out of the order of nature and
 unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with
 four aces and a king.
 %
 MISCREANT, n.  A person of the highest degree of unworth.
 Etymologically, the word means unbeliever, and its present
 signification may be regarded as theology's noblest contribution to
 the development of our language.
 %
 MISDEMEANOR, n.  An infraction of the law having less dignity than a
 felony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal
 society.

  By misdemeanors he essays to climb
  Into the aristocracy of crime.
  O, woe was him!--with manner chill and grand
  "Captains of industry" refused his hand,
  "Kings of finance" denied him recognition
  And "railway magnates" jeered his low condition.
  He robbed a bank to make himself respected.
  They still rebuffed him, for he was detected.

 S.V. Hanipur
 %
 MISERICORDE, n.  A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the
 foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.
 %
 MISFORTUNE, n.  The kind of fortune that never misses.
 %
 MISS, n.  The title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate
 that they are in the market.  Miss, Missis (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are
 the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound
 and sense.  Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master.  In
 the general abolition of social titles in this our country they
 miraculously escaped to plague us.  If we must have them let us be
 consistent and give one to the unmarried man.  I venture to suggest
 Mush, abbreviated to Mh.
 %
 MOLECULE, n.  The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter.  It is
 distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit
 of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate,
 indivisible unit of matter.  Three great scientific theories of the
 structure of the universe are the molecular, the corpuscular and the
 atomic.  A fourth affirms, with Haeckel, the condensation of
 precipitation of matter from ether--whose existence is proved by the
 condensation of precipitation.  The present trend of scientific
 thought is toward the theory of ions.  The ion differs from the
 molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion.  A fifth
 theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more
 about the matter than the others.
 %
 MONAD, n.  The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter.  (See
 _Molecule_.)  According to Leibnitz, as nearly as he seems willing to
 be understood, the monad has body without bulk, and mind without
 manifestation--Leibnitz knows him by the innate power of
 considering.  He has founded upon him a theory of the universe, which
 the creature bears without resentment, for the monad is a gentleman.
 Small as he is, the monad contains all the powers and possibilities
 needful to his evolution into a German philosopher of the first class
 --altogether a very capable little fellow.  He is not to be
 confounded with the microbe, or bacillus; by its inability to discern
 him, a good microscope shows him to be of an entirely distinct
 species.
 %
 MONARCH, n.  A person engaged in reigning.  Formerly the monarch
 ruled, as the derivation of the word attests, and as many subjects
 have had occasion to learn.  In Russia and the Orient the monarch has
 still a considerable influence in public affairs and in the
 disposition of the human head, but in western Europe political
 administration is mostly entrusted to his ministers, he being
 somewhat preoccupied with reflections relating to the status of his
 own head.
 %
 MONARCHICAL GOVERNMENT, n.  Government.
 %
 MONDAY, n.  In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
 %
 MONEY, n.  A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we
 part with it.  An evidence of culture and a passport to polite
 society.  Supportable property.
 %
 MONKEY, n.  An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in
 genealogical trees.
 %
 MONOSYLLABIC, adj.  Composed of words of one syllable, for literary
 babes who never tire of testifying their delight in the vapid compound
 by appropriate googoogling.  The words are commonly Saxon--that is
 to say, words of a barbarous people destitute of ideas and incapable
 of any but the most elementary sentiments and emotions.

  The man who writes in Saxon
  Is the man to use an ax on

 Judibras
 %
 MONSIGNOR, n.  A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder of
 our religion overlooked the advantages.
 %
 MONUMENT, n.  A structure intended to commemorate something which
 either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.

  The bones of Agammemnon are a show,
  And ruined is his royal monument,

 but Agammemnon's fame suffers no diminution in consequence.  The
 monument custom has its _reductiones ad absurdum_ in monuments "to the
 unknown dead"--that is to say, monuments to perpetuate the memory of
 those who have left no memory.
 %
 MORAL, adj.  Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right.
 Having the quality of general expediency.

  It is sayd there be a raunge of mountaynes in the Easte, on
  one syde of the which certayn conducts are immorall, yet on the other
  syde they are holden in good esteeme; wherebye the mountayneer is much
  conveenyenced, for it is given to him to goe downe eyther way and act
  as it shall suite his moode, withouten offence.

  _Gooke's Meditations_
 %
 MORE, adj.  The comparative degree of too much.
 %
 MOUSE, n.  An animal which strews its path with fainting women.  As in
 Rome Christians were thrown to the lions, so centuries earlier in
 Otumwee, the most ancient and famous city of the world, female
 heretics were thrown to the mice.  Jakak-Zotp, the historian, the only
 Otumwump whose writings have descended to us, says that these martyrs
 met their death with little dignity and much exertion.  He even
 attempts to exculpate the mice (such is the malice of bigotry) by
 declaring that the unfortunate women perished, some from exhaustion,
 some of broken necks from falling over their own feet, and some from
 lack of restoratives.  The mice, he avers, enjoyed the pleasures of
 the chase with composure.  But if "Roman history is nine-tenths
 lying," we can hardly expect a smaller proportion of that rhetorical
 figure in the annals of a people capable of so incredible cruelty to
 lovely women; for a hard heart has a false tongue.
 %
 MOUSQUETAIRE, n.  A long glove covering a part of the arm.  Worn in
 New Jersey.  But "mousquetaire" is a might poor way to spell
 muskeeter.
 %
 MOUTH, n.  In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of
 the heart.
 %
 MUGWUMP, n.  In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted
 to the vice of independence.  A term of contempt.
 %
 MULATTO, n.  A child of two races, ashamed of both.
 %
 MULTITUDE, n.  A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue.  In
 a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.  "In a multitude
 of counsellors there is wisdom," saith the proverb.  If many men of
 equal individual wisdom are wiser than any one of them, it must be
 that they acquire the excess of wisdom by the mere act of getting
 together.  Whence comes it?  Obviously from nowhere--as well say
 that a range of mountains is higher than the single mountains
 composing it.  A multitude is as wise as its wisest member if it obey
 him; if not, it is no wiser than its most foolish.
 %
 MUMMY, n.  An ancient Egyptian, formerly in universal use among modern
 civilized nations as medicine, and now engaged in supplying art with
 an excellent pigment.  He is handy, too, in museums in gratifying the
 vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower
 animals.

  By means of the Mummy, mankind, it is said,
  Attests to the gods its respect for the dead.
  We plunder his tomb, be he sinner or saint,
  Distil him for physic and grind him for paint,
  Exhibit for money his poor, shrunken frame,
  And with levity flock to the scene of the shame.
  O, tell me, ye gods, for the use of my rhyme:
  For respecting the dead what's the limit of time?

 Scopas Brune
 %
 MUSTANG, n.  An indocile horse of the western plains.  In English
 society, the American wife of an English nobleman.
 %
 MYRMIDON, n.  A follower of Achilles--particularly when he didn't
 lead.
 %
 MYTHOLOGY, n.  The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
 origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
 from the true accounts which it invents later.
 %
 NECTAR, n.  A drink served at banquets of the Olympian deities.  The
 secret of its preparation is lost, but the modern Kentuckians believe
 that they come pretty near to a knowledge of its chief ingredient.

  Juno drank a cup of nectar,
  But the draught did not affect her.
  Juno drank a cup of rye--
  Then she bad herself good-bye.

 J.G.
 %
 NEGRO, n.  The _piece de resistance_ in the American political
 problem.  Representing him by the letter n, the Republicans begin to
 build their equation thus:  "Let n = the white man."  This, however,
 appears to give an unsatisfactory solution.
 %
 NEIGHBOR, n.  One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who
 does all he knows how to make us disobedient.
 %
 NEPOTISM, n.  Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of
 the party.
 %
 NEWTONIAN, adj.  Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe invented
 by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but
 was unable to say why.  His successors and disciples have advanced so
 far as to be able to say when.
 %
 NIHILIST, n.  A Russian who denies the existence of anything but
 Tolstoi.  The leader of the school is Tolstoi.
 %
 NIRVANA, n.  In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable
 annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to
 understand it.
 %
 NOBLEMAN, n.  Nature's provision for wealthy American minds ambitious
 to incur social distinction and suffer high life.
 %
 NOISE, n.  A stench in the ear.  Undomesticated music.  The chief
 product and authenticating sign of civilization.
 %
 NOMINATE, v.  To designate for the heaviest political assessment.  To
 put forward a suitable person to incur the mudgobbing and deadcatting
 of the opposition.
 %
 NOMINEE, n.  A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of
 private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public
 office.
 %
 NON-COMBATANT, n.  A dead Quaker.
 %
 NONSENSE, n.  The objections that are urged against this excellent
 dictionary.
 %
 NOSE, n.  The extreme outpost of the face.  From the circumstance that
 great conquerors have great noses, Getius, whose writings antedate the
 age of humor, calls the nose the organ of quell.  It has been observed
 that one's nose is never so happy as when thrust into the affairs of
 others, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that
 the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.

      There's a man with a Nose,
      And wherever he goes
  The people run from him and shout:
      "No cotton have we
      For our ears if so be
  He blow that interminous snout!"

      So the lawyers applied
      For injunction.  "Denied,"
  Said the Judge:  "the defendant prefixion,
      Whate'er it portend,
      Appears to transcend
  The bounds of this court's jurisdiction."

 Arpad Singiny
 %
 NOTORIETY, n.  The fame of one's competitor for public honors.  The
 kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity.  A
 Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending
 and descending.
 %
 NOUMENON, n.  That which exists, as distinguished from that which
 merely seems to exist, the latter being a phenomenon.  The noumenon is
 a bit difficult to locate; it can be apprehended only be a process of
 reasoning--which is a phenomenon.  Nevertheless, the discovery and
 exposition of noumena offer a rich field for what Lewes calls "the
 endless variety and excitement of philosophic thought."  Hurrah
 (therefore) for the noumenon!
 %
 NOVEL, n.  A short story padded.  A species of composition bearing the
 same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art.  As it is
 too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its
 successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama.  Unity,
 totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read
 all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before.
 To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting.  Its
 distinguishing principle, probability, corresponds to the literal
 actuality of the photograph and puts it distinctly into the category
 of reporting; whereas the free wing of the romancer enables him to
 mount to such altitudes of imagination as he may be fitted to attain;
 and the first three essentials of the literary art are imagination,
 imagination and imagination.  The art of writing novels, such as it
 was, is long dead everywhere except in Russia, where it is new.  Peace
 to its ashes--some of which have a large sale.
 %
 NOVEMBER, n.  The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
 %
 OATH, n.  In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the
 conscience by a penalty for perjury.
 %
 OBLIVION, n.  The state or condition in which the wicked cease from
 struggling and the dreary are at rest.  Fame's eternal dumping ground.
 Cold storage for high hopes.  A place where ambitious authors meet
 their works without pride and their betters without envy.  A dormitory
 without an alarm clock.
 %
 OBSERVATORY, n.  A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses
 of their predecessors.
 %
 OBSESSED, p.p.  Vexed by an evil spirit, like the Gadarene swine and
 other critics.  Obsession was once more common than it is now.
 Arasthus tells of a peasant who was occupied by a different devil for
 every day in the week, and on Sundays by two.  They were frequently
 seen, always walking in his shadow, when he had one, but were finally
 driven away by the village notary, a holy man; but they took the
 peasant with them, for he vanished utterly.  A devil thrown out of a
 woman by the Archbishop of Rheims ran through the trees, pursued by a
 hundred persons, until the open country was reached, where by a leap
 higher than a church spire he escaped into a bird.  A chaplain in
 Cromwell's army exorcised a soldier's obsessing devil by throwing the
 soldier into the water, when the devil came to the surface.  The
 soldier, unfortunately, did not.
 %
 OBSOLETE, adj.  No longer used by the timid.  Said chiefly of words.
 A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter
 an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer, but if it is a
 good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally good, it is good
 enough for the good writer.  Indeed, a writer's attitude toward
 "obsolete" words is as true a measure of his literary ability as
 anything except the character of his work.  A dictionary of obsolete
 and obsolescent words would not only be singularly rich in strong and
 sweet parts of speech; it would add large possessions to the
 vocabulary of every competent writer who might not happen to be a
 competent reader.
 %
 OBSTINATE, adj.  Inaccessible to the truth as it is manifest in the
 splendor and stress of our advocacy.

 The popular type and exponent of obstinacy is the mule, a most
 intelligent animal.
 %
 OCCASIONAL, adj.  Afflicting us with greater or less frequency.  That,
 however, is not the sense in which the word is used in the phrase
 "occasional verses," which are verses written for an "occasion," such
 as an anniversary, a celebration or other event.  True, they afflict
 us a little worse than other sorts of verse, but their name has no
 reference to irregular recurrence.
 %
 OCCIDENT, n.  The part of the world lying west (or east) of the
 Orient.  It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful subtribe of
 the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating,
 which they are pleased to call "war" and "commerce."  These, also, are
 the principal industries of the Orient.
 %
 OCEAN, n.  A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made
 for man--who has no gills.
 %
 OFFENSIVE, adj.  Generating disagreeable emotions or sensations, as
 the advance of an army against its enemy.

 "Were the enemy's tactics offensive?" the king asked.  "I should
 say so!" replied the unsuccessful general.  "The blackguard wouldn't
 come out of his works!"
 %
 OLD, adj.  In that stage of usefulness which is not inconsistent with
 general inefficiency, as an _old man_.  Discredited by lapse of time
 and offensive to the popular taste, as an _old_ book.

  "Old books?  The devil take them!" Goby said.
  "Fresh every day must be my books and bread."
  Nature herself approves the Goby rule
  And gives us every moment a fresh fool.

 Harley Shum
 %
 OLEAGINOUS, adj.  Oily, smooth, sleek.

 Disraeli once described the manner of Bishop Wilberforce as
 "unctuous, oleaginous, saponaceous."  And the good prelate was ever
 afterward known as Soapy Sam.  For every man there is something in the
 vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin.  His enemies
 have only to find it.
 %
 OLYMPIAN, adj.  Relating to a mountain in Thessaly, once inhabited by
 gods, now a repository of yellowing newspapers, beer bottles and
 mutilated sardine cans, attesting the presence of the tourist and his
 appetite.

  His name the smirking tourist scrawls
  Upon Minerva's temple walls,
  Where thundered once Olympian Zeus,
  And marks his appetite's abuse.

 Averil Joop
 %
 OMEN, n.  A sign that something will happen if nothing happens.
 %
 ONCE, adv.  Enough.
 %
 OPERA, n.  A play representing life in another world, whose
 inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no
 postures but attitudes.  All acting is simulation, and the word
 _simulation_ is from _simia_, an ape; but in opera the actor takes for
 his model _Simia audibilis_ (or _Pithecanthropos stentor_)--the ape
 that howls.

  The actor apes a man--at least in shape;
  The opera performer apes an ape.
 %
 OPIATE, n.  An unlocked door in the prison of Identity.  It leads into
 the jail yard.
 %
 OPPORTUNITY, n.  A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.
 %
 OPPOSE, v.  To assist with obstructions and objections.

  How lonely he who thinks to vex
  With bandinage the Solemn Sex!
  Of levity, Mere Man, beware;
  None but the Grave deserve the Unfair.

 Percy P. Orminder
 %
 OPPOSITION, n.  In politics the party that prevents the Government from
 running amuck by hamstringing it.

 The King of Ghargaroo, who had been abroad to study the science of
 government, appointed one hundred of his fattest subjects as members
 of a parliament to make laws for the collection of revenue.  Forty of
 these he named the Party of Opposition and had his Prime Minister
 carefully instruct them in their duty of opposing every royal measure.
 Nevertheless, the first one that was submitted passed unanimously.
 Greatly displeased, the King vetoed it, informing the Opposition that
 if they did that again they would pay for their obstinacy with their
 heads.  The entire forty promptly disemboweled themselves.

 "What shall we do now?" the King asked.  "Liberal institutions
 cannot be maintained without a party of Opposition."

 "Splendor of the universe," replied the Prime Minister, "it is
 true these dogs of darkness have no longer their credentials, but all
 is not lost.  Leave the matter to this worm of the dust."

 So the Minister had the bodies of his Majesty's Opposition
 embalmed and stuffed with straw, put back into the seats of power and
 nailed there.  Forty votes were recorded against every bill and the
 nation prospered.  But one day a bill imposing a tax on warts was
 defeated--the members of the Government party had not been nailed to
 their seats!  This so enraged the King that the Prime Minister was put
 to death, the parliament was dissolved with a battery of artillery,
 and government of the people, by the people, for the people perished
 from Ghargaroo.
 %
 OPTIMISM, n.  The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful,
 including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and
 everything right that is wrong.  It is held with greatest tenacity by
 those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity, and
 is most acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile.  Being a
 blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof--an
 intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death.  It is
 hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.
 %
 OPTIMIST, n.  A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.

 A pessimist applied to God for relief.

 "Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness," said God.

 "No," replied the petitioner, "I wish you to create something that
 would justify them."

 "The world is all created," said God, "but you have overlooked
 something--the mortality of the optimist."
 %
 ORATORY, n.  A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the
 understanding.  A tyranny tempered by stenography.
 %
 ORPHAN, n.  A living person whom death has deprived of the power of
 filial ingratitude--a privation appealing with a particular
 eloquence to all that is sympathetic in human nature.  When young the
 orphan is commonly sent to an asylum, where by careful cultivation of
 its rudimentary sense of locality it is taught to know its place.  It
 is then instructed in the arts of dependence and servitude and
 eventually turned loose to prey upon the world as a bootblack or
 scullery maid.
 %
 ORTHODOX, n.  An ox wearing the popular religious yoke.
 %
 ORTHOGRAPHY, n.  The science of spelling by the eye instead of the
 ear.  Advocated with more heat than light by the outmates of every
 asylum for the insane.  They have had to concede a few things since
 the time of Chaucer, but are none the less hot in defence of those to
 be conceded hereafter.

  A spelling reformer indicted
  For fudge was before the court cicted.
      The judge said:  "Enough--
      His candle we'll snough,
  And his sepulchre shall not be whicted."
 %
 OSTRICH, n.  A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature
 has denied that hinder toe in which so many pious naturalists have
 seen a conspicuous evidence of design.  The absence of a good working
 pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out,
 the ostrich does not fly.
 %
 OTHERWISE, adv.  No better.
 %
 OUTCOME, n.  A particular type of disappointment.  By the kind of
 intelligence that sees in an exception a proof of the rule the wisdom
 of an act is judged by the outcome, the result.  This is immortal
 nonsense; the wisdom of an act is to be juded by the light that the
 doer had when he performed it.
 %
 OUTDO, v.t.  To make an enemy.
 %
 OUT-OF-DOORS, n.  That part of one's environment upon which no
 government has been able to collect taxes.  Chiefly useful to inspire
 poets.

  I climbed to the top of a mountain one day
      To see the sun setting in glory,
  And I thought, as I looked at his vanishing ray,
      Of a perfectly splendid story.

  'Twas about an old man and the ass he bestrode
      Till the strength of the beast was o'ertested;
  Then the man would carry him miles on the road
      Till Neddy was pretty well rested.

  The moon rising solemnly over the crest
      Of the hills to the east of my station
  Displayed her broad disk to the darkening west
      Like a visible new creation.

  And I thought of a joke (and I laughed till I cried)
      Of an idle young woman who tarried
  About a church-door for a look at the bride,
      Although 'twas herself that was married.

  To poets all Nature is pregnant with grand
      Ideas--with thought and emotion.
  I pity the dunces who don't understand
      The speech of earth, heaven and ocean.

 Stromboli Smith
 %
 OVATION, n.  In ancient Rome, a definite, formal pageant in honor of
 one who had been disserviceable to the enemies of the nation.  A
 lesser "triumph."  In modern English the word is improperly used to
 signify any loose and spontaneous expression of popular homage to the
 hero of the hour and place.

  "I had an ovation!" the actor man said,
      But I thought it uncommonly queer,
  That people and critics by him had been led
          By the ear.

  The Latin lexicon makes his absurd
      Assertion as plain as a peg;
  In "ovum" we find the true root of the word.
          It means egg.

 Dudley Spink
 %
 OVEREAT, v.  To dine.

  Hail, Gastronome, Apostle of Excess,
  Well skilled to overeat without distress!
  Thy great invention, the unfatal feast,
  Shows Man's superiority to Beast.

 John Boop
 %
 OVERWORK, n.  A dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries
 who want to go fishing.
 %
 OWE, v.  To have (and to hold) a debt.  The word formerly signified
 not indebtedness, but possession; it meant "own," and in the minds of
 debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and
 liabilities.
 %
 OYSTER, n.  A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the
 hardihood to eat without removing its entrails!  The shells are
 sometimes given to the poor.
 %
 PAIN, n.  An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical
 basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely
 mental, caused by the good fortune of another.
 %
 PAINTING, n.  The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and
 exposing them to the critic.

 Formerly, painting and sculpture were combined in the same work:
 the ancients painted their statues.  The only present alliance between
 the two arts is that the modern painter chisels his patrons.
 %
 PALACE, n.  A fine and costly residence, particularly that of a great
 official.  The residence of a high dignitary of the Christian Church
 is called a palace; that of the Founder of his religion was known as a
 field, or wayside.  There is progress.
 %
 PALM, n.  A species of tree having several varieties, of which the
 familiar "itching palm" (_Palma hominis_) is most widely distributed
 and sedulously cultivated.  This noble vegetable exudes a kind of
 invisible gum, which may be detected by applying to the bark a piece
 of gold or silver.  The metal will adhere with remarkable tenacity.
 The fruit of the itching palm is so bitter and unsatisfying that a
 considerable percentage of it is sometimes given away in what are known
 as "benefactions."
 %
 PALMISTRY, n.  The 947th method (according to Mimbleshaw's
 classification) of obtaining money by false pretences.  It consists in
 "reading character" in the wrinkles made by closing the hand.  The
 pretence is not altogether false; character can really be read very
 accurately in this way, for the wrinkles in every hand submitted
 plainly spell the word "dupe."  The imposture consists in not reading
 it aloud.
 %
 PANDEMONIUM, n.  Literally, the Place of All the Demons.  Most of them
 have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a
 lecture hall by the Audible Reformer.  When disturbed by his voice the
 ancient echoes clamor appropriate responses most gratifying to his
 pride of distinction.
 %
 PANTALOONS, n.  A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male.  The
 garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of
 flexion.  Supposed to have been invented by a humorist.  Called
 "trousers" by the enlightened and "pants" by the unworthy.
 %
 PANTHEISM, n.  The doctrine that everything is God, in
 contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
 %
 PANTOMIME, n.  A play in which the story is told without violence to
 the language.  The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.
 %
 PARDON, v.  To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime.  To
 add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
 %
 PASSPORT, n.  A document treacherously inflicted upon a citizen going
 abroad, exposing him as an alien and pointing him out for special
 reprobation and outrage.
 %
 PAST, n.  That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we
 have a slight and regrettable acquaintance.  A moving line called the
 Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future.  These
 two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually
 effacing the other, are entirely unlike.  The one is dark with sorrow
 and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy.  The
 Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song.  In the
 one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential
 prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing,
 beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease.  Yet the Past is
 the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow.  They
 are one--the knowledge and the dream.
 %
 PASTIME, n.  A device for promoting dejection.  Gentle exercise for
 intellectual debility.
 %
 PATIENCE, n.  A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
 %
 PATRIOT, n.  One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to
 those of the whole.  The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
 %
 PATRIOTISM, n.  Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one
 ambitious to illuminate his name.

 In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the
 last resort of a scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened
 but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
 %
 PEACE, n.  In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
 periods of fighting.

  O, what's the loud uproar assailing
      Mine ears without cease?
  'Tis the voice of the hopeful, all-hailing
      The horrors of peace.

  Ah, Peace Universal; they woo it--
      Would marry it, too.
  If only they knew how to do it
      'Twere easy to do.

  They're working by night and by day
      On their problem, like moles.
  Have mercy, O Heaven, I pray,
      On their meddlesome souls!

 Ro Amil
 %
 PEDESTRIAN, n.  The variable (an audible) part of the roadway for an
 automobile.
 %
 PEDIGREE, n.  The known part of the route from an arboreal ancestor
 with a swim bladder to an urban descendant with a cigarette.
 %
 PENITENT, adj.  Undergoing or awaiting punishment.
 %
 PERFECTION, n.  An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the
 actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.

 The editor of an English magazine having received a letter
 pointing out the erroneous nature of his views and style, and signed
 "Perfection," promptly wrote at the foot of the letter:  "I don't
 agree with you," and mailed it to Matthew Arnold.
 %
 PERIPATETIC, adj.  Walking about.  Relating to the philosophy of
 Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in
 order to avoid his pupil's objections.  A needless precaution--they
 knew no more of the matter than he.
 %
 PERORATION, n.  The explosion of an oratorical rocket.  It dazzles,
 but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous
 peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in
 preparing it.
 %
 PERSEVERANCE, n.  A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an
 inglorious success.

  "Persevere, persevere!" cry the homilists all,
  Themselves, day and night, persevering to bawl.
  "Remember the fable of tortoise and hare--
  The one at the goal while the other is--where?"
  Why, back there in Dreamland, renewing his lease
  Of life, all his muscles preserving the peace,
  The goal and the rival forgotten alike,
  And the long fatigue of the needless hike.
  His spirit a-squat in the grass and the dew
  Of the dogless Land beyond the Stew,
  He sleeps, like a saint in a holy place,
  A winner of all that is good in a race.

 Sukker Uffro
 %
 PESSIMISM, n.  A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the
 observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his
 scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.
 %
 PHILANTHROPIST, n.  A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has
 trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
 %
 PHILISTINE, n.  One whose mind is the creature of its environment,
 following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment.  He is
 sometimes learned, frequently prosperous, commonly clean and always
 solemn.
 %
 PHILOSOPHY, n.  A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
 %
 PHOENIX, n.  The classical prototype of the modern "small hot bird."
 %
 PHONOGRAPH, n.  An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.
 %
 PHOTOGRAPH, n.  A picture painted by the sun without instruction in
 art.  It is a little better than the work of an Apache, but not quite
 so good as that of a Cheyenne.
 %
 PHRENOLOGY, n.  The science of picking the pocket through the scalp.
 It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe
 with.
 %
 PHYSICIAN, n.  One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs
 when well.
 %
 PHYSIOGNOMY, n.  The art of determining the character of another by
 the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which
 is the standard of excellence.

  "There is no art," says Shakespeare, foolish man,
      "To read the mind's construction in the face."
  The physiognomists his portrait scan,
      And say:  "How little wisdom here we trace!
  He knew his face disclosed his mind and heart,
  So, in his own defence, denied our art."

 Lavatar Shunk
 %
 PIANO, n.  A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor.  It
 is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the
 audience.
 %
 PICKANINNY, n.  The young of the _Procyanthropos_, or _Americanus
 dominans_.  It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.
 %
 PICTURE, n.  A representation in two dimensions of something wearisome
 in three.

  "Behold great Daubert's picture here on view--
  Taken from Life."  If that description's true,
  Grant, heavenly Powers, that I be taken, too.

 Jali Hane
 %
 PIE, n.  An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.

  Cold pie was highly esteemed by the remains.

 Rev. Dr. Mucker

 (in a funeral sermon over a British nobleman)

  Cold pie is a detestable
  American comestible.
  That's why I'm done--or undone--
  So far from that dear London.

 (from the headstone of a British nobleman in Kalamazoo)
 %
 PIETY, n.  Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed
 resemblance to man.

  The pig is taught by sermons and epistles
  To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.

 Judibras
 %
 PIG, n.  An animal (_Porcus omnivorus_) closely allied to the human
 race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is
 inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.
 %
 PIGMY, n.  One of a tribe of very small men found by ancient travelers
 in many parts of the world, but by modern in Central Africa only.  The
 Pigmies are so called to distinguish them from the bulkier Caucasians
 --who are Hogmies.
 %
 PILGRIM, n.  A traveler that is taken seriously.  A Pilgrim Father was
 one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms
 through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could
 personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
 %
 PILLORY, n.  A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction
 --prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere
 virtues and blameless lives.
 %
 PIRACY, n.  Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
 %
 PITIFUL, adj.  The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary
 encounter with oneself.
 %
 PITY, n.  A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
 %
 PLAGIARISM, n.  A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable
 priority and an honorable subsequence.
 %
 PLAGIARIZE, v.  To take the thought or style of another writer whom
 one has never, never read.
 %
 PLAGUE, n.  In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for
 admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the
 Immune.  The plague as we of to-day have the happiness to know it is
 merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless
 objectionableness.
 %
 PLAN, v.t.  To bother about the best method of accomplishing an
 accidental result.
 %
 PLATITUDE, n.  The fundamental element and special glory of popular
 literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke.  The wisdom of
 a million fools in the diction of a dullard.  A fossil sentiment in
 artificial rock.  A moral without the fable.  All that is mortal of a
 departed truth.  A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality.  The Pope's-nose
 of a featherless peacock.  A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the
 sea of thought.  The cackle surviving the egg.  A desiccated epigram.
 %
 PLATONIC, adj.  Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates.  Platonic
 Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a
 frost.
 %
 PLAUDITS, n.  Coins with which the populace pays those who tickle and
 devour it.
 %
 PLEASE, v.  To lay the foundation for a superstructure of imposition.
 %
 PLEASURE, n.  The least hateful form of dejection.
 %
 PLEBEIAN, n.  An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained
 nothing but his hands.  Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a
 saturated solution.
 %
 PLEBISCITE, n.  A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign.
 %
 PLENIPOTENTIARY, adj.  Having full power.  A Minister Plenipotentiary
 is a diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he
 never exert it.
 %
 PLEONASM, n.  An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.
 %
 PLOW, n.  An implement that cries aloud for hands accustomed to the
 pen.
 %
 PLUNDER, v.  To take the property of another without observing the
 decent and customary reticences of theft.  To effect a change of
 ownership with the candid concomitance of a brass band.  To wrest the
 wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanished opportunity.
 %
 POCKET, n.  The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience.  In
 woman this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her
 conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of
 others.
 %
 POETRY, n.  A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the
 Magazines.
 %
 POKER, n.  A game said to be played with cards for some purpose to
 this lexicographer unknown.
 %
 POLICE, n.  An armed force for protection and participation.
 %
 POLITENESS, n.  The most acceptable hypocrisy.
 %
 POLITICS, n.  A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of
 principles.  The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
 %
 POLITICIAN, n.  An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the
 superstructure of organized society is reared.  When he wriggles he
 mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.
 As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being
 alive.
 %
 POLYGAMY, n.  A house of atonement, or expiatory chapel, fitted with
 several stools of repentance, as distinguished from monogamy, which
 has but one.
 %
 POPULIST, n.  A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found
 in the old red soapstone underlying Kansas; characterized by an
 uncommon spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the
 power of flight, though Professors Morse and Whitney, pursuing
 independent lines of thought, have ingeniously pointed out that had he
 possessed it he would have gone elsewhere.  In the picturesque speech
 of his period, some fragments of which have come down to us, he was
 known as "The Matter with Kansas."
 %
 PORTABLE, adj.  Exposed to a mutable ownership through vicissitudes of
 possession.

  His light estate, if neither he did make it
  Nor yet its former guardian forsake it,
  Is portable improperty, I take it.

 Worgum Slupsky
 %
 PORTUGUESE, n.pl.  A species of geese indigenous to Portugal.  They
 are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed
 with garlic.
 %
 POSITIVE, adj.  Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
 %
 POSITIVISM, n.  A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and
 affirms our ignorance of the Apparent.  Its longest exponent is Comte,
 its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.
 %
 POSTERITY, n.  An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a
 popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure
 competitor.
 %
 POTABLE, n.  Suitable for drinking.  Water is said to be potable;
 indeed, some declare it our natural beverage, although even they find
 it palatable only when suffering from the recurrent disorder known as
 thirst, for which it is a medicine.  Upon nothing has so great and
 diligent ingenuity been brought to bear in all ages and in all
 countries, except the most uncivilized, as upon the invention of
 substitutes for water.  To hold that this general aversion to that
 liquid has no basis in the preservative instinct of the race is to be
 unscientific--and without science we are as the snakes and toads.
 %
 POVERTY, n.  A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform.  The
 number of plans for its abolition equals that of the reformers who
 suffer from it, plus that of the philosophers who know nothing about
 it.  Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues
 and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a
 prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.
 %
 PRAY, v.  To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf
 of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
 %
 PRE-ADAMITE, n.  One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory
 race of antedated Creation and lived under conditions not easily
 conceived.  Melsius believed them to have inhabited "the Void" and to
 have been something intermediate between fishes and birds.  Little its
 known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and
 theologians with a controversy.
 %
 PRECEDENT, n.  In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in
 the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a
 Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of
 doing as he pleases.  As there are precedents for everything, he has
 only to ignore those that make against his interest and accentuate
 those in the line of his desire.  Invention of the precedent elevates
 the trial-at-law from the low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the
 noble attitude of a dirigible arbitrament.
 %
 PRECIPITATE, adj.  Anteprandial.

  Precipitate in all, this sinner
  Took action first, and then his dinner.

 Judibras
 %
 PREDESTINATION, n.  The doctrine that all things occur according to
 programme.  This doctrine should not be confused with that of
 foreordination, which means that all things are programmed, but does
 not affirm their occurrence, that being only an implication from other
 doctrines by which this is entailed.  The difference is great enough
 to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
 With the distinction of the two doctrines kept well in mind, and a
 reverent belief in both, one may hope to escape perdition if spared.
 %
 PREDICAMENT, n.  The wage of consistency.
 %
 PREDILECTION, n.  The preparatory stage of disillusion.
 %
 PRE-EXISTENCE, n.  An unnoted factor in creation.
 %
 PREFERENCE, n.  A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the
 erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.

 An ancient philosopher, expounding his conviction that life is no
 better than death, was asked by a disciple why, then, he did not die.
 "Because," he replied, "death is no better than life."

 It is longer.
 %
 PREHISTORIC, adj.  Belonging to an early period and a museum.
 Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.

  He lived in a period prehistoric,
  When all was absurd and phantasmagoric.
  Born later, when Clio, celestial recorder,
  Set down great events in succession and order,
  He surely had seen nothing droll or fortuitous
  In anything here but the lies that she threw at us.

 Orpheus Bowen
 %
 PREJUDICE, n.  A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
 %
 PRELATE, n.  A church officer having a superior degree of holiness and
 a fat preferment.  One of Heaven's aristocracy.  A gentleman of God.
 %
 PREROGATIVE, n.  A sovereign's right to do wrong.
 %
 PRESBYTERIAN, n.  One who holds the conviction that the government
 authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.
 %
 PRESCRIPTION, n.  A physician's guess at what will best prolong the
 situation with least harm to the patient.
 %
 PRESENT, n.  That part of eternity dividing the domain of
 disappointment from the realm of hope.
 %
 PRESENTABLE, adj.  Hideously appareled after the manner of the time
 and place.

 In Boorioboola-Gha a man is presentable on occasions of ceremony
 if he have his abdomen painted a bright blue and wear a cow's tail; in
 New York he may, if it please him, omit the paint, but after sunset he
 must wear two tails made of the wool of a sheep and dyed black.
 %
 PRESIDE, v.  To guide the action of a deliberative body to a desirable
 result.  In Journalese, to perform upon a musical instrument; as, "He
 presided at the piccolo."

  The Headliner, holding the copy in hand,
      Read with a solemn face:
  "The music was very uncommonly grand--
          The best that was every provided,
          For our townsman Brown presided
      At the organ with skill and grace."
  The Headliner discontinued to read,
      And, spread the paper down
  On the desk, he dashed in at the top of the screed:
      "Great playing by President Brown."

 Orpheus Bowen
 %
 PRESIDENCY, n.  The greased pig in the field game of American
 politics.
 %
 PRESIDENT, n.  The leading figure in a small group of men of whom--
 and of whom only--it is positively known that immense numbers of
 their countrymen did not want any of them for President.

  If that's an honor surely 'tis a greater
  To have been a simple and undamned spectator.
  Behold in me a man of mark and note
  Whom no elector e'er denied a vote!--
  An undiscredited, unhooted gent
  Who might, for all we know, be President
  By acclamation.  Cheer, ye varlets, cheer--
  I'm passing with a wide and open ear!

 Jonathan Fomry
 %
 PREVARICATOR, n.  A liar in the caterpillar state.
 %
 PRICE, n.  Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of
 conscience in demanding it.
 %
 PRIMATE, n.  The head of a church, especially a State church supported
 by involuntary contributions.  The Primate of England is the
 Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies
 Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead.  He is
 commonly dead.
 %
 PRISON, n.  A place of punishments and rewards.  The poet assures us
 that--

  "Stone walls do not a prison make,"

 but a combination of the stone wall, the political parasite and the
 moral instructor is no garden of sweets.
 %
 PRIVATE, n.  A military gentleman with a field-marshal's baton in his
 knapsack and an impediment in his hope.
 %
 PROBOSCIS, n.  The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him
 in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him.
 For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.

 Asked how he knew that an elephant was going on a journey, the
 illustrious Jo. Miller cast a reproachful look upon his tormentor, and
 answered, absently:  "When it is ajar," and threw himself from a high
 promontory into the sea.  Thus perished in his pride the most famous
 humorist of antiquity, leaving to mankind a heritage of woe!  No
 successor worthy of the title has appeared, though Mr. Edward Bok, of
 _The Ladies' Home Journal_, is much respected for the purity and
 sweetness of his personal character.
 %
 PROJECTILE, n.  The final arbiter in international disputes.  Formerly
 these disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants,
 with such simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could
 supply--the sword, the spear, and so forth.  With the growth of
 prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into
 favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous.  Its
 capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at the point of
 propulsion.
 %
 PROOF, n.  Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of
 unlikelihood.  The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to
 that of only one.
 %
 PROOF-READER, n.  A malefactor who atones for making your writing
 nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
 %
 PROPERTY, n.  Any material thing, having no particular value, that may
 be held by A against the cupidity of B.  Whatever gratifies the
 passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others.  The
 object of man's brief rapacity and long indifference.
 %
 PROPHECY, n.  The art and practice of selling one's credibility for
 future delivery.
 %
 PROSPECT, n.  An outlook, usually forbidding.  An expectation, usually
 forbidden.

  Blow, blow, ye spicy breezes--
      O'er Ceylon blow your breath,
  Where every prospect pleases,
      Save only that of death.

 Bishop Sheber
 %
 PROVIDENTIAL, adj.  Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the
 person so describing it.
 %
 PRUDE, n.  A bawd hiding behind the back of her demeanor.
 %
 PUBLISH, n.  In literary affairs, to become the fundamental element in
 a cone of critics.
 %
 PUSH, n.  One of the two things mainly conducive to success,
 especially in politics.  The other is Pull.
 %
 PYRRHONISM, n.  An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor.  It
 consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism.  Its
 modern professors have added that.
 %
 QUEEN, n.  A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king,
 and through whom it is ruled when there is not.
 %
 QUILL, n.  An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly
 wielded by an ass.  This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its
 modern equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting
 Presence.
 %
 QUIVER, n.  A portable sheath in which the ancient statesman and the
 aboriginal lawyer carried their lighter arguments.

  He extracted from his quiver,
      Did the controversial Roman,
  An argument well fitted
  To the question as submitted,
  Then addressed it to the liver,
      Of the unpersuaded foeman.

 Oglum P. Boomp
 %
 QUIXOTIC, adj.  Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote.  An insight into
 the beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily
 denied to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman's name
 is pronounced Ke-ho-tay.

  When ignorance from out of our lives can banish
  Philology, 'tis folly to know Spanish.

 Juan Smith
 %
 QUORUM, n.  A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to
 have their own way and their own way of having it.  In the United
 States Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on
 Finance and a messenger from the White House; in the House of
 Representatives, of the Speaker and the devil.
 %
 QUOTATION, n.  The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
 The words erroneously repeated.

  Intent on making his quotation truer,
  He sought the page infallible of Brewer,
  Then made a solemn vow that he would be
  Condemned eternally.  Ah, me, ah, me!

 Stumpo Gaker
 %
 QUOTIENT, n.  A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging
 to one person is contained in the pocket of another--usually about
 as many times as it can be got there.
 %
 RABBLE, n.  In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority
 tempered by fraudulent elections.  The rabble is like the sacred
 Simurgh, of Arabian fable--omnipotent on condition that it do
 nothing.  (The word is Aristocratese, and has no exact equivalent in
 our tongue, but means, as nearly as may be, "soaring swine.")
 %
 RACK, n.  An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading
 devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth.  As a call to
 the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now
 held in light popular esteem.
 %
 RANK, n.  Relative elevation in the scale of human worth.

  He held at court a rank so high
  That other noblemen asked why.
  "Because," 'twas answered, "others lack
  His skill to scratch the royal back."

 Aramis Jukes
 %
 RANSOM, n.  The purchase of that which neither belongs to the seller,
 nor can belong to the buyer.  The most unprofitable of investments.
 %
 RAPACITY, n.  Providence without industry.  The thrift of power.
 %
 RAREBIT, n.  A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point
 out that it is not a rabbit.  To whom it may be solemnly explained
 that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and
 that _riz-de-veau a la financiere_ is not the smile of a calf prepared
 after the recipe of a she banker.
 %
 RASCAL, n.  A fool considered under another aspect.
 %
 RASCALITY, n.  Stupidity militant.  The activity of a clouded
 intellect.
 %
 RASH, adj.  Insensible to the value of our advice.

  "Now lay your bet with mine, nor let
      These gamblers take your cash."
  "Nay, this child makes no bet."  "Great snakes!
      How can you be so rash?"

 Bootle P. Gish
 %
 RATIONAL, adj.  Devoid of all delusions save those of observation,
 experience and reflection.
 %
 RATTLESNAKE, n.  Our prostrate brother, _Homo ventrambulans_.
 %
 RAZOR, n.  An instrument used by the Caucasian to enhance his beauty,
 by the Mongolian to make a guy of himself, and by the Afro-American to
 affirm his worth.
 %
 REACH, n.  The radius of action of the human hand.  The area within
 which it is possible (and customary) to gratify directly the
 propensity to provide.

  This is a truth, as old as the hills,
      That life and experience teach:
  The poor man suffers that keenest of ills,
      An impediment in his reach.

 G.J.
 %
 READING, n.  The general body of what one reads.  In our country it
 consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in "dialect" and
 humor in slang.

  We know by one's reading
  His learning and breeding;
  By what draws his laughter
  We know his Hereafter.
  Read nothing, laugh never--
  The Sphinx was less clever!

 Jupiter Muke
 %
 RADICALISM, n.  The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the
 affairs of to-day.
 %
 RADIUM, n.  A mineral that gives off heat and stimulates the organ
 that a scientist is a fool with.
 %
 RAILROAD, n.  The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get
 away from where we are to where we are no better off.  For this purpose
 the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits
 him to make the transit with great expedition.
 %
 RAMSHACKLE, adj.  Pertaining to a certain order of architecture,
 otherwise known as the Normal American.  Most of the public buildings
 of the United States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our
 earlier architects preferred the Ironic.  Recent additions to the
 White House in Washington are Theo-Doric, the ecclesiastic order of
 the Dorians.  They are exceedingly fine and cost one hundred dollars a
 brick.
 %
 REALISM, n.  The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads.  The
 charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a
 measuring-worm.
 %
 REALITY, n.  The dream of a mad philosopher.  That which would remain
 in the cupel if one should assay a phantom.  The nucleus of a vacuum.
 %
 REALLY, adv.  Apparently.
 %
 REAR, n.  In American military matters, that exposed part of the army
 that is nearest to Congress.
 %
 REASON, v.i.  To weigh probabilities in the scales of desire.
 %
 REASON, n.  Propensitate of prejudice.
 %
 REASONABLE, adj.  Accessible to the infection of our own opinions.
 Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion.
 %
 REBEL, n.  A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish
 it.
 %
 RECOLLECT, v.  To recall with additions something not previously
 known.
 %
 RECONCILIATION, n.  A suspension of hostilities.  An armed truce for
 the purpose of digging up the dead.
 %
 RECONSIDER, v.  To seek a justification for a decision already made.
 %
 RECOUNT, n.  In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded
 to the player against whom they are loaded.
 %
 RECREATION, n.  A particular kind of dejection to relieve a general
 fatigue.
 %
 RECRUIT, n.  A person distinguishable from a civilian by his uniform
 and from a soldier by his gait.

  Fresh from the farm or factory or street,
  His marching, in pursuit or in retreat,
      Were an impressive martial spectacle
  Except for two impediments--his feet.

 Thompson Johnson
 %
 RECTOR, n.  In the Church of England, the Third Person of the
 parochial Trinity, the Curate and the Vicar being the other two.
 %
 REDEMPTION, n.  Deliverance of sinners from the penalty of their sin,
 through their murder of the deity against whom they sinned.  The
 doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy
 religion, and whoso believeth in it shall not perish, but have
 everlasting life in which to try to understand it.

  We must awake Man's spirit from his sin,
      And take some special measure for redeeming it;
  Though hard indeed the task to get it in
      Among the angels any way but teaming it,
      Or purify it otherwise than steaming it.
  I'm awkward at Redemption--a beginner:
  My method is to crucify the sinner.

 Golgo Brone
 %
 REDRESS, n.  Reparation without satisfaction.

 Among the Anglo-Saxon a subject conceiving himself wronged by the
 king was permitted, on proving his injury, to beat a brazen image of
 the royal offender with a switch that was afterward applied to his own
 naked back.  The latter rite was performed by the public hangman, and
 it assured moderation in the plaintiff's choice of a switch.
 %
 RED-SKIN, n.  A North American Indian, whose skin is not red--at
 least not on the outside.
 %
 REDUNDANT, adj.  Superfluous; needless; _de trop_.

  The Sultan said:  "There's evidence abundant
  To prove this unbelieving dog redundant."
  To whom the Grand Vizier, with mien impressive,
  Replied:  "His head, at least, appears excessive."

 Habeeb Suleiman


  Mr. Debs is a redundant citizen.

 Theodore Roosevelt
 %
 REFERENDUM, n.  A law for submission of proposed legislation to a
 popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion.
 %
 REFLECTION, n.  An action of the mind whereby we obtain a clearer view
 of our relation to the things of yesterday and are able to avoid the
 perils that we shall not again encounter.
 %
 REFORM, v.  A thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to
 reformation.
 %
 REFUGE, n.  Anything assuring protection to one in peril.  Moses and
 Joshua provided six cities of refuge--Bezer, Golan, Ramoth, Kadesh,
 Schekem and Hebron--to which one who had taken life inadvertently
 could flee when hunted by relatives of the deceased.  This admirable
 expedient supplied him with wholesome exercise and enabled them to
 enjoy the pleasures of the chase; whereby the soul of the dead man was
 appropriately honored by observances akin to the funeral games of
 early Greece.
 %
 REFUSAL, n.  Denial of something desired; as an elderly maiden's hand
 in marriage, to a rich and handsome suitor; a valuable franchise to a
 rich corporation, by an alderman; absolution to an impenitent king, by
 a priest, and so forth.  Refusals are graded in a descending scale of
 finality thus:  the refusal absolute, the refusal conditional, the
 refusal tentative and the refusal feminine.  The last is called by
 some casuists the refusal assentive.
 %
 REGALIA, n.  Distinguishing insignia, jewels and costume of such
 ancient and honorable orders as Knights of Adam; Visionaries of
 Detectable Bosh; the Ancient Order of Modern Troglodytes; the League
 of Holy Humbug; the Golden Phalanx of Phalangers; the Genteel Society
 of Expurgated Hoodlums; the Mystic Alliances of Gorgeous Regalians;
 Knights and Ladies of the Yellow Dog; the Oriental Order of Sons of
 the West; the Blatherhood of Insufferable Stuff; Warriors of the Long
 Bow; Guardians of the Great Horn Spoon; the Band of Brutes; the
 Impenitent Order of Wife-Beaters; the Sublime Legion of Flamboyant
 Conspicuants; Worshipers at the Electroplated Shrine; Shining
 Inaccessibles; Fee-Faw-Fummers of the Inimitable Grip; Jannissaries of
 the Broad-Blown Peacock; Plumed Increscencies of the Magic Temple; the
 Grand Cabal of Able-Bodied Sedentarians; Associated Deities of the
 Butter Trade; the Garden of Galoots; the Affectionate Fraternity of
 Men Similarly Warted; the Flashing Astonishers; Ladies of Horror;
 Cooperative Association for Breaking into the Spotlight; Dukes of Eden;
 Disciples Militant of the Hidden Faith; Knights-Champions of the
 Domestic Dog; the Holy Gregarians; the Resolute Optimists; the Ancient
 Sodality of Inhospitable Hogs; Associated Sovereigns of Mendacity;
 Dukes-Guardian of the Mystic Cess-Pool; the Society for Prevention of
 Prevalence; Kings of Drink; Polite Federation of Gents-Consequential;
 the Mysterious Order of the Undecipherable Scroll; Uniformed Rank of
 Lousy Cats; Monarchs of Worth and Hunger; Sons of the South Star;
 Prelates of the Tub-and-Sword.
 %
 RELIGION, n.  A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the
 nature of the Unknowable.

  "What is your religion my son?" inquired the Archbishop of Rheims.
  "Pardon, monseigneur," replied Rochebriant; "I am ashamed of it."
  "Then why do you not become an atheist?"
  "Impossible!  I should be ashamed of atheism."
  "In that case, monsieur, you should join the Protestants."
 %
 RELIQUARY, n.  A receptacle for such sacred objects as pieces of the
 true cross, short-ribs of the saints, the ears of Balaam's ass, the
 lung of the cock that called Peter to repentance and so forth.
 Reliquaries are commonly of metal, and provided with a lock to prevent
 the contents from coming out and performing miracles at unseasonable
 times.  A feather from the wing of the Angel of the Annunciation once
 escaped during a sermon in Saint Peter's and so tickled the noses of
 the congregation that they woke and sneezed with great vehemence three
 times each.  It is related in the "Gesta Sanctorum" that a sacristan
 in the Canterbury cathedral surprised the head of Saint Dennis in the
 library.  Reprimanded by its stern custodian, it explained that it was
 seeking a body of doctrine.  This unseemly levity so raged the
 diocesan that the offender was publicly anathematized, thrown into the
 Stour and replaced by another head of Saint Dennis, brought from Rome.
 %
 RENOWN, n.  A degree of distinction between notoriety and fame--a
 little more supportable than the one and a little more intolerable
 than the other.  Sometimes it is conferred by an unfriendly and
 inconsiderate hand.

  I touched the harp in every key,
      But found no heeding ear;
  And then Ithuriel touched me
      With a revealing spear.

  Not all my genius, great as 'tis,
      Could urge me out of night.
  I felt the faint appulse of his,
      And leapt into the light!

 W.J. Candleton
 %
 REPARATION, n.  Satisfaction that is made for a wrong and deducted
 from the satisfaction felt in committing it.
 %
 REPARTEE, n.  Prudent insult in retort.  Practiced by gentlemen with a
 constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to
 offend.  In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.
 %
 REPENTANCE, n.  The faithful attendant and follower of Punishment.  It
 is usually manifest in a degree of reformation that is not
 inconsistent with continuity of sin.

  Desirous to avoid the pains of Hell,
  You will repent and join the Church, Parnell?
  How needless!--Nick will keep you off the coals
  And add you to the woes of other souls.

 Jomater Abemy
 %
 REPLICA, n.  A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made
 the original.  It is so called to distinguish it from a "copy," which
 is made by another artist.  When the two are made with equal skill the
 replica is the more valuable, for it is supposed to be more beautiful
 than it looks.
 %
 REPORTER, n.  A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it
 with a tempest of words.

  "More dear than all my bosom knows, O thou
  Whose 'lips are sealed' and will not disavow!"
  So sang the blithe reporter-man as grew
  Beneath his hand the leg-long "interview."

 Barson Maith
 %
 REPOSE, v.i.  To cease from troubling.
 %
 REPRESENTATIVE, n.  In national politics, a member of the Lower House
 in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.
 %
 REPROBATION, n.  In theology, the state of a luckless mortal
 prenatally damned.  The doctrine of reprobation was taught by Calvin,
 whose joy in it was somewhat marred by the sad sincerity of his
 conviction that although some are foredoomed to perdition, others are
 predestined to salvation.
 %
 REPUBLIC, n.  A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing
 governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to
 enforce an optional obedience.  In a republic, the foundation of
 public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from
 ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to.
 There are as many kinds of republics as there are graduations between
 the despotism whence they came and the anarchy whither they lead.
 %
 REQUIEM, n.  A mass for the dead which the minor poets assure us the
 winds sing o'er the graves of their favorites.  Sometimes, by way of
 providing a varied entertainment, they sing a dirge.
 %
 RESIDENT, adj.  Unable to leave.
 %
 RESIGN, v.t.  To renounce an honor for an advantage.  To renounce an
 advantage for a greater advantage.

  'Twas rumored Leonard Wood had signed
      A true renunciation
  Of title, rank and every kind
      Of military station--
      Each honorable station.

  By his example fired--inclined
      To noble emulation,
  The country humbly was resigned
      To Leonard's resignation--
      His Christian resignation.

 Politian Greame
 %
 RESOLUTE, adj.  Obstinate in a course that we approve.
 %
 RESPECTABILITY, n.  The offspring of a _liaison_ between a bald head
 and a bank account.
 %
 RESPIRATOR, n.  An apparatus fitted over the nose and mouth of an
 inhabitant of London, whereby to filter the visible universe in its
 passage to the lungs.
 %
 RESPITE, n.  A suspension of hostilities against a sentenced assassin,
 to enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have
 been done by the prosecuting attorney.  Any break in the continuity of
 a disagreeable expectation.

  Altgeld upon his incandescent bed
  Lay, an attendant demon at his head.

  "O cruel cook, pray grant me some relief--
  Some respite from the roast, however brief."

  "Remember how on earth I pardoned all
  Your friends in Illinois when held in thrall."

  "Unhappy soul! for that alone you squirm
  O'er fire unquenched, a never-dying worm.

  "Yet, for I pity your uneasy state,
  Your doom I'll mollify and pains abate.

  "Naught, for a season, shall your comfort mar,
  Not even the memory of who you are."

  Throughout eternal space dread silence fell;
  Heaven trembled as Compassion entered Hell.

  "As long, sweet demon, let my respite be
  As, governing down here, I'd respite thee."

  "As long, poor soul, as any of the pack
  You thrust from jail consumed in getting back."

  A genial chill affected Altgeld's hide
  While they were turning him on t'other side.

 Joel Spate Woop
 %
 RESPLENDENT, adj.  Like a simple American citizen beduking himself in
 his lodge, or affirming his consequence in the Scheme of Things as an
 elemental unit of a parade.

      The Knights of Dominion were so resplendent in their velvet-
  and-gold that their masters would hardly have known them.

 "Chronicles of the Classes"
 %
 RESPOND, v.i.  To make answer, or disclose otherwise a consciousness
 of having inspired an interest in what Herbert Spencer calls "external
 coexistences," as Satan "squat like a toad" at the ear of Eve,
 responded to the touch of the angel's spear.  To respond in damages is
 to contribute to the maintenance of the plaintiff's attorney and,
 incidentally, to the gratification of the plaintiff.
 %
 RESPONSIBILITY, n.  A detachable burden easily shifted to the
 shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor.  In the days
 of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.

  Alas, things ain't what we should see
  If Eve had let that apple be;
  And many a feller which had ought
  To set with monarchses of thought,
  Or play some rosy little game
  With battle-chaps on fields of fame,
  Is downed by his unlucky star
  And hollers:  "Peanuts!--here you are!"

 "The Sturdy Beggar"
 %
 RESTITUTION, n.  The founding or endowing of universities and public
 libraries by gift or bequest.
 %
 RESTITUTOR, n.  Benefactor; philanthropist.
 %
 RETALIATION, n.  The natural rock upon which is reared the Temple of
 Law.
 %
 RETRIBUTION, n.  A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon
 the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by
 evicting them.

 In the lines following, addressed to an Emperor in exile by Father
 Gassalasca Jape, the reverend poet appears to hint his sense of the
 imprudence of turning about to face Retribution when it is taking
 exercise:

  What, what! Dom Pedro, you desire to go
      Back to Brazil to end your days in quiet?
  Why, what assurance have you 'twould be so?
      'Tis not so long since you were in a riot,
      And your dear subjects showed a will to fly at
  Your throat and shake you like a rat.  You know
  That empires are ungrateful; are you certain
  Republics are less handy to get hurt in?
 %
 REVEILLE, n.  A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields
 no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted.  In the
 American army it is ingeniously called "rev-e-lee," and to that
 pronunciation our countrymen have pledged their lives, their
 misfortunes and their sacred dishonor.
 %
 REVELATION, n.  A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed
 all that he knew.  The revealing is done by the commentators, who know
 nothing.
 %
 REVERENCE, n.  The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a
 man.
 %
 REVIEW, v.t.

  To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it,
      Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)
  At work upon a book, and so read out of it
      The qualities that you have first read into it.
 %
 REVOLUTION, n.  In politics, an abrupt change in the form of
 misgovernment.  Specifically, in American history, the substitution of
 the rule of an Administration for that of a Ministry, whereby the
 welfare and happiness of the people were advanced a full half-inch.
 Revolutions are usually accompanied by a considerable effusion of
 blood, but are accounted worth it--this appraisement being made by
 beneficiaries whose blood had not the mischance to be shed.  The
 French revolution is of incalculable value to the Socialist of to-day;
 when he pulls the string actuating its bones its gestures are
 inexpressibly terrifying to gory tyrants suspected of fomenting law
 and order.
 %
 RHADOMANCER, n.  One who uses a divining-rod in prospecting for
 precious metals in the pocket of a fool.
 %
 RIBALDRY, n.  Censorious language by another concerning oneself.
 %
 RIBROASTER, n.  Censorious language by oneself concerning another.
 The word is of classical refinement, and is even said to have been
 used in a fable by Georgius Coadjutor, one of the most fastidious
 writers of the fifteenth century--commonly, indeed, regarded as the
 founder of the Fastidiotic School.
 %
 RICE-WATER, n.  A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular
 novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the
 conscience.  It is said to be rich in both obtundite and lethargine,
 and is brewed in a midnight fog by a fat witch of the Dismal Swamp.
 %
 RICH, adj.  Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property
 of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the
 luckless.  That is the view that prevails in the underworld, where the
 Brotherhood of Man finds its most logical development and candid
 advocacy.  To denizens of the midworld the word means good and wise.
 %
 RICHES, n.

      A gift from Heaven signifying, "This is my beloved son, in
  whom I am well pleased."

 John D. Rockefeller


      The reward of toil and virtue.

 J.P. Morgan


      The savings of many in the hands of one.

 Eugene Debs

 To these excellent definitions the inspired lexicographer feels
 that he can add nothing of value.
 %
 RIDICULE, n.  Words designed to show that the person of whom they are
 uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who
 utters them.  It may be graphic, mimetic or merely rident.
 Shaftesbury is quoted as having pronounced it the test of truth--a
 ridiculous assertion, for many a solemn fallacy has undergone
 centuries of ridicule with no abatement of its popular acceptance.
 What, for example, has been more valorously derided than the doctrine
 of Infant Respectability?
 %
 RIGHT, n.  Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right
 to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have
 measles, and the like.  The first of these rights was once universally
 believed to be derived directly from the will of God; and this is
 still sometimes affirmed _in partibus infidelium_ outside the
 enlightened realms of Democracy; as the well known lines of Sir
 Abednego Bink, following:

      By what right, then, do royal rulers rule?
          Whose is the sanction of their state and pow'r?
      He surely were as stubborn as a mule
          Who, God unwilling, could maintain an hour
  His uninvited session on the throne, or air
  His pride securely in the Presidential chair.

      Whatever is is so by Right Divine;
          Whate'er occurs, God wills it so.  Good land!
      It were a wondrous thing if His design
          A fool could baffle or a rogue withstand!
  If so, then God, I say (intending no offence)
  Is guilty of contributory negligence.
 %
 RIGHTEOUSNESS, n.  A sturdy virtue that was once found among the
 Pantidoodles inhabiting the lower part of the peninsula of Oque.  Some
 feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it
 into several European countries, but it appears to have been
 imperfectly expounded.  An example of this faulty exposition is found
 in the only extant sermon of the pious Bishop Rowley, a characteristic
 passage from which is here given:

      "Now righteousness consisteth not merely in a holy state of
  mind, nor yet in performance of religious rites and obedience to
  the letter of the law.  It is not enough that one be pious and
  just:  one must see to it that others also are in the same state;
  and to this end compulsion is a proper means.  Forasmuch as my
  injustice may work ill to another, so by his injustice may evil be
  wrought upon still another, the which it is as manifestly my duty
  to estop as to forestall mine own tort.  Wherefore if I would be
  righteous I am bound to restrain my neighbor, by force if needful,
  in all those injurious enterprises from which, through a better
  disposition and by the help of Heaven, I do myself refrain."
 %
 RIME, n.  Agreeing sounds in the terminals of verse, mostly bad.  The
 verses themselves, as distinguished from prose, mostly dull.  Usually
 (and wickedly) spelled "rhyme."
 %
 RIMER, n.  A poet regarded with indifference or disesteem.

  The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,
  The sound surceases and the sense expires.
  Then the domestic dog, to east and west,
  Expounds the passions burning in his breast.
  The rising moon o'er that enchanted land
  Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.

 Mowbray Myles
 %
 RIOT, n.  A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent
 bystanders.

 R.I.P.  A careless abbreviation of _requiescat in pace_, attesting an
 indolent goodwill to the dead.  According to the learned Dr. Drigge,
 however, the letters originally meant nothing more than _reductus in
 pulvis_.
 %
 RITE, n.  A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept
 or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out
 of it.
 %
 RITUALISM, n.  A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear
 freedom, keeping off the grass.
 %
 ROAD, n.  A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is
 too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.

  All roads, howsoe'er they diverge, lead to Rome,
  Whence, thank the good Lord, at least one leads back home.

 Borey the Bald
 %
 ROBBER, n.  A candid man of affairs.
  It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling
 companion lodged at a wayside inn.  The surroundings were suggestive,
 and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn.  "Once
 there was a Farmer-General of the Revenues."  Saying nothing more, he
 was encouraged to continue.  "That," he said, "is the story."
 %
 ROMANCE, n.  Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as
 They Are.  In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to
 probability, as a domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance
 it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination--free,
 lawless, immune to bit and rein.  Your novelist is a poor creature, as
 Carlyle might say--a mere reporter.  He may invent his characters
 and plot, but he must not imagine anything taking place that might not
 occur, albeit his entire narrative is candidly a lie.  Why he imposes
 this hard condition on himself, and "drags at each remove a
 lengthening chain" of his own forging he can explain in ten thick
 volumes without illuminating by so much as a candle's ray the black
 profound of his own ignorance of the matter.  There are great novels,
 for great writers have "laid waste their powers" to write them, but it
 remains true that far and away the most fascinating fiction that we
 have is "The Thousand and One Nights."
 %
 ROPE, n.  An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they
 too are mortal.  It is put about the neck and remains in place one's
 whole life long.  It has been largely superseded by a more complex
 electrical device worn upon another part of the person; and this is
 rapidly giving place to an apparatus known as the preachment.
 %
 ROSTRUM, n.  In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship.  In
 America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically
 expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.
 %
 ROUNDHEAD, n.  A member of the Parliamentarian party in the English
 civil war--so called from his habit of wearing his hair short,
 whereas his enemy, the Cavalier, wore his long.  There were other
 points of difference between them, but the fashion in hair was the
 fundamental cause of quarrel.  The Cavaliers were royalists because
 the king, an indolent fellow, found it more convenient to let his hair
 grow than to wash his neck.  This the Roundheads, who were mostly
 barbers and soap-boilers, deemed an injury to trade, and the royal
 neck was therefore the object of their particular indignation.
 Descendants of the belligerents now wear their hair all alike, but the
 fires of animosity enkindled in that ancient strife smoulder to this
 day beneath the snows of British civility.
 %
 RUBBISH, n.  Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies,
 literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions
 lying due south from Boreaplas.
 %
 RUIN, v.  To destroy.  Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the
 virtue of maids.
 %
 RUM, n.  Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total
 abstainers.
 %
 RUMOR, n.  A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.

  Sharp, irresistible by mail or shield,
      By guard unparried as by flight unstayed,
  O serviceable Rumor, let me wield
      Against my enemy no other blade.
  His be the terror of a foe unseen,
      His the inutile hand upon the hilt,
  And mine the deadly tongue, long, slender, keen,
      Hinting a rumor of some ancient guilt.
  So shall I slay the wretch without a blow,
  Spare me to celebrate his overthrow,
  And nurse my valor for another foe.

 Joel Buxter
 %
 RUSSIAN, n.  A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul.  A
 Tartar Emetic.
 %
 SABBATH, n.  A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God
 made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.  Among the
 Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this
 is the Christian version:  "Remember the seventh day to make thy
 neighbor keep it wholly."  To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient
 that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early
 Fathers of the Church held other views.  So great is the sanctity of
 the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious
 jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is
 reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water
 version of the Fourth Commandment:

  Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,
  And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.

 Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the
 captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine
 ordinance.
 %
 SACERDOTALIST, n.  One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a
 priest.  Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge
 that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the
 Neo-Dictionarians.
 %
 SACRAMENT, n.  A solemn religious ceremony to which several degrees of
 authority and significance are attached.  Rome has seven sacraments,
 but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can
 afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity.  Some of the smaller
 sects have no sacraments at all--for which mean economy they will
 indubitable be damned.
 %
 SACRED, adj.  Dedicated to some religious purpose; having a divine
 character; inspiring solemn thoughts or emotions; as, the Dalai Lama
 of Thibet; the Moogum of M'bwango; the temple of Apes in Ceylon; the
 Cow in India; the Crocodile, the Cat and the Onion of ancient Egypt;
 the Mufti of Moosh; the hair of the dog that bit Noah, etc.

  All things are either sacred or profane.
  The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
  The latter to the devil appertain.

 Dumbo Omohundro
 %
 SANDLOTTER, n.  A vertebrate mammal holding the political views of
 Denis Kearney, a notorious demagogue of San Francisco, whose audiences
 gathered in the open spaces (sandlots) of the town.  True to the
 traditions of his species, this leader of the proletariat was finally
 bought off by his law-and-order enemies, living prosperously silent
 and dying impenitently rich.  But before his treason he imposed upon
 California a constitution that was a confection of sin in a diction of
 solecisms.  The similarity between the words "sandlotter" and
 "sansculotte" is problematically significant, but indubitably
 suggestive.
 %
 SAFETY-CLUTCH, n.  A mechanical device acting automatically to prevent
 the fall of an elevator, or cage, in case of an accident to the
 hoisting apparatus.

  Once I seen a human ruin
      In an elevator-well,
  And his members was bestrewin'
      All the place where he had fell.

  And I says, apostrophisin'
      That uncommon woful wreck:
  "Your position's so surprisin'
      That I tremble for your neck!"

  Then that ruin, smilin' sadly
      And impressive, up and spoke:
  "Well, I wouldn't tremble badly,
      For it's been a fortnight broke."

  Then, for further comprehension
      Of his attitude, he begs
  I will focus my attention
      On his various arms and legs--

  How they all are contumacious;
      Where they each, respective, lie;
  How one trotter proves ungracious,
      T'other one an _alibi_.

  These particulars is mentioned
      For to show his dismal state,
  Which I wasn't first intentioned
      To specifical relate.

  None is worser to be dreaded
      That I ever have heard tell
  Than the gent's who there was spreaded
      In that elevator-well.

  Now this tale is allegoric--
      It is figurative all,
  For the well is metaphoric
      And the feller didn't fall.

  I opine it isn't moral
      For a writer-man to cheat,
  And despise to wear a laurel
      As was gotten by deceit.

  For 'tis Politics intended
      By the elevator, mind,
  It will boost a person splendid
      If his talent is the kind.

  Col. Bryan had the talent
      (For the busted man is him)
  And it shot him up right gallant
      Till his head begun to swim.

  Then the rope it broke above him
      And he painful come to earth
  Where there's nobody to love him
      For his detrimented worth.

  Though he's livin' none would know him,
      Or at leastwise not as such.
  Moral of this woful poem:
      Frequent oil your safety-clutch.

 Porfer Poog
 %
 SAINT, n.  A dead sinner revised and edited.

 The Duchess of Orleans relates that the irreverent old
 calumniator, Marshal Villeroi, who in his youth had known St. Francis
 de Sales, said, on hearing him called saint:  "I am delighted to hear
 that Monsieur de Sales is a saint.  He was fond of saying indelicate
 things, and used to cheat at cards.  In other respects he was a
 perfect gentleman, though a fool."
 %
 SALACITY, n.  A certain literary quality frequently observed in
 popular novels, especially in those written by women and young girls,
 who give it another name and think that in introducing it they are
 occupying a neglected field of letters and reaping an overlooked
 harvest.  If they have the misfortune to live long enough they are
 tormented with a desire to burn their sheaves.
 %
 SALAMANDER, n.  Originally a reptile inhabiting fire; later, an
 anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile.  Salamanders are now
 believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account
 having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it
 with a bucket of holy water.
 %
 SARCOPHAGUS, n.  Among the Greeks a coffin which being made of a
 certain kind of carnivorous stone, had the peculiar property of
 devouring the body placed in it.  The sarcophagus known to modern
 obsequiographers is commonly a product of the carpenter's art.
 %
 SATAN, n.  One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in
 sashcloth and axes.  Being instated as an archangel, Satan made
 himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from
 Heaven.  Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a
 moment and at last went back.  "There is one favor that I should like
 to ask," said he.

 "Name it."

 "Man, I understand, is about to be created.  He will need laws."

 "What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn
 of eternity with hatred of his soul--you ask for the right to make
 his laws?"

 "Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them
 himself."

 It was so ordered.
 %
 SATIETY, n.  The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten
 its contents, madam.
 %
 SATIRE, n.  An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the
 vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with
 imperfect tenderness.  In this country satire never had more than a
 sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we
 are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all
 humor, being tolerant and sympathetic.  Moreover, although Americans
 are "endowed by their Creator" with abundant vice and folly, it is not
 generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the
 satirist is popularly regarded as a sour-spirited knave, and his ever
 victim's outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent.

  Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung
  In the dead language of a mummy's tongue,
  For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well--
  Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell.
  Had it been such as consecrates the Bible
  Thou hadst not perished by the law of libel.

 Barney Stims
 %
 SATYR, n.  One of the few characters of the Grecian mythology accorded
 recognition in the Hebrew.  (Leviticus, xvii, 7.)  The satyr was at
 first a member of the dissolute community acknowledging a loose
 allegiance with Dionysius, but underwent many transformations and
 improvements.  Not infrequently he is confounded with the faun, a
 later and decenter creation of the Romans, who was less like a man and
 more like a goat.
 %
 SAUCE, n.  The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment.
 A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one
 sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine.  For every sauce invented
 and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.
 %
 SAW, n.  A trite popular saying, or proverb.  (Figurative and
 colloquial.)  So called because it makes its way into a wooden head.
 Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.

      A penny saved is a penny to squander.

      A man is known by the company that he organizes.

      A bad workman quarrels with the man who calls him that.

      A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.

      Better late than before anybody has invited you.

      Example is better than following it.

      Half a loaf is better than a whole one if there is much else.

      Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.

      What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.

      Least said is soonest disavowed.

      He laughs best who laughs least.

      Speak of the Devil and he will hear about it.

      Of two evils choose to be the least.

      Strike while your employer has a big contract.

      Where there's a will there's a won't.
 %
 SCARABAEUS, n.  The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to
 our familiar "tumble-bug."  It was supposed to symbolize immortality,
 the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity.  Its habit
 of incubating its eggs in a ball of ordure may also have commended it
 to the favor of the priesthood, and may some day assure it an equal
 reverence among ourselves.  True, the American beetle is an inferior
 beetle, but the American priest is an inferior priest.
 %
 SCARABEE, n.  The same as scarabaeus.

              He fell by his own hand
                  Beneath the great oak tree.
              He'd traveled in a foreign land.
              He tried to make her understand
              The dance that's called the Saraband,
                  But he called it Scarabee.
  He had called it so through an afternoon,
      And she, the light of his harem if so might be,
      Had smiled and said naught.  O the body was fair to see,
  All frosted there in the shine o' the moon--
                      Dead for a Scarabee
  And a recollection that came too late.
                          O Fate!
                  They buried him where he lay,
                  He sleeps awaiting the Day,
                          In state,
  And two Possible Puns, moon-eyed and wan,
  Gloom over the grave and then move on.
                      Dead for a Scarabee!
                                                     Fernando Tapple
 %
 SCARIFICATION, n.  A form of penance practised by the mediaeval pious.
 The rite was performed, sometimes with a knife, sometimes with a hot
 iron, but always, says Arsenius Asceticus, acceptably if the penitent
 spared himself no pain nor harmless disfigurement.  Scarification,
 with other crude penances, has now been superseded by benefaction.
 The founding of a library or endowment of a university is said to
 yield to the penitent a sharper and more lasting pain than is
 conferred by the knife or iron, and is therefore a surer means of
 grace.  There are, however, two grave objections to it as a
 penitential method:  the good that it does and the taint of justice.
 %
 SCEPTER, n.  A king's staff of office, the sign and symbol of his
 authority.  It was originally a mace with which the sovereign
 admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the
 bones of their proponents.
 %
 SCIMITAR, n.  A curved sword of exceeding keenness, in the conduct of
 which certain Orientals attain a surprising proficiency, as the
 incident here related will serve to show.  The account is translated
 from the Japanese of Shusi Itama, a famous writer of the thirteenth
 century.

      When the great Gichi-Kuktai was Mikado he condemned to
  decapitation Jijiji Ri, a high officer of the Court.  Soon after
  the hour appointed for performance of the rite what was his
  Majesty's surprise to see calmly approaching the throne the man
  who should have been at that time ten minutes dead!
      "Seventeen hundred impossible dragons!" shouted the enraged
  monarch.  "Did I not sentence you to stand in the market-place and
  have your head struck off by the public executioner at three
  o'clock?  And is it not now 3:10?"
      "Son of a thousand illustrious deities," answered the
  condemned minister, "all that you say is so true that the truth is
  a lie in comparison.  But your heavenly Majesty's sunny and
  vitalizing wishes have been pestilently disregarded.  With joy I
  ran and placed my unworthy body in the market-place.  The
  executioner appeared with his bare scimitar, ostentatiously
  whirled it in air, and then, tapping me lightly upon the neck,
  strode away, pelted by the populace, with whom I was ever a
  favorite.  I am come to pray for justice upon his own dishonorable
  and treasonous head."
      "To what regiment of executioners does the black-boweled
  caitiff belong?" asked the Mikado.
      "To the gallant Ninety-eight Hundred and Thirty-seventh--I
  know the man.  His name is Sakko-Samshi."
      "Let him be brought before me," said the Mikado to an
  attendant, and a half-hour later the culprit stood in the
  Presence.
      "Thou bastard son of a three-legged hunchback without thumbs!"
  roared the sovereign--"why didst thou but lightly tap the neck
  that it should have been thy pleasure to sever?"
      "Lord of Cranes an Cherry Blooms," replied the executioner,
  unmoved, "command him to blow his nose with his fingers."
      Being commanded, Jijiji Ri laid hold of his nose and trumpeted
  like an elephant, all expecting to see the severed head flung
  violently from him.  Nothing occurred:  the performance prospered
  peacefully to the close, without incident.
      All eyes were now turned on the executioner, who had grown as
  white as the snows on the summit of Fujiama.  His legs trembled
  and his breath came in gasps of terror.
      "Several kinds of spike-tailed brass lions!" he cried; "I am a
  ruined and disgraced swordsman!  I struck the villain feebly
  because in flourishing the scimitar I had accidentally passed it
  through my own neck!  Father of the Moon, I resign my office."
      So saying, he gasped his top-knot, lifted off his head, and
  advancing to the throne laid it humbly at the Mikado's feet.
 %
 SCRAP-BOOK, n.  A book that is commonly edited by a fool.  Many
 persons of some small distinction compile scrap-books containing
 whatever they happen to read about themselves or employ others to
 collect.  One of these egotists was addressed in the lines following,
 by Agamemnon Melancthon Peters:

  Dear Frank, that scrap-book where you boast
      You keep a record true
  Of every kind of peppered roast
          That's made of you;

  Wherein you paste the printed gibes
      That revel round your name,
  Thinking the laughter of the scribes
          Attests your fame;

  Where all the pictures you arrange
      That comic pencils trace--
  Your funny figure and your strange
          Semitic face--

  Pray lend it me.  Wit I have not,
      Nor art, but there I'll list
  The daily drubbings you'd have got
          Had God a fist.
 %
 SCRIBBLER, n.  A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to
 one's own.
 %
 SCRIPTURES, n.  The sacred books of our holy religion, as
 distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other
 faiths are based.
 %
 SEAL, n.  A mark impressed upon certain kinds of documents to attest
 their authenticity and authority.  Sometimes it is stamped upon wax,
 and attached to the paper, sometimes into the paper itself.  Sealing,
 in this sense, is a survival of an ancient custom of inscribing
 important papers with cabalistic words or signs to give them a magical
 efficacy independent of the authority that they represent.  In the
 British museum are preserved many ancient papers, mostly of a
 sacerdotal character, validated by necromantic pentagrams and other
 devices, frequently initial letters of words to conjure with; and in
 many instances these are attached in the same way that seals are
 appended now.  As nearly every reasonless and apparently meaningless
 custom, rite or observance of modern times had origin in some remote
 utility, it is pleasing to note an example of ancient nonsense
 evolving in the process of ages into something really useful.  Our
 word "sincere" is derived from _sine cero_, without wax, but the
 learned are not in agreement as to whether this refers to the absence
 of the cabalistic signs, or to that of the wax with which letters were
 formerly closed from public scrutiny.  Either view of the matter will
 serve one in immediate need of an hypothesis.  The initials L.S.,
 commonly appended to signatures of legal documents, mean _locum
 sigillis_, the place of the seal, although the seal is no longer used
 --an admirable example of conservatism distinguishing Man from the
 beasts that perish.  The words _locum sigillis_ are humbly suggested
 as a suitable motto for the Pribyloff Islands whenever they shall take
 their place as a sovereign State of the American Union.
 %
 SEINE, n.  A kind of net for effecting an involuntary change of
 environment.  For fish it is made strong and coarse, but women are
 more easily taken with a singularly delicate fabric weighted with
 small, cut stones.

  The devil casting a seine of lace,
      (With precious stones 'twas weighted)
  Drew it into the landing place
      And its contents calculated.

  All souls of women were in that sack--
      A draft miraculous, precious!
  But ere he could throw it across his back
      They'd all escaped through the meshes.

 Baruch de Loppis
 %
 SELF-ESTEEM, n.  An erroneous appraisement.
 %
 SELF-EVIDENT, adj.  Evident to one's self and to nobody else.
 %
 SELFISH, adj.  Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
 %
 SENATE, n.  A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
 misdemeanors.
 %
 SERIAL, n.  A literary work, usually a story that is not true,
 creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.
 Frequently appended to each installment is a "synposis of preceding
 chapters" for those who have not read them, but a direr need is a
 synposis of succeeding chapters for those who do not intend to read
 _them_.  A synposis of the entire work would be still better.

 The late James F. Bowman was writing a serial tale for a weekly
 paper in collaboration with a genius whose name has not come down to
 us.  They wrote, not jointly but alternately, Bowman supplying the
 installment for one week, his friend for the next, and so on, world
 without end, they hoped.  Unfortunately they quarreled, and one Monday
 morning when Bowman read the paper to prepare himself for his task, he
 found his work cut out for him in a way to surprise and pain him.  His
 collaborator had embarked every character of the narrative on a ship
 and sunk them all in the deepest part of the Atlantic.
 %
 SEVERALTY, n.  Separateness, as, lands in severalty, i.e., lands held
 individually, not in joint ownership.  Certain tribes of Indians are
 believed now to be sufficiently civilized to have in severalty the
 lands that they have hitherto held as tribal organizations, and could
 not sell to the Whites for waxen beads and potato whiskey.

  Lo! the poor Indian whose unsuited mind
  Saw death before, hell and the grave behind;
  Whom thrifty settler ne'er besought to stay--
  His small belongings their appointed prey;
  Whom Dispossession, with alluring wile,
  Persuaded elsewhere every little while!
  His fire unquenched and his undying worm
  By "land in severalty" (charming term!)
  Are cooled and killed, respectively, at last,
  And he to his new holding anchored fast!
 %
 SHERIFF, n.  In America the chief executive officer of a county, whose
 most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern
 States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.

  John Elmer Pettibone Cajee
  (I write of him with little glee)
  Was just as bad as he could be.

  'Twas frequently remarked:  "I swon!
  The sun has never looked upon
  So bad a man as Neighbor John."

  A sinner through and through, he had
  This added fault:  it made him mad
  To know another man was bad.

  In such a case he thought it right
  To rise at any hour of night
  And quench that wicked person's light.

  Despite the town's entreaties, he
  Would hale him to the nearest tree
  And leave him swinging wide and free.

  Or sometimes, if the humor came,
  A luckless wight's reluctant frame
  Was given to the cheerful flame.

  While it was turning nice and brown,
  All unconcerned John met the frown
  Of that austere and righteous town.

  "How sad," his neighbors said, "that he
  So scornful of the law should be--
  An anar c, h, i, s, t."

  (That is the way that they preferred
  To utter the abhorrent word,
  So strong the aversion that it stirred.)

  "Resolved," they said, continuing,
  "That Badman John must cease this thing
  Of having his unlawful fling.

  "Now, by these sacred relics"--here
  Each man had out a souvenir
  Got at a lynching yesteryear--

  "By these we swear he shall forsake
  His ways, nor cause our hearts to ache
  By sins of rope and torch and stake.

  "We'll tie his red right hand until
  He'll have small freedom to fulfil
  The mandates of his lawless will."

  So, in convention then and there,
  They named him Sheriff.  The affair
  Was opened, it is said, with prayer.

 J. Milton Sloluck
 %
 SIREN, n.  One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt
 to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave.  Figuratively, any
 lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing
 performance.
 %
 SLANG, n.  The grunt of the human hog (_Pignoramus intolerabilis_)
 with an audible memory.  The speech of one who utters with his tongue
 what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in
 accomplishing the feat of a parrot.  A means (under Providence) of
 setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.
 %
 SMITHAREEN, n.  A fragment, a decomponent part, a remain.  The word is
 used variously, but in the following verse on a noted female reformer
 who opposed bicycle-riding by women because it "led them to the devil"
 it is seen at its best:

  The wheels go round without a sound--
      The maidens hold high revel;
  In sinful mood, insanely gay,
  True spinsters spin adown the way
      From duty to the devil!
  They laugh, they sing, and--ting-a-ling!
      Their bells go all the morning;
  Their lanterns bright bestar the night
      Pedestrians a-warning.
  With lifted hands Miss Charlotte stands,
      Good-Lording and O-mying,
  Her rheumatism forgotten quite,
      Her fat with anger frying.
  She blocks the path that leads to wrath,
      Jack Satan's power defying.
  The wheels go round without a sound
      The lights burn red and blue and green.
  What's this that's found upon the ground?
      Poor Charlotte Smith's a smithareen!

 John William Yope
 %
 SOPHISTRY, n.  The controversial method of an opponent, distinguished
 from one's own by superior insincerity and fooling.  This method is
 that of the later Sophists, a Grecian sect of philosophers who began
 by teaching wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in brief, whatever men
 ought to know, but lost themselves in a maze of quibbles and a fog of
 words.

  His bad opponent's "facts" he sweeps away,
  And drags his sophistry to light of day;
  Then swears they're pushed to madness who resort
  To falsehood of so desperate a sort.
  Not so; like sods upon a dead man's breast,
  He lies most lightly who the least is pressed.

 Polydore Smith
 %
 SORCERY, n.  The ancient prototype and forerunner of political
 influence.  It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was
 punished by torture and death.  Augustine Nicholas relates that a poor
 peasant who had been accused of sorcery was put to the torture to
 compel a confession.  After enduring a few gentle agonies the
 suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively asked his
 tormentors if it were not possible to be a sorcerer without knowing
 it.
 %
 SOUL, n.  A spiritual entity concerning which there hath been brave
 disputation.  Plato held that those souls which in a previous state of
 existence (antedating Athens) had obtained the clearest glimpses of
 eternal truth entered into the bodies of persons who became
 philosophers.  Plato himself was a philosopher.  The souls that had
 least contemplated divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and
 despots.  Dionysius I, who had threatened to decapitate the
 broad-browed philosopher, was a usurper and a despot.  Plato, doubtless,
 was not the first to construct a system of philosophy that could be
 quoted against his enemies; certainly he was not the last.

 "Concerning the nature of the soul," saith the renowned author of
 _Diversiones Sanctorum_, "there hath been hardly more argument than
 that of its place in the body.  Mine own belief is that the soul hath
 her seat in the abdomen--in which faith we may discern and interpret
 a truth hitherto unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men
 most devout.  He is said in the Scripture to 'make a god of his belly'
 --why, then, should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him
 to freshen his faith?  Who so well as he can know the might and
 majesty that he shrines?  Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach
 are one Divine Entity; and such was the belief of Promasius, who
 nevertheless erred in denying it immortality.  He had observed that
 its visible and material substance failed and decayed with the rest of
 the body after death, but of its immaterial essence he knew nothing.
 This is what we call the Appetite, and it survives the wreck and reek
 of mortality, to be rewarded or punished in another world, according
 to what it hath demanded in the flesh.  The Appetite whose coarse
 clamoring was for the unwholesome viands of the general market and the
 public refectory shall be cast into eternal famine, whilst that which
 firmly though civilly insisted on ortolans, caviare, terrapin,
 anchovies, _pates de foie gras_ and all such Christian comestibles
 shall flesh its spiritual tooth in the souls of them forever and ever,
 and wreak its divine thirst upon the immortal parts of the rarest and
 richest wines ever quaffed here below.  Such is my religious faith,
 though I grieve to confess that neither His Holiness the Pope nor His
 Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I equally and profoundly
 revere) will assent to its dissemination."
 %
 SPOOKER, n.  A writer whose imagination concerns itself with
 supernatural phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks.  One of
 the most illustrious spookers of our time is Mr. William D. Howells,
 who introduces a well-credentialed reader to as respectable and
 mannerly a company of spooks as one could wish to meet.  To the terror
 that invests the chairman of a district school board, the Howells
 ghost adds something of the mystery enveloping a farmer from another
 township.
 %
 STORY, n.  A narrative, commonly untrue.  The truth of the stories
 here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.

 One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated
 at dinner alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.

 "Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_,
 is published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its
 authorship.  Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the
 Idiot of the Century.  Do you think that fair criticism?"

 "I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did
 not occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who
 wrote it."

 Mr. W.C. Morrow, who used to live in San Jose, California, was
 addicted to writing ghost stories which made the reader feel as if a
 stream of lizards, fresh from the ice, were streaking it up his back
 and hiding in his hair.  San Jose was at that time believed to be
 haunted by the visible spirit of a noted bandit named Vasquez, who had
 been hanged there.  The town was not very well lighted, and it is
 putting it mildly to say that San Jose was reluctant to be out o'
 nights.  One particularly dark night two gentlemen were abroad in the
 loneliest spot within the city limits, talking loudly to keep up their
 courage, when they came upon Mr. J.J. Owen, a well-known journalist.

 "Why, Owen," said one, "what brings you here on such a night as
 this?  You told me that this is one of Vasquez' favorite haunts!  And
 you are a believer.  Aren't you afraid to be out?"

 "My dear fellow," the journalist replied with a drear autumnal
 cadence in his speech, like the moan of a leaf-laden wind, "I am
 afraid to be in.  I have one of Will Morrow's stories in my pocket and
 %
 I don't dare to go where there is light enough to read it."

 Rear-Admiral Schley and Representative Charles F. Joy were
 standing near the Peace Monument, in Washington, discussing the
 question, Is success a failure?  Mr. Joy suddenly broke off in the
 middle of an eloquent sentence, exclaiming:  "Hello!  I've heard that
 band before.  Santlemann's, I think."

 "I don't hear any band," said Schley.

 "Come to think, I don't either," said Joy; "but I see General
 Miles coming down the avenue, and that pageant always affects me in
 the same way as a brass band.  One has to scrutinize one's impressions
 pretty closely, or one will mistake their origin."

 While the Admiral was digesting this hasty meal of philosophy
 General Miles passed in review, a spectacle of impressive dignity.
 When the tail of the seeming procession had passed and the two
 observers had recovered from the transient blindness caused by its
 effulgence--

 "He seems to be enjoying himself," said the Admiral.

 "There is nothing," assented Joy, thoughtfully, "that he enjoys
 one-half so well."


 The illustrious statesman, Champ Clark, once lived about a mile
 from the village of Jebigue, in Missouri.  One day he rode into town
 on a favorite mule, and, hitching the beast on the sunny side of a
 street, in front of a saloon, he went inside in his character of
 teetotaler, to apprise the barkeeper that wine is a mocker.  It was a
 dreadfully hot day.  Pretty soon a neighbor came in and seeing Clark,
 said:

 "Champ, it is not right to leave that mule out there in the sun.
 He'll roast, sure!--he was smoking as I passed him."

 "O, he's all right," said Clark, lightly; "he's an inveterate
 smoker."

 The neighbor took a lemonade, but shook his head and repeated that
 it was not right.

 He was a conspirator.  There had been a fire the night before:  a
 stable just around the corner had burned and a number of horses had
 put on their immortality, among them a young colt, which was roasted
 to a rich nut-brown.  Some of the boys had turned Mr. Clark's mule
 loose and substituted the mortal part of the colt.  Presently another
 man entered the saloon.

 "For mercy's sake!" he said, taking it with sugar, "do remove that
 mule, barkeeper:  it smells."

 "Yes," interposed Clark, "that animal has the best nose in
 Missouri.  But if he doesn't mind, you shouldn't."

 In the course of human events Mr. Clark went out, and there,
 apparently, lay the incinerated and shrunken remains of his charger.
 The boys did not have any fun out of Mr. Clarke, who looked at the
 body and, with the non-committal expression to which he owes so much
 of his political preferment, went away.  But walking home late that
 night he saw his mule standing silent and solemn by the wayside in the
 misty moonlight.  Mentioning the name of Helen Blazes with uncommon
 emphasis, Mr. Clark took the back track as hard as ever he could hook
 it, and passed the night in town.

 General H.H. Wotherspoon, president of the Army War College, has a
 pet rib-nosed baboon, an animal of uncommon intelligence but
 imperfectly beautiful.  Returning to his apartment one evening, the
 General was surprised and pained to find Adam (for so the creature is
 named, the general being a Darwinian) sitting up for him and wearing
 his master's best uniform coat, epaulettes and all.

 "You confounded remote ancestor!" thundered the great strategist,
 "what do you mean by being out of bed after naps?--and with my coat
 on!"

 Adam rose and with a reproachful look got down on all fours in the
 manner of his kind and, scuffling across the room to a table, returned
 with a visiting-card:  General Barry had called and, judging by an
 empty champagne bottle and several cigar-stumps, had been hospitably
 entertained while waiting.  The general apologized to his faithful
 progenitor and retired.  The next day he met General Barry, who said:

 "Spoon, old man, when leaving you last evening I forgot to ask you
 about those excellent cigars.  Where did you get them?"

 General Wotherspoon did not deign to reply, but walked away.

 "Pardon me, please," said Barry, moving after him; "I was joking
 of course.  Why, I knew it was not you before I had been in the room
 fifteen minutes."
 %
 SUCCESS, n.  The one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.  In
 literature, and particularly in poetry, the elements of success are
 exceedingly simple, and are admirably set forth in the following lines
 by the reverend Father Gassalasca Jape, entitled, for some mysterious
 reason, "John A. Joyce."

  The bard who would prosper must carry a book,
      Do his thinking in prose and wear
  A crimson cravat, a far-away look
      And a head of hexameter hair.
  Be thin in your thought and your body'll be fat;
  If you wear your hair long you needn't your hat.
 %
 SUFFRAGE, n.  Expression of opinion by means of a ballot.  The right
 of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means,
 as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another
 man's choice, and is highly prized.  Refusal to do so has the bad name
 of "incivism."  The incivilian, however, cannot be properly arraigned
 for his crime, for there is no legitimate accuser.  If the accuser is
 himself guilty he has no standing in the court of opinion; if not, he
 profits by the crime, for A's abstention from voting gives greater
 weight to the vote of B.  By female suffrage is meant the right of a
 woman to vote as some man tells her to.  It is based on female
 responsibility, which is somewhat limited.  The woman most eager to
 jump out of her petticoat to assert her rights is first to jump back
 into it when threatened with a switching for misusing them.
 %
 SYCOPHANT, n.  One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he
 may not be commanded to turn and be kicked.  He is sometimes an
 editor.

  As the lean leech, its victim found, is pleased
  To fix itself upon a part diseased
  Till, its black hide distended with bad blood,
  It drops to die of surfeit in the mud,
  So the base sycophant with joy descries
  His neighbor's weak spot and his mouth applies,
  Gorges and prospers like the leech, although,
  Unlike that reptile, he will not let go.
  Gelasma, if it paid you to devote
  Your talent to the service of a goat,
  Showing by forceful logic that its beard
  Is more than Aaron's fit to be revered;
  If to the task of honoring its smell
  Profit had prompted you, and love as well,
  The world would benefit at last by you
  And wealthy malefactors weep anew--
  Your favor for a moment's space denied
  And to the nobler object turned aside.
  Is't not enough that thrifty millionaires
  Who loot in freight and spoliate in fares,
  Or, cursed with consciences that bid them fly
  To safer villainies of darker dye,
  Forswearing robbery and fain, instead,
  To steal (they call it "cornering") our bread
  May see you groveling their boots to lick
  And begging for the favor of a kick?
  Still must you follow to the bitter end
  Your sycophantic disposition's trend,
  And in your eagerness to please the rich
  Hunt hungry sinners to their final ditch?
  In Morgan's praise you smite the sounding wire,
  And sing hosannas to great Havemeyer!
  What's Satan done that him you should eschew?
  He too is reeking rich--deducting _you_.
 %
 SYLLOGISM, n.  A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor
 assumption and an inconsequent.  (See LOGIC.)
 %
 SYLPH, n.  An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when
 the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory
 smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.  Sylphs were
 allied to gnomes, nymphs and salamanders, which dwelt, respectively,
 in earth, water and fire, all now insalubrious.  Sylphs, like fowls of
 the air, were male and female, to no purpose, apparently, for if they
 had progeny they must have nested in inaccessible places, none of the
 chicks having ever been seen.
 %
 SYMBOL, n.  Something that is supposed to typify or stand for
 something else.  Many symbols are mere "survivals"--things which
 having no longer any utility continue to exist because we have
 inherited the tendency to make them; as funereal urns carved on
 memorial monuments.  They were once real urns holding the ashes of the
 dead.  We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that
 conceals our helplessness.
 %
 SYMBOLIC, adj.  Pertaining to symbols and the use and interpretation
 of symbols.

  They say 'tis conscience feels compunction;
  I hold that that's the stomach's function,
  For of the sinner I have noted
  That when he's sinned he's somewhat bloated,
  Or ill some other ghastly fashion
  Within that bowel of compassion.
  True, I believe the only sinner
  Is he that eats a shabby dinner.
  You know how Adam with good reason,
  For eating apples out of season,
  Was "cursed."  But that is all symbolic:
  The truth is, Adam had the colic.

 G.J.









 T, the twentieth letter of the English alphabet, was by the Greeks
 absurdly called _tau_.  In the alphabet whence ours comes it had the
 form of the rude corkscrew of the period, and when it stood alone
 (which was more than the Phoenicians could always do) signified
 _Tallegal_, translated by the learned Dr. Brownrigg, "tanglefoot."
 %
 TABLE D'HOTE, n.  A caterer's thrifty concession to the universal
 passion for irresponsibility.

  Old Paunchinello, freshly wed,
      Took Madam P. to table,
  And there deliriously fed
      As fast as he was able.

  "I dote upon good grub," he cried,
      Intent upon its throatage.
  "Ah, yes," said the neglected bride,
      "You're in your _table d'hotage_."

 Associated Poets
 %
 TAIL, n.  The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its
 natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of
 its own.  Excepting in its foetal state, Man is without a tail, a
 privation of which he attests an hereditary and uneasy consciousness
 by the coat-skirt of the male and the train of the female, and by a
 marked tendency to ornament that part of his attire where the tail
 should be, and indubitably once was.  This tendency is most observable
 in the female of the species, in whom the ancestral sense is strong
 and persistent.  The tailed men described by Lord Monboddo are now
 generally regarded as a product of an imagination unusually
 susceptible to influences generated in the golden age of our pithecan
 past.
 %
 TAKE, v.t.  To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.
 %
 TALK, v.t.  To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an
 impulse without purpose.
 %
 TARIFF, n.  A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the
 domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.

  The Enemy of Human Souls
  Sat grieving at the cost of coals;
  For Hell had been annexed of late,
  And was a sovereign Southern State.

  "It were no more than right," said he,
  "That I should get my fuel free.
  The duty, neither just nor wise,
  Compels me to economize--
  Whereby my broilers, every one,
  Are execrably underdone.
  What would they have?--although I yearn
  To do them nicely to a turn,
  I can't afford an honest heat.
  This tariff makes even devils cheat!
  I'm ruined, and my humble trade
  All rascals may at will invade:
  Beneath my nose the public press
  Outdoes me in sulphureousness;
  The bar ingeniously applies
  To my undoing my own lies;
  My medicines the doctors use
  (Albeit vainly) to refuse
  To me my fair and rightful prey
  And keep their own in shape to pay;
  The preachers by example teach
  What, scorning to perform, I teach;
  And statesmen, aping me, all make
  More promises than they can break.
  Against such competition I
  Lift up a disregarded cry.
  Since all ignore my just complaint,
  By Hokey-Pokey!  I'll turn saint!"
  Now, the Republicans, who all
  Are saints, began at once to bawl
  Against _his_ competition; so
  There was a devil of a go!
  They locked horns with him, tete-a-tete
  In acrimonious debate,
  Till Democrats, forlorn and lone,
  Had hopes of coming by their own.
  That evil to avert, in haste
  The two belligerents embraced;
  But since 'twere wicked to relax
  A tittle of the Sacred Tax,
  'Twas finally agreed to grant
  The bold Insurgent-protestant
  A bounty on each soul that fell
  Into his ineffectual Hell.

 Edam Smith
 %
 TECHNICALITY, n.  In an English court a man named Home was tried for
 slander in having accused his neighbor of murder.  His exact words
 were:  "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook
 upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and
 the other side upon the other shoulder."  The defendant was acquitted
 by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words
 did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook,
 that being only an inference.
 %
 TEDIUM, n.  Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored.  Many
 fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an
 authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious
 source--the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum
 Laudamus_.  In this apparently natural derivation there is something
 that saddens.
 %
 TEETOTALER, n.  One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally,
 sometimes tolerably totally.
 %
 TELEPHONE, n.  An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
 advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
 %
 TELESCOPE, n.  A device having a relation to the eye similar to that
 of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us
 with a multitude of needless details.  Luckily it is unprovided with a
 bell summoning us to the sacrifice.
 %
 TENACITY, n.  A certain quality of the human hand in its relation to
 the coin of the realm.  It attains its highest development in the hand
 of authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in
 politics.  The following illustrative lines were written of a
 Californian gentleman in high political preferment, who has passed to
 his accounting:

  Of such tenacity his grip
  That nothing from his hand can slip.
  Well-buttered eels you may o'erwhelm
  In tubs of liquid slippery-elm
  In vain--from his detaining pinch
  They cannot struggle half an inch!
  'Tis lucky that he so is planned
  That breath he draws not with his hand,
  For if he did, so great his greed
  He'd draw his last with eager speed.
  Nay, that were well, you say.  Not so
  He'd draw but never let it go!
 %
 THEOSOPHY, n.  An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion
 and all the mystery of science.  The modern Theosophist holds, with
 the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this
 earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough
 for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime
 does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to
 wish to become.  To be absolutely wise and good--that is perfection;
 and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that
 everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection.
 Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem
 neither wiser nor better than they were last year.  The greatest and
 fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had
 no cat.
 %
 TIGHTS, n.  An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the
 general acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity.
 Public attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss
 Lillian Russell's refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as
 to her motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of
 ingenuity and sustained reflection.  It was Miss Hall's belief that
 nature had not endowed Miss Russell with beautiful legs.  This theory
 was impossible of acceptance by the male understanding, but the
 conception of a faulty female leg was of so prodigious originality as
 to rank among the most brilliant feats of philosophical speculation!
 It is strange that in all the controversy regarding Miss Russell's
 aversion to tights no one seems to have thought to ascribe it to what
 was known among the ancients as "modesty."  The nature of that
 sentiment is now imperfectly understood, and possibly incapable of
 exposition with the vocabulary that remains to us.  The study of lost
 arts has, however, been recently revived and some of the arts
 themselves recovered.  This is an epoch of _renaissances_, and there
 is ground for hope that the primitive "blush" may be dragged from its
 hiding-place amongst the tombs of antiquity and hissed on to the
 stage.
 %
 TOMB, n.  The House of Indifference.  Tombs are now by common consent
 invested with a certain sanctity, but when they have been long
 tenanted it is considered no sin to break them open and rifle them,
 the famous Egyptologist, Dr. Huggyns, explaining that a tomb may be
 innocently "glened" as soon as its occupant is done "smellynge," the
 soul being then all exhaled.  This reasonable view is now generally
 accepted by archaeologists, whereby the noble science of Curiosity has
 been greatly dignified.
 %
 TOPE, v.  To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig.
 In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping
 nations are in the forefront of civilization and power.  When pitted
 against the hard-drinking Christians the abstemious Mahometans go down
 like grass before the scythe.  In India one hundred thousand
 beef-eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two
 hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race.
 With what an easy grace the whisky-loving American pushed the temperate
 Spaniard out of his possessions!  From the time when the Berserkers
 ravaged all the coasts of western Europe and lay drunk in every
 conquered port it has been the same way:  everywhere the nations that
 drink too much are observed to fight rather well and not too
 righteously.  Wherefore the estimable old ladies who abolished the
 canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially
 augmented the nation's military power.
 %
 TORTOISE, n.  A creature thoughtfully created to supply occasion for
 the following lines by the illustrious Ambat Delaso:
 %
 TO MY PET TORTOISE


  My friend, you are not graceful--not at all;
  Your gait's between a stagger and a sprawl.

  Nor are you beautiful:  your head's a snake's
  To look at, and I do not doubt it aches.

  As to your feet, they'd make an angel weep.
  'Tis true you take them in whene'er you sleep.

  No, you're not pretty, but you have, I own,
  A certain firmness--mostly you're [sic] backbone.

  Firmness and strength (you have a giant's thews)
  Are virtues that the great know how to use--

  I wish that they did not; yet, on the whole,
  You lack--excuse my mentioning it--Soul.

  So, to be candid, unreserved and true,
  I'd rather you were I than I were you.

  Perhaps, however, in a time to be,
  When Man's extinct, a better world may see

  Your progeny in power and control,
  Due to the genesis and growth of Soul.

  So I salute you as a reptile grand
  Predestined to regenerate the land.

  Father of Possibilities, O deign
  To accept the homage of a dying reign!

  In the far region of the unforeknown
  I dream a tortoise upon every throne.

  I see an Emperor his head withdraw
  Into his carapace for fear of Law;

  A King who carries something else than fat,
  Howe'er acceptably he carries that;

  A President not strenuously bent
  On punishment of audible dissent--

  Who never shot (it were a vain attack)
  An armed or unarmed tortoise in the back;

  Subject and citizens that feel no need
  To make the March of Mind a wild stampede;

  All progress slow, contemplative, sedate,
  And "Take your time" the word, in Church and State.

  O Tortoise, 'tis a happy, happy dream,
  My glorious testudinous regime!

  I wish in Eden you'd brought this about
  By slouching in and chasing Adam out.
 %
 TREE, n.  A tall vegetable intended by nature to serve as a penal
 apparatus, though through a miscarriage of justice most trees bear
 only a negligible fruit, or none at all.  When naturally fruited, the
 tree is a beneficient agency of civilization and an important factor
 in public morals.  In the stern West and the sensitive South its fruit
 (white and black respectively) though not eaten, is agreeable to the
 public taste and, though not exported, profitable to the general
 welfare.  That the legitimate relation of the tree to justice was no
 discovery of Judge Lynch (who, indeed, conceded it no primacy over the
 lamp-post and the bridge-girder) is made plain by the following
 passage from Morryster, who antedated him by two centuries:

      While in yt londe I was carried to see ye Ghogo tree, whereof
  I had hearde moch talk; but sayynge yt I saw naught remarkabyll in
  it, ye hed manne of ye villayge where it grewe made answer as
  followeth:
      "Ye tree is not nowe in fruite, but in his seasonne you shall
  see dependynge fr. his braunches all soch as have affroynted ye
  King his Majesty."
      And I was furder tolde yt ye worde "Ghogo" sygnifyeth in yr
  tong ye same as "rapscal" in our owne.

 _Trauvells in ye Easte_
 %
 TRIAL, n.  A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the
 blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.  In order to
 effect this purpose it is necessary to supply a contrast in the person
 of one who is called the defendant, the prisoner, or the accused.  If
 the contrast is made sufficiently clear this person is made to undergo
 such an affliction as will give the virtuous gentlemen a comfortable
 sense of their immunity, added to that of their worth.  In our day the
 accused is usually a human being, or a socialist, but in mediaeval
 times, animals, fishes, reptiles and insects were brought to trial.  A
 beast that had taken human life, or practiced sorcery, was duly
 arrested, tried and, if condemned, put to death by the public
 executioner.  Insects ravaging grain fields, orchards or vineyards
 were cited to appeal by counsel before a civil tribunal, and after
 testimony, argument and condemnation, if they continued _in
 contumaciam_ the matter was taken to a high ecclesiastical court,
 where they were solemnly excommunicated and anathematized.  In a
 street of Toledo, some pigs that had wickedly run between the
 viceroy's legs, upsetting him, were arrested on a warrant, tried and
 punished.  In Naples an ass was condemned to be burned at the stake,
 but the sentence appears not to have been executed.  D'Addosio relates
 from the court records many trials of pigs, bulls, horses, cocks,
 dogs, goats, etc., greatly, it is believed, to the betterment of their
 conduct and morals.  In 1451 a suit was brought against the leeches
 infesting some ponds about Berne, and the Bishop of Lausanne,
 instructed by the faculty of Heidelberg University, directed that some
 of "the aquatic worms" be brought before the local magistracy.  This
 was done and the leeches, both present and absent, were ordered to
 leave the places that they had infested within three days on pain of
 incurring "the malediction of God."  In the voluminous records of this
 _cause celebre_ nothing is found to show whether the offenders braved
 the punishment, or departed forthwith out of that inhospitable
 jurisdiction.
 %
 TRICHINOSIS, n.  The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.

 Moses Mendlessohn having fallen ill sent for a Christian
 physician, who at once diagnosed the philosopher's disorder as
 trichinosis, but tactfully gave it another name.  "You need an
 immediate change of diet," he said; "you must eat six ounces of pork
 every other day."

 "Pork?" shrieked the patient--"pork?  Nothing shall induce me to
 touch it!"

 "Do you mean that?" the doctor gravely asked.

 "I swear it!"

 "Good!--then I will undertake to cure you."
 %
 TRINITY, n.  In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches,
 three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one.  Subordinate
 deities of the polytheistic faith, such as devils and angels, are not
 dowered with the power of combination, and must urge individually
 their claims to adoration and propitiation.  The Trinity is one of the
 most sublime mysteries of our holy religion.  In rejecting it because
 it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of
 theological fundamentals.  In religion we believe only what we do not
 understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that
 contradicts an incomprehensible one.  In that case we believe the
 former as a part of the latter.
 %
 TROGLODYTE, n.  Specifically, a cave-dweller of the paleolithic
 period, after the Tree and before the Flat.  A famous community of
 troglodytes dwelt with David in the Cave of Adullam.  The colony
 consisted of "every one that was in distress, and every one that was
 in debt, and every one that was discontented"--in brief, all the
 Socialists of Judah.
 %
 TRUCE, n.  Friendship.
 %
 TRUTH, n.  An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.
 Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the
 most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of
 existing with increasing activity to the end of time.
 %
 TRUTHFUL, adj.  Dumb and illiterate.
 %
 TRUST, n.  In American politics, a large corporation composed in
 greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in
 the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors
 and public enemies.
 %
 TURKEY, n.  A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious
 anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and
 gratitude.  Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.
 %
 TWICE, adv.  Once too often.
 %
 TYPE, n.  Pestilent bits of metal suspected of destroying
 civilization and enlightenment, despite their obvious agency in this
 incomparable dictionary.
 %
 TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n.  An African insect (_Glossina morsitans_)
 whose bite is commonly regarded as nature's most efficacious remedy
 for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American
 novelist (_Mendax interminabilis_).
 %
 UBIQUITY, n.  The gift or power of being in all places at one time,
 but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an
 attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.  This important
 distinction between ubiquity and omnipresence was not clear to the
 mediaeval Church and there was much bloodshed about it.  Certain
 Lutherans, who affirmed the presence everywhere of Christ's body were
 known as Ubiquitarians.  For this error they were doubtless damned,
 for Christ's body is present only in the eucharist, though that
 sacrament may be performed in more than one place simultaneously.  In
 recent times ubiquity has not always been understood--not even by
 Sir Boyle Roche, for example, who held that a man cannot be in two
 places at once unless he is a bird.
 %
 UGLINESS, n.  A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue
 without humility.
 %
 ULTIMATUM, n.  In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to
 concessions.

 Having received an ultimatum from Austria, the Turkish Ministry
 met to consider it.

 "O servant of the Prophet," said the Sheik of the Imperial Chibouk
 to the Mamoosh of the Invincible Army, "how many unconquerable
 soldiers have we in arms?"

 "Upholder of the Faith," that dignitary replied after examining
 his memoranda, "they are in numbers as the leaves of the forest!"

 "And how many impenetrable battleships strike terror to the hearts
 of all Christian swine?" he asked the Imaum of the Ever Victorious
 Navy.

 "Uncle of the Full Moon," was the reply, "deign to know that they
 are as the waves of the ocean, the sands of the desert and the stars
 of Heaven!"

 For eight hours the broad brow of the Sheik of the Imperial
 Chibouk was corrugated with evidences of deep thought:  he was
 calculating the chances of war.  Then, "Sons of angels," he said, "the
 die is cast!  I shall suggest to the Ulema of the Imperial Ear that he
 advise inaction.  In the name of Allah, the council is adjourned."
 %
 UN-AMERICAN, adj.  Wicked, intolerable, heathenish.
 %
 UNCTION, n.  An oiling, or greasing.  The rite of extreme unction
 consists in touching with oil consecrated by a bishop several parts of
 the body of one engaged in dying.  Marbury relates that after the rite
 had been administered to a certain wicked English nobleman it was
 discovered that the oil had not been properly consecrated and no other
 could be obtained.  When informed of this the sick man said in anger:
 "Then I'll be damned if I die!"

 "My son," said the priest, "this is what we fear."
 %
 UNDERSTANDING, n.  A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to
 know a house from a horse by the roof on the house.  Its nature and
 laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and
 Kant, who lived in a horse.

  His understanding was so keen
  That all things which he'd felt, heard, seen,
  He could interpret without fail
  If he was in or out of jail.
  He wrote at Inspiration's call
  Deep disquisitions on them all,
  Then, pent at last in an asylum,
  Performed the service to compile 'em.
  So great a writer, all men swore,
  They never had not read before.

 Jorrock Wormley
 %
 UNITARIAN, n.  One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.
 %
 UNIVERSALIST, n.  One who forgoes the advantage of a Hell for persons
 of another faith.
 %
 URBANITY, n.  The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to
 dwellers in all cities but New York.  Its commonest expression is
 heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not inconsistent with
 disregard of the rights of others.

  The owner of a powder mill
  Was musing on a distant hill--
      Something his mind foreboded--
  When from the cloudless sky there fell
  A deviled human kidney!  Well,
      The man's mill had exploded.
  His hat he lifted from his head;
  "I beg your pardon, sir," he said;
      "I didn't know 'twas loaded."

 Swatkin
 %
 USAGE, n.  The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and
 Third being Custom and Conventionality.  Imbued with a decent
 reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to
 produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
 %
 UXORIOUSNESS, n.  A perverted affection that has strayed to one's own
 wife.
 %
 VALOR, n.  A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler's
 hope.

 "Why have you halted?" roared the commander of a division and
 Chickamauga, who had ordered a charge; "move forward, sir, at once."

 "General," said the commander of the delinquent brigade, "I am
 persuaded that any further display of valor by my troops will bring
 them into collision with the enemy."
 %
 VANITY, n.  The tribute of a fool to the worth of the nearest ass.

  They say that hens do cackle loudest when
      There's nothing vital in the eggs they've laid;
      And there are hens, professing to have made
  A study of mankind, who say that men
  Whose business 'tis to drive the tongue or pen
      Make the most clamorous fanfaronade
      O'er their most worthless work; and I'm afraid
  They're not entirely different from the hen.
  Lo! the drum-major in his coat of gold,
      His blazing breeches and high-towering cap--
  Imperiously pompous, grandly bold,
      Grim, resolute, an awe-inspiring chap!
  Who'd think this gorgeous creature's only virtue
  Is that in battle he will never hurt you?

 Hannibal Hunsiker
 %
 VIRTUES, n.pl.  Certain abstentions.
 %
 VITUPERATION, n.  Satire, as understood by dunces and all such as
 suffer from an impediment in their wit.
 %
 VOTE, n.  The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a
 fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
 %
 W (double U) has, of all the letters in our alphabet, the only
 cumbrous name, the names of the others being monosyllabic.  This
 advantage of the Roman alphabet over the Grecian is the more valued
 after audibly spelling out some simple Greek word, like
 _epixoriambikos_.  Still, it is now thought by the learned that other
 agencies than the difference of the two alphabets may have been
 concerned in the decline of "the glory that was Greece" and the rise
 of "the grandeur that was Rome."  There can be no doubt, however, that
 by simplifying the name of W (calling it "wow," for example) our
 civilization could be, if not promoted, at least better endured.
 %
 WALL STREET, n.  A symbol of sin for every devil to rebuke.  That
 Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every
 unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven.  Even the great and
 good Andrew Carnegie has made his profession of faith in the matter.

  Carnegie the dauntless has uttered his call
  To battle:  "The brokers are parasites all!"
  Carnegie, Carnegie, you'll never prevail;
  Keep the wind of your slogan to belly your sail,
  Go back to your isle of perpetual brume,
  Silence your pibroch, doff tartan and plume:
  Ben Lomond is calling his son from the fray--
  Fly, fly from the region of Wall Street away!
  While still you're possessed of a single baubee
  (I wish it were pledged to endowment of me)
  'Twere wise to retreat from the wars of finance
  Lest its value decline ere your credit advance.
  For a man 'twixt a king of finance and the sea,
  Carnegie, Carnegie, your tongue is too free!

 Anonymus Bink
 %
 WAR, n.  A by-product of the arts of peace.  The most menacing
 political condition is a period of international amity.  The student
 of history who has not been taught to expect the unexpected may justly
 boast himself inaccessible to the light.  "In time of peace prepare
 for war" has a deeper meaning than is commonly discerned; it means,
 not merely that all things earthly have an end--that change is the
 one immutable and eternal law--but that the soil of peace is thickly
 sown with the seeds of war and singularly suited to their germination
 and growth.  It was when Kubla Khan had decreed his "stately pleasure
 dome"--when, that is to say, there were peace and fat feasting in
 Xanadu--that he

                      heard from afar
  Ancestral voices prophesying war.

 One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of
 men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable.  Let us
 have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of
 that elemental distrust that is the security of nations.  War loves to
 come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide
 the night.
 %
 WASHINGTONIAN, n.  A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of
 governing himself for the advantage of good government.  In justice to
 him it should be said that he did not want to.

  They took away his vote and gave instead
  The right, when he had earned, to _eat_ his bread.
  In vain--he clamors for his "boss," pour soul,
  To come again and part him from his roll.

 Offenbach Stutz
 %
 WEAKNESSES, n.pl.  Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she
 holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the
 service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.
 %
 WEATHER, n.  The climate of the hour.  A permanent topic of
 conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have
 inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal
 ancestors whom it keenly concerned.  The setting up official weather
 bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments
 are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle.

  Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
  And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be--
  Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
  With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
  While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
  From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
  He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
  On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote--
  For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
  "Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."

 Halcyon Jones
 %
 WEDDING, n.  A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one,
 one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become
 supportable.
 %
 WEREWOLF, n.  A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man.  All
 werewolves are of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to
 gratify a beastial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are as
 humane as is consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.

 Some Bavarian peasants having caught a wolf one evening, tied it
 to a post by the tail and went to bed.  The next morning nothing was
 there!  Greatly perplexed, they consulted the local priest, who told
 them that their captive was undoubtedly a werewolf and had resumed its
 human form during the night.  "The next time that you take a wolf," the
 good man said, "see that you chain it by the leg, and in the morning
 you will find a Lutheran."
 %
 WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n.  In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected
 affliction that strikes hard.

  Should you ask me whence this laughter,
  Whence this audible big-smiling,
  With its labial extension,
  With its maxillar distortion
  And its diaphragmic rhythmus
  Like the billowing of an ocean,
  Like the shaking of a carpet,
  I should answer, I should tell you:
  From the great deeps of the spirit,
  From the unplummeted abysmus
  Of the soul this laughter welleth
  As the fountain, the gug-guggle,
  Like the river from the canon [sic],
  To entoken and give warning
  That my present mood is sunny.
  Should you ask me further question--
  Why the great deeps of the spirit,
  Why the unplummeted abysmus
  Of the soule extrudes this laughter,
  This all audible big-smiling,
  I should answer, I should tell you
  With a white heart, tumpitumpy,
  With a true tongue, honest Injun:
  William Bryan, he has Caught It,
  Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

  Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank,
  Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,
  Standing silent in the kneedeep
  With his wing-tips crossed behind him
  And his neck close-reefed before him,
  With his bill, his william, buried
  In the down upon his bosom,
  With his head retracted inly,
  While his shoulders overlook it?
  Does the sandhill crane, the shankank,
  Shiver grayly in the north wind,
  Wishing he had died when little,
  As the sparrow, the chipchip, does?
  No 'tis not the Shankank standing,
  Standing in the gray and dismal
  Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep.
  No, 'tis peerless William Bryan
  Realizing that he's Caught It,
  Caught the Whangdepootenawah!
 %
 WHEAT, n.  A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some
 difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread.  The French are
 said to eat more bread _per capita_ of population than any other
 people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff
 palatable.
 %
 WHITE, adj. and n.  Black.
 %
 WIDOW, n.  A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to
 take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one
 of the most marked features of his character.
 %
 WINE, n.  Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union
 as "liquor," sometimes as "rum."  Wine, madam, is God's next best gift
 to man.
 %
 WIT, n.  The salt with which the American humorist spoils his
 intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
 %
 WITCH, n.  (1)  Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league
 with the devil.  (2)  A beautiful and attractive young woman, in
 wickedness a league beyond the devil.
 %
 WITTICISM, n.  A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldom
 noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a "joke."
 %
 WOMAN, n.

      An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a
  rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.  It is credited by
  many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility
  acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the
  postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion,
  deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld,
  it roareth now.  The species is the most widely distributed of all
  beasts of prey, infesting all habitable parts of the globe, from
  Greenland's spicy mountains to India's moral strand.  The popular
  name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind.
  The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the
  American variety (_felis pugnans_), is omnivorous and can be
  taught not to talk.

 Balthasar Pober
 %
 WORMS'-MEAT, n.  The finished product of which we are the raw
 material.  The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the
 Grantarium.  Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that
 houses it, but "this too must pass away."  Probably the silliest work
 in which a human being can engage is construction of a tomb for
 himself.  The solemn purpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by
 contrast the foreknown futility.

  Ambitious fool! so mad to be a show!
  How profitless the labor you bestow
      Upon a dwelling whose magnificence
  The tenant neither can admire nor know.

  Build deep, build high, build massive as you can,
  The wanton grass-roots will defeat the plan
      By shouldering asunder all the stones
  In what to you would be a moment's span.

  Time to the dead so all unreckoned flies
  That when your marble is all dust, arise,
      If wakened, stretch your limbs and yawn--
  You'll think you scarcely can have closed your eyes.

  What though of all man's works your tomb alone
  Should stand till Time himself be overthrown?
      Would it advantage you to dwell therein
  Forever as a stain upon a stone?

 Joel Huck
 %
 WORSHIP, n.  Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and
 fine finish of Deus Creatus.  A popular form of abjection, having an
 element of pride.
 %
 WRATH, n.  Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to
 exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, "the wrath of God,"
 "the day of wrath," etc.  Amongst the ancients the wrath of kings was
 deemed sacred, for it could usually command the agency of some god for
 its fit manifestation, as could also that of a priest.  The Greeks
 before Troy were so harried by Apollo that they jumped out of the
 frying-pan of the wrath of Chryses into the fire of the wrath of
 Achilles, though Agamemnon, the sole offender, was neither fried nor
 roasted.  A similar noted immunity was that of David when he incurred
 the wrath of Yahveh by numbering his people, seventy thousand of whom
 paid the penalty with their lives.  God is now Love, and a director of
 the census performs his work without apprehension of disaster.
 %
 X in our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility
 to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will
 doubtless last as long as the language.  X is the sacred symbol of ten
 dollars, and in such words as Xmas, Xn, etc., stands for Christ, not,
 as is popular supposed, because it represents a cross, but because the
 corresponding letter in the Greek alphabet is the initial of his name
 --_Xristos_.  If it represented a cross it would stand for St.
 Andrew, who "testified" upon one of that shape.  In the algebra of
 psychology x stands for Woman's mind.  Words beginning with X are
 Grecian and will not be defined in this standard English dictionary.
 %
 YANKEE, n.  In Europe, an American.  In the Northern States of our
 Union, a New Englander.  In the Southern States the word is unknown.
 (See DAMNYANK.)
 %
 YEAR, n.  A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
 %
 YESTERDAY, n.  The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire
 past of age.

  But yesterday I should have thought me blest
      To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak
      Of middle life and look adown the bleak
  And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,
  Where solemn shadows all the land invest
      And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak
      Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak
  The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest.
  Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame
      To stay the shadow on the dial's face
  At manhood's noonmark!  Now, in God His name
      I chide aloud the little interspace
  Disparting me from Certitude, and fain
  Would know the dream and vision ne'er again.

 Baruch Arnegriff


 It is said that in his last illness the poet Arnegriff was
 attended at different times by seven doctors.
 %
 YOKE, n.  An implement, madam, to whose Latin name, _jugum_, we owe
 one of the most illuminating words in our language--a word that
 defines the matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy.
 A thousand apologies for withholding it.
 %
 YOUTH, n.  The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum,
 Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of
 endowing a living Homer.

      Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth
  again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with
  whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and
  cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice never
  is heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and,
  howling, is cast into Baltimost!

 Polydore Smith
 %
 ZANY, n.  A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with
 ludicrous incompetence the _buffone_, or clown, and was therefore the
 ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters
 of the play.  The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as
 we to-day have the unhappiness to know him.  In the zany we see an
 example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission.  Another
 excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the
 rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the
 devil.
 %
 ZANZIBARI, n.  An inhabitant of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, off the
 eastern coast of Africa.  The Zanzibaris, a warlike people, are best
 known in this country through a threatening diplomatic incident that
 occurred a few years ago.  The American consul at the capital occupied
 a dwelling that faced the sea, with a sandy beach between.  Greatly to
 the scandal of this official's family, and against repeated
 remonstrances of the official himself, the people of the city
 persisted in using the beach for bathing.  One day a woman came down
 to the edge of the water and was stooping to remove her attire (a pair
 of sandals) when the consul, incensed beyond restraint, fired a charge
 of bird-shot into the most conspicuous part of her person.
 Unfortunately for the existing _entente cordiale_ between two great
 nations, she was the Sultana.
 %
 ZEAL, n.  A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and
 inexperienced.  A passion that goeth before a sprawl.

  When Zeal sought Gratitude for his reward
  He went away exclaiming:  "O my Lord!"
  "What do you want?" the Lord asked, bending down.
  "An ointment for my cracked and bleeding crown."

 Jum Coople
 %
 ZENITH, n.  The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man
 standing or a growing cabbage.  A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot
 is not considered as having a zenith, though from this view of the
 matter there was once a considerably dissent among the learned, some
 holding that the posture of the body was immaterial.  These were
 called Horizontalists, their opponents, Verticalists.  The
 Horizontalist heresy was finally extinguished by Xanobus, the
 philosopher-king of Abara, a zealous Verticalist.  Entering an
 assembly of philosophers who were debating the matter, he cast a
 severed human head at the feet of his opponents and asked them to
 determine its zenith, explaining that its body was hanging by the
 heels outside.  Observing that it was the head of their leader, the
 Horizontalists hastened to profess themselves converted to whatever
 opinion the Crown might be pleased to hold, and Horizontalism took its
 place among _fides defuncti_.
 %
 ZEUS, n.  The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter
 and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog.  Some explorers
 who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to
 have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought
 that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his
 monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives
 are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he
 worships under many sacred names.
 %
 ZIGZAG, v.t.  To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one
 carrying the white man's burden.  (From _zed_, _z_, and _jag_, an
 Icelandic word of unknown meaning.)

  He zedjagged so uncomen wyde
  Thet non coude pas on eyder syde;
  So, to com saufly thruh, I been
  Constreynet for to doodge betwene.

 Munwele
 %
 ZOOLOGY, n.  The science and history of the animal kingdom, including
 its king, the House Fly (_Musca maledicta_).  The father of Zoology
 was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother
 has not come down to us.  Two of the science's most illustrious
 expounders were Buffon and Oliver Goldsmith, from both of whom we
 learn (_L'Histoire generale des animaux_ and _A History of Animated
 Nature_) that the domestic cow sheds its horn every two years.