THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The Devil's Dictionary was begun in a weekly paper in 1881, and was
continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906. In that year a
large part of it was published in covers with the title The Cynic's
Word Book, a name which the author had not the power to reject or
happiness to approve. To quote the publishers of the present work:

"This more reverent title had previously been forced upon him by the
religious scruples of the last newspaper in which a part of the work had
appeared, with the natural consequence that when it came out in covers the
country already had been flooded by its imitators with a score of 'cynic'
books—The Cynic's This, The Cynic's That, and The
Cynic's t'Other. Most of these books were merely stupid, though some
of them added the distinction of silliness. Among them, they brought the
word 'cynic' into disfavor so deep that any book bearing it was
discredited in advance of publication."

Meantime, too, some of the enterprising humorists of the country had
helped themselves to such parts of the work as served their needs, and
many of its definitions, anecdotes, phrases and so forth, had become more
or less current in popular speech. This explanation is made, not with any
pride of priority in trifles, but in simple denial of possible charges of
plagiarism, which is no trifle. In merely resuming his own the author
hopes to be held guiltless by those to whom the work is addressed—enlightened
souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humor and
clean English to slang.

A conspicuous, and it is hoped not unpleasant, feature of the book is its
abundant illustrative quotations from eminent poets, chief of whom is that
learned and ingenious cleric, Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J., whose lines
bear his initials. To Father Jape's kindly encouragement and assistance
the author of the prose text is greatly indebted.

A.B.

A

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 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

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.

ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable
natural laws.

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.

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

ADORE, v.t. To venerate expectantly.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

ARCHITECT, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of
your money.

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.

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

B

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 contented.
          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.

C

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 worn 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-riding out one day,
  Across Mount Carmel 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 poured 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.

D

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.

E

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.

F

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 your 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.

G

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 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 proportioned 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 in 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."

H

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 gay 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 assisted in what ye were at—
      For it's naught ye are ever doin'."

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

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

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 sacred 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 crafty 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

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

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.

L

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 peoples 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

M

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 mighty 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.

N

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.

O

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 judged 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.

P

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."