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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Devil's Dictionary
+
+Author: Ambrose Bierce
+
+Posting Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #972]
+[Last updated: August 22, 2015]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Aloysius
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
+
+by Ambrose Bierce
+
+
+
+
+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 [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself.
+Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and
+the hope of Hell.
+
+ABORIGINIES, n.  Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a
+newly discovered country.  They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
+
+ABRACADABRA.
+
+  By _Abracadabra_ we signify
+      An infinite number of things.
+  'Tis the answer to What? and How? and Why?
+  And Whence? and Whither?--a word whereby
+      The Truth (with the comfort it brings)
+  Is open to all who grope in night,
+  Crying for Wisdom's holy light.
+
+  Whether the word is a verb or a noun
+      Is knowledge beyond my reach.
+  I only know that 'tis handed down.
+          From sage to sage,
+          From age to age--
+      An immortal part of speech!
+
+  Of an ancient man the tale is told
+  That he lived to be ten centuries old,
+      In a cave on a mountain side.
+      (True, he finally died.)
+  The fame of his wisdom filled the land,
+  For his head was bald, and you'll understand
+      His beard was long and white
+      And his eyes uncommonly bright.
+
+  Philosophers gathered from far and near
+  To sit at his feet and hear and hear,
+          Though he never was heard
+          To utter a word
+      But "_Abracadabra, abracadab_,
+          _Abracada, abracad_,
+      _Abraca, abrac, abra, ab!_"
+          'Twas all he had,
+  'Twas all they wanted to hear, and each
+  Made copious notes of the mystical speech,
+          Which they published next--
+          A trickle of text
+  In a meadow of commentary.
+      Mighty big books were these,
+      In number, as leaves of trees;
+  In learning, remarkable--very!
+
+          He's dead,
+          As I said,
+  And the books of the sages have perished,
+  But his wisdom is sacredly cherished.
+  In _Abracadabra_ it solemnly rings,
+  Like an ancient bell that forever swings.
+          O, I love to hear
+          That word make clear
+  Humanity's General Sense of Things.
+
+Jamrach Holobom
+
+
+ABRIDGE, v.t.  To shorten.
+
+      When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for
+  people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of
+  mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
+  them to the separation.
+
+Oliver Cromwell
+
+
+ABRUPT, adj.  Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon-
+shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most
+affected by it.  Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another
+author's ideas that they were "concatenated without abruption."
+
+ABSCOND, v.i.  To "move in a mysterious way," commonly with the
+property of another.
+
+  Spring beckons!  All things to the call respond;
+  The trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
+
+Phela Orm
+
+
+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 contended.
+          Now man is tormented
+  Until to buy babes he has squandered
+  His money.  And so I have pondered
+          This thing, and thought may be
+          'T were better that Baby
+  The First had been eagled or condored.
+
+Ro Amil
+
+
+BACCHUS, n.  A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse
+for getting drunk.
+
+  Is public worship, then, a sin,
+      That for devotions paid to Bacchus
+  The lictors dare to run us in,
+      And resolutely thump and whack us?
+
+Jorace
+
+
+BACK, n.  That part of your friend which it is your privilege to
+contemplate in your adversity.
+
+BACKBITE, v.t.  To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find
+you.
+
+BAIT, n.  A preparation that renders the hook more palatable.  The
+best kind is beauty.
+
+BAPTISM, n.  A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself
+in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever.  It is
+performed with water in two ways--by immersion, or plunging, and by
+aspersion, or sprinkling.
+
+  But whether the plan of immersion
+  Is better than simple aspersion
+      Let those immersed
+      And those aspersed
+  Decide by the Authorized Version,
+  And by matching their agues tertian.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+BAROMETER, n.  An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of
+weather we are having.
+
+BARRACK, n.  A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of
+which it is their business to deprive others.
+
+BASILISK, n.  The cockatrice.  A sort of serpent hatched from the egg
+of a cock.  The basilisk had a bad eye, and its glance was fatal.
+Many infidels deny this creature's existence, but Semprello Aurator
+saw and handled one that had been blinded by lightning as a punishment
+for having fatally gazed on a lady of rank whom Jupiter loved.  Juno
+afterward restored the reptile's sight and hid it in a cave.  Nothing
+is so well attested by the ancients as the existence of the basilisk,
+but the cocks have stopped laying.
+
+BASTINADO, n.  The act of walking on wood without exertion.
+
+BATH, n.  A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship,
+with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.
+
+  The man who taketh a steam bath
+  He loseth all the skin he hath,
+  And, for he's boiled a brilliant red,
+  Thinketh to cleanliness he's wed,
+  Forgetting that his lungs he's soiling
+  With dirty vapors of the boiling.
+
+Richard Gwow
+
+
+BATTLE, n.  A method of untying with the teeth of a political knot
+that would not yield to the tongue.
+
+BEARD, n.  The hair that is commonly cut off by those who justly
+execrate the absurd Chinese custom of shaving the head.
+
+BEAUTY, n.  The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a
+husband.
+
+BEFRIEND, v.t.  To make an ingrate.
+
+BEG, v.  To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the
+belief that it will not be given.
+
+  Who is that, father?
+                        A mendicant, child,
+  Haggard, morose, and unaffable--wild!
+  See how he glares through the bars of his cell!
+  With Citizen Mendicant all is not well.
+
+  Why did they put him there, father?
+
+                                       Because
+  Obeying his belly he struck at the laws.
+
+  His belly?
+
+              Oh, well, he was starving, my boy--
+  A state in which, doubtless, there's little of joy.
+  No bite had he eaten for days, and his cry
+  Was "Bread!" ever "Bread!"
+
+                              What's the matter with pie?
+
+  With little to wear, he had nothing to sell;
+  To beg was unlawful--improper as well.
+
+  Why didn't he work?
+
+                       He would even have done that,
+  But men said:  "Get out!" and the State remarked:  "Scat!"
+  I mention these incidents merely to show
+  That the vengeance he took was uncommonly low.
+  Revenge, at the best, is the act of a Siou,
+  But for trifles--
+
+                      Pray what did bad Mendicant do?
+
+  Stole two loaves of bread to replenish his lack
+  And tuck out the belly that clung to his back.
+
+  Is that _all_ father dear?
+
+                              There's little to tell:
+  They sent him to jail, and they'll send him to--well,
+  The company's better than here we can boast,
+  And there's--
+
+                  Bread for the needy, dear father?
+
+                                                     Um--toast.
+
+Atka Mip
+
+
+BEGGAR, n.  One who has relied on the assistance of his friends.
+
+BEHAVIOR, n.  Conduct, as determined, not by principle, but by
+breeding.  The word seems to be somewhat loosely used in Dr. Jamrach
+Holobom's translation of the following lines from the _Dies Irae_:
+
+      Recordare, Jesu pie,
+      Quod sum causa tuae viae.
+      Ne me perdas illa die.
+
+  Pray remember, sacred Savior,
+  Whose the thoughtless hand that gave your
+  Death-blow.  Pardon such behavior.
+
+BELLADONNA, n.  In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly
+poison.  A striking example of the essential identity of the two
+tongues.
+
+BENEDICTINES, n.  An order of monks otherwise known as black friars.
+
+  She thought it a crow, but it turn out to be
+      A monk of St. Benedict croaking a text.
+  "Here's one of an order of cooks," said she--
+      "Black friars in this world, fried black in the next."
+
+"The Devil on Earth" (London, 1712)
+
+
+BENEFACTOR, n.  One who makes heavy purchases of ingratitude, without,
+however, materially affecting the price, which is still within the
+means of all.
+
+BERENICE'S HAIR, n.  A constellation (_Coma Berenices_) named in honor
+of one who sacrificed her hair to save her husband.
+
+  Her locks an ancient lady gave
+  Her loving husband's life to save;
+  And men--they honored so the dame--
+  Upon some stars bestowed her name.
+
+  But to our modern married fair,
+  Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
+  No stellar recognition's given.
+  There are not stars enough in heaven.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+BIGAMY, n.  A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will
+adjudge a punishment called trigamy.
+
+BIGOT, n.  One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion
+that you do not entertain.
+
+BILLINGSGATE, n.  The invective of an opponent.
+
+BIRTH, n.  The first and direst of all disasters.  As to the nature of
+it there appears to be no uniformity.  Castor and Pollux were born
+from the egg.  Pallas came out of a skull.  Galatea was once a block
+of stone.  Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he
+grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water.  It
+is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a
+stroke of lightning.  Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount
+Aetna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar.
+
+BLACKGUARD, n.  A man whose qualities, prepared for display like a box
+of berries in a market--the fine ones on top--have been opened on
+the wrong side.  An inverted gentleman.
+
+BLANK-VERSE, n.  Unrhymed iambic pentameters--the most difficult
+kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much
+affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.
+
+BODY-SNATCHER, n.  A robber of grave-worms.  One who supplies the
+young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied
+the undertaker.  The hyena.
+
+  "One night," a doctor said, "last fall,
+  I and my comrades, four in all,
+      When visiting a graveyard stood
+  Within the shadow of a wall.
+
+  "While waiting for the moon to sink
+  We saw a wild hyena slink
+      About a new-made grave, and then
+  Begin to excavate its brink!
+
+  "Shocked by the horrid act, we made
+  A sally from our ambuscade,
+      And, falling on the unholy beast,
+  Dispatched him with a pick and spade."
+
+Bettel K. Jhones
+
+
+BONDSMAN, n.  A fool who, having property of his own, undertakes to
+become responsible for that entrusted to another to a third.
+
+Philippe of Orleans wishing to appoint one of his favorites, a
+dissolute nobleman, to a high office, asked him what security he would
+be able to give.  "I need no bondsmen," he replied, "for I can give
+you my word of honor."  "And pray what may be the value of that?"
+inquired the amused Regent.  "Monsieur, it is worth its weight in gold."
+
+BORE, n.  A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
+
+BOTANY, n.  The science of vegetables--those that are not good to
+eat, as well as those that are.  It deals largely with their flowers,
+which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and
+ill-smelling.
+
+BOTTLE-NOSED, adj.  Having a nose created in the image of its maker.
+
+BOUNDARY, n.  In political geography, an imaginary line between two
+nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary
+rights of the other.
+
+BOUNTY, n.  The liberality of one who has much, in permitting one who
+has nothing to get all that he can.
+
+      A single swallow, it is said, devours ten millions of insects
+  every year.  The supplying of these insects I take to be a signal
+  instance of the Creator's bounty in providing for the lives of His
+  creatures.
+
+Henry Ward Beecher
+
+
+BRAHMA, n.  He who created the Hindoos, who are preserved by Vishnu
+and destroyed by Siva--a rather neater division of labor than is
+found among the deities of some other nations.  The Abracadabranese,
+for example, are created by Sin, maintained by Theft and destroyed by
+Folly.  The priests of Brahma, like those of Abracadabranese, are holy
+and learned men who are never naughty.
+
+  O Brahma, thou rare old Divinity,
+  First Person of the Hindoo Trinity,
+  You sit there so calm and securely,
+  With feet folded up so demurely--
+  You're the First Person Singular, surely.
+
+Polydore Smith
+
+
+BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think what we think.  That which
+distinguishes the man who is content to _be_ something from the man
+who wishes to _do_ something.  A man of great wealth, or one who has
+been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of
+brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on.  In our
+civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so
+highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of
+office.
+
+BRANDY, n.  A cordial composed of one part thunder-and-lightning, one
+part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the
+grave and four parts clarified Satan.  Dose, a headful all the time.
+Brandy is said by Dr. Johnson to be the drink of heroes.  Only a hero
+will venture to drink it.
+
+BRIDE, n.  A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
+
+BRUTE, n.  See HUSBAND.
+
+
+
+
+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 worm by Jesters of the Court of Heaven.
+
+CAPITAL, n.  The seat of misgovernment.  That which provides the fire,
+the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the
+anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the
+disgrace before meat.  _Capital Punishment_, a penalty regarding the
+justice and expediency of which many worthy persons--including all
+the assassins--entertain grave misgivings.
+
+CARMELITE, n.  A mendicant friar of the order of Mount Carmel.
+
+  As Death was a-rising out one day,
+  Across Mount Camel he took his way,
+      Where he met a mendicant monk,
+      Some three or four quarters drunk,
+  With a holy leer and a pious grin,
+  Ragged and fat and as saucy as sin,
+      Who held out his hands and cried:
+  "Give, give in Charity's name, I pray.
+  Give in the name of the Church.  O give,
+  Give that her holy sons may live!"
+      And Death replied,
+      Smiling long and wide:
+      "I'll give, holy father, I'll give thee--a ride."
+
+      With a rattle and bang
+      Of his bones, he sprang
+  From his famous Pale Horse, with his spear;
+      By the neck and the foot
+      Seized the fellow, and put
+  Him astride with his face to the rear.
+
+  The Monarch laughed loud with a sound that fell
+  Like clods on the coffin's sounding shell:
+  "Ho, ho!  A beggar on horseback, they say,
+      Will ride to the devil!"--and _thump_
+      Fell the flat of his dart on the rump
+  Of the charger, which galloped away.
+
+  Faster and faster and faster it flew,
+  Till the rocks and the flocks and the trees that grew
+  By the road were dim and blended and blue
+      To the wild, wild eyes
+      Of the rider--in size
+      Resembling a couple of blackberry pies.
+  Death laughed again, as a tomb might laugh
+      At a burial service spoiled,
+      And the mourners' intentions foiled
+      By the body erecting
+      Its head and objecting
+  To further proceedings in its behalf.
+
+  Many a year and many a day
+  Have passed since these events away.
+  The monk has long been a dusty corse,
+  And Death has never recovered his horse.
+      For the friar got hold of its tail,
+      And steered it within the pale
+  Of the monastery gray,
+  Where the beast was stabled and fed
+  With barley and oil and bread
+  Till fatter it grew than the fattest friar,
+  And so in due course was appointed Prior.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+CARNIVOROUS, adj.  Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorous
+vegetarian, his heirs and assigns.
+
+CARTESIAN, adj.  Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author
+of the celebrated dictum, _Cogito ergo sum_--whereby he was pleased
+to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence.  The dictum
+might be improved, however, thus:  _Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum_--
+"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an
+approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
+
+CAT, n.  A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be
+kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
+
+  This is a dog,
+      This is a cat.
+  This is a frog,
+      This is a rat.
+  Run, dog, mew, cat.
+  Jump, frog, gnaw, rat.
+
+Elevenson
+
+
+CAVILER, n.  A critic of our own work.
+
+CEMETERY, n.  An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies,
+poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager.  The
+inscriptions following will serve to illustrate the success attained
+in these Olympian games:
+
+      His virtues were so conspicuous that his enemies, unable to
+  overlook them, denied them, and his friends, to whose loose lives
+  they were a rebuke, represented them as vices.  They are here
+  commemorated by his family, who shared them.
+      In the earth we here prepare a
+      Place to lay our little Clara.
+
+Thomas M. and Mary Frazer
+
+      P.S.--Gabriel will raise her.
+
+CENTAUR, n.  One of a race of persons who lived before the division of
+labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who
+followed the primitive economic maxim, "Every man his own horse."  The
+best of the lot was Chiron, who to the wisdom and virtues of the horse
+added the fleetness of man.  The scripture story of the head of John
+the Baptist on a charger shows that pagan myths have somewhat
+sophisticated sacred history.
+
+CERBERUS, n.  The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the
+entrance--against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody,
+sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the
+entrance.  Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the
+poets have credited him with as many as a hundred.  Professor
+Graybill, whose clerky erudition and profound knowledge of Greek give
+his opinion great weight, has averaged all the estimates, and makes
+the number twenty-seven--a judgment that would be entirely
+conclusive if Professor Graybill had known (a) something about dogs,
+and (b) something about arithmetic.
+
+CHILDHOOD, n.  The period of human life intermediate between the
+idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth--two removes from the sin
+of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
+
+CHRISTIAN, n.  One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely
+inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
+One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not
+inconsistent with a life of sin.
+
+  I dreamed I stood upon a hill, and, lo!
+  The godly multitudes walked to and fro
+  Beneath, in Sabbath garments fitly clad,
+  With pious mien, appropriately sad,
+  While all the church bells made a solemn din--
+  A fire-alarm to those who lived in sin.
+  Then saw I gazing thoughtfully below,
+  With tranquil face, upon that holy show
+  A tall, spare figure in a robe of white,
+  Whose eyes diffused a melancholy light.
+  "God keep you, stranger," I exclaimed.  "You are
+  No doubt (your habit shows it) from afar;
+  And yet I entertain the hope that you,
+  Like these good people, are a Christian too."
+  He raised his eyes and with a look so stern
+  It made me with a thousand blushes burn
+  Replied--his manner with disdain was spiced:
+  "What!  I a Christian?  No, indeed!  I'm Christ."
+
+G.J.
+
+
+CIRCUS, n.  A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted
+to see men, women and children acting the fool.
+
+CLAIRVOYANT, n.  A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of
+seeing that which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is a
+blockhead.
+
+CLARIONET, n.  An instrument of torture operated by a person with
+cotton in his ears.  There are two instruments that are worse than a
+clarionet--two clarionets.
+
+CLERGYMAN, n.  A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual
+affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones.
+
+CLIO, n.  One of the nine Muses.  Clio's function was to preside over
+history--which she did with great dignity, many of the prominent
+citizens of Athens occupying seats on the platform, the meetings being
+addressed by Messrs. Xenophon, Herodotus and other popular speakers.
+
+CLOCK, n.  A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern
+for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.
+
+  A busy man complained one day:
+  "I get no time!"  "What's that you say?"
+  Cried out his friend, a lazy quiz;
+  "You have, sir, all the time there is.
+  There's plenty, too, and don't you doubt it--
+  We're never for an hour without it."
+
+Purzil Crofe
+
+
+CLOSE-FISTED, adj.  Unduly desirous of keeping that which many
+meritorious persons wish to obtain.
+
+  "Close-fisted Scotchman!" Johnson cried
+      To thrifty J. Macpherson;
+  "See me--I'm ready to divide
+      With any worthy person."
+  Sad Jamie:  "That is very true--
+      The boast requires no backing;
+  And all are worthy, sir, to you,
+      Who have what you are lacking."
+
+Anita M. Bobe
+
+
+COENOBITE, n.  A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the
+sin of wickedness; and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a
+brotherhood of awful examples.
+
+  O Coenobite, O coenobite,
+      Monastical gregarian,
+  You differ from the anchorite,
+      That solitudinarian:
+  With vollied prayers you wound Old Nick;
+  With dropping shots he makes him sick.
+
+Quincy Giles
+
+
+COMFORT, n.  A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's
+uneasiness.
+
+COMMENDATION, n.  The tribute that we pay to achievements that
+resembles, but do not equal, our own.
+
+COMMERCE, n.  A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the
+goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money
+belonging to E.
+
+COMMONWEALTH, n.  An administrative entity operated by an incalculable
+multitude of political parasites, logically active but fortuitously
+efficient.
+
+  This commonwealth's capitol's corridors view,
+  So thronged with a hungry and indolent crew
+  Of clerks, pages, porters and all attaches
+  Whom rascals appoint and the populace pays
+  That a cat cannot slip through the thicket of shins
+  Nor hear its own shriek for the noise of their chins.
+  On clerks and on pages, and porters, and all,
+  Misfortune attend and disaster befall!
+  May life be to them a succession of hurts;
+  May fleas by the bushel inhabit their shirts;
+  May aches and diseases encamp in their bones,
+  Their lungs full of tubercles, bladders of stones;
+  May microbes, bacilli, their tissues infest,
+  And tapeworms securely their bowels digest;
+  May corn-cobs be snared without hope in their hair,
+  And frequent impalement their pleasure impair.
+  Disturbed be their dreams by the awful discourse
+  Of audible sofas sepulchrally hoarse,
+  By chairs acrobatic and wavering floors--
+  The mattress that kicks and the pillow that snores!
+  Sons of cupidity, cradled in sin!
+  Your criminal ranks may the death angel thin,
+  Avenging the friend whom I couldn't work in.
+
+K.Q.
+
+
+COMPROMISE, n.  Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives
+each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought
+not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his
+due.
+
+COMPULSION, n.  The eloquence of power.
+
+CONDOLE, v.i.  To show that bereavement is a smaller evil than
+sympathy.
+
+CONFIDANT, CONFIDANTE, n.  One entrusted by A with the secrets of B,
+confided by _him_ to C.
+
+CONGRATULATION, n.  The civility of envy.
+
+CONGRESS, n.  A body of men who meet to repeal laws.
+
+CONNOISSEUR, n.  A specialist who knows everything about something and
+nothing about anything else.
+
+An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision,
+some wine was pouted on his lips to revive him.  "Pauillac, 1873," he
+murmured and died.
+
+CONSERVATIVE, n.  A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as
+distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with
+others.
+
+CONSOLATION, n.  The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate
+than yourself.
+
+CONSUL, n.  In American politics, a person who having failed to secure
+an office from the people is given one by the Administration on
+condition that he leave the country.
+
+CONSULT, v.i.  To seek another's disapproval of a course already
+decided on.
+
+CONTEMPT, n.  The feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too
+formidable safely to be opposed.
+
+CONTROVERSY, n.  A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the
+injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.
+
+  In controversy with the facile tongue--
+  That bloodless warfare of the old and young--
+  So seek your adversary to engage
+  That on himself he shall exhaust his rage,
+  And, like a snake that's fastened to the ground,
+  With his own fangs inflict the fatal wound.
+  You ask me how this miracle is done?
+  Adopt his own opinions, one by one,
+  And taunt him to refute them; in his wrath
+  He'll sweep them pitilessly from his path.
+  Advance then gently all you wish to prove,
+  Each proposition prefaced with, "As you've
+  So well remarked," or, "As you wisely say,
+  And I cannot dispute," or, "By the way,
+  This view of it which, better far expressed,
+  Runs through your argument."  Then leave the rest
+  To him, secure that he'll perform his trust
+  And prove your views intelligent and just.
+
+Conmore Apel Brune
+
+
+CONVENT, n.  A place of retirement for woman who wish for leisure to
+meditate upon the vice of idleness.
+
+CONVERSATION, n.  A fair for the display of the minor mental
+commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of
+his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
+
+CORONATION, n.  The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward
+and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a
+dynamite bomb.
+
+CORPORAL, n.  A man who occupies the lowest rung of the military
+ladder.
+
+  Fiercely the battle raged and, sad to tell,
+  Our corporal heroically fell!
+  Fame from her height looked down upon the brawl
+  And said:  "He hadn't very far to fall."
+
+Giacomo Smith
+
+
+CORPORATION, n.  An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit
+without individual responsibility.
+
+CORSAIR, n.  A politician of the seas.
+
+COURT FOOL, n.  The plaintiff.
+
+COWARD, n.  One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
+
+CRAYFISH, n.  A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but
+less indigestible.
+
+      In this small fish I take it that human wisdom is admirably
+  figured and symbolized; for whereas the crayfish doth move only
+  backward, and can have only retrospection, seeing naught but the
+  perils already passed, so the wisdom of man doth not enable him to
+  avoid the follies that beset his course, but only to apprehend
+  their nature afterward.
+
+Sir James Merivale
+
+
+CREDITOR, n.  One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial
+Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.
+
+CREMONA, n.  A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.
+
+CRITIC, n.  A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody
+tries to please him.
+
+  There is a land of pure delight,
+      Beyond the Jordan's flood,
+  Where saints, apparelled all in white,
+      Fling back the critic's mud.
+
+  And as he legs it through the skies,
+      His pelt a sable hue,
+  He sorrows sore to recognize
+      The missiles that he threw.
+
+Orrin Goof
+
+
+CROSS, n.  An ancient religious symbol erroneously supposed to owe its
+significance to the most solemn event in the history of Christianity,
+but really antedating it by thousands of years.  By many it has been
+believed to be identical with the _crux ansata_ of the ancient phallic
+worship, but it has been traced even beyond all that we know of that,
+to the rites of primitive peoples.  We have to-day the White Cross as
+a symbol of chastity, and the Red Cross as a badge of benevolent
+neutrality in war.  Having in mind the former, the reverend Father
+Gassalasca Jape smites the lyre to the effect following:
+
+  "Be good, be good!" the sisterhood
+      Cry out in holy chorus,
+  And, to dissuade from sin, parade
+      Their various charms before us.
+
+  But why, O why, has ne'er an eye
+      Seen her of winsome manner
+  And youthful grace and pretty face
+      Flaunting the White Cross banner?
+
+  Now where's the need of speech and screed
+      To better our behaving?
+  A simpler plan for saving man
+      (But, first, is he worth saving?)
+
+  Is, dears, when he declines to flee
+      From bad thoughts that beset him,
+  Ignores the Law as 't were a straw,
+      And wants to sin--don't let him.
+
+CUI BONO?  [Latin]  What good would that do _me_?
+
+CUNNING, n.  The faculty that distinguishes a weak animal or person
+from a strong one.  It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction
+and great material adversity.  An Italian proverb says:  "The furrier
+gets the skins of more foxes than asses."
+
+CUPID, n.  The so-called god of love.  This bastard creation of a
+barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of
+its deities.  Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is
+the most reasonless and offensive.  The notion of symbolizing sexual
+love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the
+wounds of an arrow--of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art
+grossly to materialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work--
+this is eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on
+the doorstep of prosperity.
+
+CURIOSITY, n.  An objectionable quality of the female mind.  The
+desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one
+of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
+
+CURSE, v.t.  Energetically to belabor with a verbal slap-stick.  This
+is an operation which in literature, particularly in the drama, is
+commonly fatal to the victim.  Nevertheless, the liability to a
+cursing is a risk that cuts but a small figure in fixing the rates of
+life insurance.
+
+CYNIC, n.  A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are,
+not as they ought to be.  Hence the custom among the Scythians of
+plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
+
+
+
+
+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 you
+master stay our benefactor's soul in Purgatory?"  "Ay," said the
+officer, coldly, "an ye will not pray him thence for naught he must
+e'en roast."  "But look you, my son," persisted the good man, "this
+act hath rank as robbery of God!"  "Nay, nay, good father, my master
+the king doth but deliver him from the manifold temptations of too
+great wealth."
+
+FREEBOOTER, n.  A conqueror in a small way of business, whose
+annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
+
+FREEDOM, n.  Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half
+dozen of restraint's infinite multitude of methods.  A political
+condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual
+monopoly.  Liberty.  The distinction between freedom and liberty is
+not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a
+living specimen of either.
+
+  Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,
+      Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
+  On every wind, indeed, that blows
+          I hear her yell.
+
+  She screams whenever monarchs meet,
+      And parliaments as well,
+  To bind the chains about her feet
+          And toll her knell.
+
+  And when the sovereign people cast
+      The votes they cannot spell,
+  Upon the pestilential blast
+          Her clamors swell.
+
+  For all to whom the power's given
+      To sway or to compel,
+  Among themselves apportion Heaven
+          And give her Hell.
+
+Blary O'Gary
+
+
+FREEMASONS, n.  An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and
+fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II,
+among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the
+dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces
+all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming
+up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of
+Chaos and Formless Void.  The order was founded at different times by
+Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious,
+Thothmes, and Buddha.  Its emblems and symbols have been found in the
+Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the
+Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the
+Egyptian Pyramids--always by a Freemason.
+
+FRIENDLESS, adj.  Having no favors to bestow.  Destitute of fortune.
+Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.
+
+FRIENDSHIP, n.  A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but
+only one in foul.
+
+  The sea was calm and the sky was blue;
+  Merrily, merrily sailed we two.
+      (High barometer maketh glad.)
+  On the tipsy ship, with a dreadful shout,
+  The tempest descended and we fell out.
+      (O the walking is nasty bad!)
+
+Armit Huff Bettle
+
+
+FROG, n.  A reptile with edible legs.  The first mention of frogs in
+profane literature is in Homer's narrative of the war between them and
+the mice.  Skeptical persons have doubted Homer's authorship of the
+work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr. Schliemann has
+set the question forever at rest by uncovering the bones of the slain
+frogs.  One of the forms of moral suasion by which Pharaoh was
+besought to favor the Israelities was a plague of frogs, but Pharaoh,
+who liked them _fricasees_, remarked, with truly oriental stoicism,
+that he could stand it as long as the frogs and the Jews could; so the
+programme was changed.  The frog is a diligent songster, having a good
+voice but no ear.  The libretto of his favorite opera, as written by
+Aristophanes, is brief, simple and effective--"brekekex-koax"; the
+music is apparently by that eminent composer, Richard Wagner.  Horses
+have a frog in each hoof--a thoughtful provision of nature, enabling
+them to shine in a hurdle race.
+
+FRYING-PAN, n.  One part of the penal apparatus employed in that
+punitive institution, a woman's kitchen.  The frying-pan was invented
+by Calvin, and by him used in cooking span-long infants that had died
+without baptism; and observing one day the horrible torment of a tramp
+who had incautiously pulled a fried babe from the waste-dump and
+devoured it, it occurred to the great divine to rob death of its
+terrors by introducing the frying-pan into every household in Geneva.
+Thence it spread to all corners of the world, and has been of
+invaluable assistance in the propagation of his sombre faith.  The
+following lines (said to be from the pen of his Grace Bishop Potter)
+seem to imply that the usefulness of this utensil is not limited to
+this world; but as the consequences of its employment in this life
+reach over into the life to come, so also itself may be found on the
+other side, rewarding its devotees:
+
+  Old Nick was summoned to the skies.
+      Said Peter:  "Your intentions
+  Are good, but you lack enterprise
+      Concerning new inventions.
+
+  "Now, broiling is an ancient plan
+      Of torment, but I hear it
+  Reported that the frying-pan
+      Sears best the wicked spirit.
+
+  "Go get one--fill it up with fat--
+      Fry sinners brown and good in't."
+  "I know a trick worth two o' that,"
+      Said Nick--"I'll cook their food in't."
+
+FUNERAL, n.  A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by
+enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure
+that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.
+
+  The savage dies--they sacrifice a horse
+  To bear to happy hunting-grounds the corse.
+  Our friends expire--we make the money fly
+  In hope their souls will chase it to the sky.
+
+Jex Wopley
+
+
+FUTURE, n.  That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our
+friends are true and our happiness is assured.
+
+
+
+
+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 [sic] that's going."
+
+  "Too true," I said; "alas, too true--
+      No sound his sense can quicken!"
+  "Well, mister, wot is that to you?--
+      The deadster ain't a-kickin'."
+
+  I knelt and prayed:  "O Father, smile
+      On him, and mercy show him!"
+  That countryman looked on the while,
+      And said:  "Ye didn't know him."
+
+Pobeter Dunko
+
+
+GRAVITATION, n.  The tendency of all bodies to approach one another
+with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain--
+the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength
+of their tendency to approach one another.  This is a lovely and
+edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B,
+makes B the proof of A.
+
+GREAT, adj.
+
+  "I'm great," the Lion said--"I reign
+  The monarch of the wood and plain!"
+
+  The Elephant replied:  "I'm great--
+  No quadruped can match my weight!"
+
+  "I'm great--no animal has half
+  So long a neck!" said the Giraffe.
+
+  "I'm great," the Kangaroo said--"see
+  My femoral muscularity!"
+
+  The 'Possum said:  "I'm great--behold,
+  My tail is lithe and bald and cold!"
+
+  An Oyster fried was understood
+  To say:  "I'm great because I'm good!"
+
+  Each reckons greatness to consist
+  In that in which he heads the list,
+
+  And Vierick thinks he tops his class
+  Because he is the greatest ass.
+
+Arion Spurl Doke
+
+
+GUILLOTINE, n.  A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders
+with good reason.
+
+In his great work on _Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution_, the
+learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture
+--the shrug--among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles
+and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracting the head inside
+the shell.  It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an
+authority, but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth and
+enforced in my work entitled _Hereditary Emotions_--lib. II, c. XI)
+the shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important a
+theory, for previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown.  I
+have not a doubt that it is directly referable to the terror inspired
+by the guillotine during the period of that instrument's activity.
+
+GUNPOWDER, n.  An agency employed by civilized nations for the
+settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left
+unadjusted.  By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to
+the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence.  Milton says it
+was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion
+seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels.  Moreover,
+it has the hearty concurrence of the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of
+Agriculture.
+
+Secretary Wilson became interested in gunpowder through an event
+that occurred on the Government experimental farm in the District of
+Columbia.  One day, several years ago, a rogue imperfectly reverent of
+the Secretary's profound attainments and personal character presented
+him with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the seed of the
+_Flashawful flabbergastor_, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial
+value, admirably adapted to this climate.  The good Secretary was
+instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with
+soil.  This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line
+of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look
+backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a
+lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point.  Contact with the
+earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary
+saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke and
+fierce evolution.  He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless,
+then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himself
+thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators
+along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak
+prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages,
+and audibly refusing to be comforted.  "Great Scott! what is that?"
+cried a surveyor's chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fading
+line of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon.  "That,"
+said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again
+centering his attention upon his instrument, "is the Meridian of
+Washington."
+
+
+
+
+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 stores are exposed
+to the fury of the customs.
+
+HARMONISTS, n.  A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from
+Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for
+the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.
+
+HASH, x.  There is no definition for this word--nobody knows what
+hash is.
+
+HATCHET, n.  A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.
+
+  "O bury the hatchet, irascible Red,
+  For peace is a blessing," the White Man said.
+      The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred,
+  With imposing rites, in the White Man's head.
+
+John Lukkus
+
+
+HATRED, n.  A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
+superiority.
+
+HEAD-MONEY, n.  A capitation tax, or poll-tax.
+
+  In ancient times there lived a king
+  Whose tax-collectors could not wring
+  From all his subjects gold enough
+  To make the royal way less rough.
+  For pleasure's highway, like the dames
+  Whose premises adjoin it, claims
+  Perpetual repairing.  So
+  The tax-collectors in a row
+  Appeared before the throne to pray
+  Their master to devise some way
+  To swell the revenue.  "So great,"
+  Said they, "are the demands of state
+  A tithe of all that we collect
+  Will scarcely meet them.  Pray reflect:
+  How, if one-tenth we must resign,
+  Can we exist on t'other nine?"
+  The monarch asked them in reply:
+  "Has it occurred to you to try
+  The advantage of economy?"
+  "It has," the spokesman said:  "we sold
+  All of our gray garrotes of gold;
+  With plated-ware we now compress
+  The necks of those whom we assess.
+  Plain iron forceps we employ
+  To mitigate the miser's joy
+  Who hoards, with greed that never tires,
+  That which your Majesty requires."
+  Deep lines of thought were seen to plow
+  Their way across the royal brow.
+  "Your state is desperate, no question;
+  Pray favor me with a suggestion."
+  "O King of Men," the spokesman said,
+  "If you'll impose upon each head
+  A tax, the augmented revenue
+  We'll cheerfully divide with you."
+  As flashes of the sun illume
+  The parted storm-cloud's sullen gloom,
+  The king smiled grimly.  "I decree
+  That it be so--and, not to be
+  In generosity outdone,
+  Declare you, each and every one,
+  Exempted from the operation
+  Of this new law of capitation.
+  But lest the people censure me
+  Because they're bound and you are free,
+  'Twere well some clever scheme were laid
+  By you this poll-tax to evade.
+  I'll leave you now while you confer
+  With my most trusted minister."
+  The monarch from the throne-room walked
+  And straightway in among them stalked
+  A silent man, with brow concealed,
+  Bare-armed--his gleaming axe revealed!
+
+G.J.
+
+
+HEARSE, n.  Death's baby-carriage.
+
+HEART, n.  An automatic, muscular blood-pump.  Figuratively, this
+useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments--a
+very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once
+universal belief.  It is now known that the sentiments and emotions
+reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of
+the gastric fluid.  The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a
+feeling--tender or not, according to the age of the animal from
+which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a
+caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a
+pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a
+hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh
+of sensibility--these things have been patiently ascertained by M.
+Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity.  (See, also,
+my monograph, _The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and
+Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion_--4to, 687 pp.)  In a
+scientific work entitled, I believe, _Delectatio Demonorum_ (John
+Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a
+striking illustration; and for further light consult Professor Dam's
+famous treatise on _Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration_.
+
+HEAT, n.
+
+  Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode
+      Of motion, but I know now how he's proving
+  His point; but this I know--hot words bestowed
+      With skill will set the human fist a-moving,
+  And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
+  _Crede expertum_--I have seen them, child.
+
+Gorton Swope
+
+
+HEATHEN, n.  A benighted creature who has the folly to worship
+something that he can see and feel.  According to Professor Howison,
+of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.
+
+  "The Hebrews are heathens!" says Howison.  He's
+      A Christian philosopher.  I'm
+  A scurril agnostical chap, if you please,
+      Addicted too much to the crime
+      Of religious discussion in my rhyme.
+
+  Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree
+      On a _modus vivendi_--not they!--
+  Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,
+      And I haven't been reared in a way
+      To joy in the thick of the fray.
+
+  For this of my creed is the soul and the gist,
+      And the truth of it I aver:
+  Who differs from me in his faith is an 'ist,
+      And 'ite, an 'ie, or an 'er--
+      And I'm down upon him or her!
+
+  Let Howison urge with perfunctory chin
+      Toleration--that's all very well,
+  But a roast is "nuts" to his nostril thin,
+      And he's running--I know by the smell--
+      A secret and personal Hell!
+
+Bissell Gip
+
+
+HEAVEN, n.  A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with
+talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention
+while you expound your own.
+
+HEBREW, n.  A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an
+altogether superior creation.
+
+HELPMATE, n.  A wife, or bitter half.
+
+  "Now, why is yer wife called a helpmate, Pat?"
+      Says the priest.  "Since the time 'o yer wooin'
+  She's niver [sic] assisted in what ye were at--
+      For it's naught ye are ever doin'."
+
+  "That's true of yer Riverence [sic]," Patrick replies,
+      And no sign of contrition envices;
+  "But, bedad, it's a fact which the word implies,
+      For she helps to mate the expinses [sic]!"
+
+Marley Wottel
+
+
+HEMP, n.  A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of
+neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open
+air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.
+
+HERMIT, n.  A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.
+
+HERS, pron.  His.
+
+HIBERNATE, v.i.  To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion.
+There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of
+various animals.  Many believe that the bear hibernates during the
+whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking its paws.  It is
+admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so lean
+that it had to try twice before it can cast a shadow.  Three or four
+centuries ago, in England, no fact was better attested than that
+swallows passed the winter months in the mud at the bottom of their
+brooks, clinging together in globular masses.  They have apparently
+been compelled to give up the custom on account of the foulness of
+the brooks.  Sotus Ecobius discovered in Central Asia a whole nation
+of people who hibernate.  By some investigators, the fasting of Lent
+is supposed to have been originally a modified form of hibernation, to
+which the Church gave a religious significance; but this view was
+strenuously opposed by that eminent authority, Bishop Kip, who did not
+wish any honors denied to the memory of the Founder of his family.
+
+HIPPOGRIFF, n.  An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half
+griffin.  The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and
+half eagle.  The hippogriff was actually, therefore, a one-quarter
+eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold.  The study of
+zoology is full of surprises.
+
+HISTORIAN, n.  A broad-gauge gossip.
+
+HISTORY, n.  An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant,
+which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly
+fools.
+
+  Of Roman history, great Niebuhr's shown
+  'Tis nine-tenths lying.  Faith, I wish 'twere known,
+  Ere we accept great Niebuhr as a guide,
+  Wherein he blundered and how much he lied.
+
+Salder Bupp
+
+
+HOG, n.  A bird remarkable for the catholicity of its appetite and
+serving to illustrate that of ours.  Among the Mahometans and Jews,
+the hog is not in favor as an article of diet, but is respected for
+the delicacy and the melody of its voice.  It is chiefly as a songster
+that the fowl is esteemed; the cage of him in full chorus has been
+known to draw tears from two persons at once.  The scientific name of
+this dicky-bird is _Porcus Rockefelleri_.  Mr. Rockefeller did not
+discover the hog, but it is considered his by right of resemblance.
+
+HOMOEOPATHIST, n.  The humorist of the medical profession.
+
+HOMOEOPATHY, n.  A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and
+Christian Science.  To the last both the others are distinctly
+inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they
+can not.
+
+HOMICIDE, n.  The slaying of one human being by another.  There are
+four kinds of homocide:  felonious, excusable, justifiable, and
+praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain
+whether he fell by one kind or another--the classification is for
+advantage of the lawyers.
+
+HOMILETICS, n.  The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual
+needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.
+
+  So skilled the parson was in homiletics
+  That all his normal purges and emetics
+  To medicine the spirit were compounded
+  With a most just discrimination founded
+  Upon a rigorous examination
+  Of tongue and pulse and heart and respiration.
+  Then, having diagnosed each one's condition,
+  His scriptural specifics this physician
+  Administered--his pills so efficacious
+  And pukes of disposition so vivacious
+  That souls afflicted with ten kinds of Adam
+  Were convalescent ere they knew they had 'em.
+  But Slander's tongue--itself all coated--uttered
+  Her bilious mind and scandalously muttered
+  That in the case of patients having money
+  The pills were sugar and the pukes were honey.
+
+_Biography of Bishop Potter_
+
+
+HONORABLE, adj.  Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach.  In
+legislative bodies it is customary to mention all members as
+honorable; as, "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
+
+HOPE, n.  Desire and expectation rolled into one.
+
+  Delicious Hope! when naught to man is left--
+  Of fortune destitute, of friends bereft;
+  When even his dog deserts him, and his goat
+  With tranquil disaffection chews his coat
+  While yet it hangs upon his back; then thou,
+  The star far-flaming on thine angel brow,
+  Descendest, radiant, from the skies to hint
+  The promise of a clerkship in the Mint.
+
+Fogarty Weffing
+
+
+HOSPITALITY, n.  The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain
+persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
+
+HOSTILITY, n.  A peculiarly sharp and specially applied sense of the
+earth's overpopulation.  Hostility is classified as active and
+passive; as (respectively) the feeling of a woman for her female
+friends, and that which she entertains for all the rest of her sex.
+
+HOURI, n.  A comely female inhabiting the Mohammedan Paradise to make
+things cheery for the good Mussulman, whose belief in her existence
+marks a noble discontent with his earthly spouse, whom he denies a
+soul.  By that good lady the Houris are said to be held in deficient
+esteem.
+
+HOUSE, n.  A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat,
+mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus and microbe.
+_House of Correction_, a place of reward for political and personal
+service, and for the detention of offenders and appropriations.
+_House of God_, a building with a steeple and a mortgage on it.
+_House-dog_, a pestilent beast kept on domestic premises to insult
+persons passing by and appal the hardy visitor.  _House-maid_, a
+youngerly person of the opposing sex employed to be variously
+disagreeable and ingeniously unclean in the station in which it has
+pleased God to place her.
+
+HOUSELESS, adj.  Having paid all taxes on household goods.
+
+HOVEL, n.  The fruit of a flower called the Palace.
+
+      Twaddle had a hovel,
+          Twiddle had a palace;
+      Twaddle said:  "I'll grovel
+          Or he'll think I bear him malice"--
+  A sentiment as novel
+      As a castor on a chalice.
+
+      Down upon the middle
+          Of his legs fell Twaddle
+      And astonished Mr. Twiddle,
+          Who began to lift his noddle.
+      Feed upon the fiddle-
+          Faddle flummery, unswaddle
+  A new-born self-sufficiency and think himself a [mockery.]
+
+G.J.
+
+
+HUMANITY, n.  The human race, collectively, exclusive of the
+anthropoid poets.
+
+HUMORIST, n.  A plague that would have softened down the hoar
+austerity of Pharaoh's heart and persuaded him to dismiss Israel with
+his best wishes, cat-quick.
+
+  Lo! the poor humorist, whose tortured mind
+  See jokes in crowds, though still to gloom inclined--
+  Whose simple appetite, untaught to stray,
+  His brains, renewed by night, consumes by day.
+  He thinks, admitted to an equal sty,
+  A graceful hog would bear his company.
+
+Alexander Poke
+
+
+HURRICANE, n.  An atmospheric demonstration once very common but now
+generally abandoned for the tornado and cyclone.  The hurricane is
+still in popular use in the West Indies and is preferred by certain
+old-fashioned sea-captains.  It is also used in the construction of
+the upper decks of steamboats, but generally speaking, the hurricane's
+usefulness has outlasted it.
+
+HURRY, n.  The dispatch of bunglers.
+
+HUSBAND, n.  One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the
+plate.
+
+HYBRID, n.  A pooled issue.
+
+HYDRA, n.  A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many
+heads.
+
+HYENA, n.  A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its
+habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead.  But the
+medical student does that.
+
+HYPOCHONDRIASIS, n.  Depression of one's own spirits.
+
+  Some heaps of trash upon a vacant lot
+  Where long the village rubbish had been shot
+  Displayed a sign among the stuff and stumps--
+  "Hypochondriasis."  It meant The Dumps.
+
+Bogul S. Purvy
+
+
+HYPOCRITE, n.  One who, professing virtues that he does not respect
+secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+
+I is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language,
+the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection.  In
+grammar it is a pronoun of the first person and singular number.  Its
+plural is said to be _We_, but how there can be more than one myself
+is doubtless clearer to the grammarians than it is to the author of this
+incomparable dictionary.  Conception of two myselfs is difficult, but
+fine.  The frank yet graceful use of "I" distinguishes a good writer
+from a bad; the latter carries it with the manner of a thief trying to
+cloak his loot.
+
+ICHOR, n.  A fluid that serves the gods and goddesses in place of
+blood.
+
+  Fair Venus, speared by Diomed,
+  Restrained the raging chief and said:
+  "Behold, rash mortal, whom you've bled--
+  Your soul's stained white with ichorshed!"
+
+Mary Doke
+
+
+ICONOCLAST, n.  A breaker of idols, the worshipers whereof are
+imperfectly gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest
+that he unbuildeth but doth not reedify, that he pulleth down but
+pileth not up.  For the poor things would have other idols in place of
+those he thwacketh upon the mazzard and dispelleth.  But the
+iconoclast saith:  "Ye shall have none at all, for ye need them not;
+and if the rebuilder fooleth round hereabout, behold I will depress
+the head of him and sit thereon till he squawk it."
+
+IDIOT, n.  A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in
+human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.  The Idiot's
+activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action,
+but "pervades and regulates the whole."  He has the last word in
+everything; his decision is unappealable.  He sets the fashions and
+opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes
+conduct with a dead-line.
+
+IDLENESS, n.  A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of
+new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.
+
+IGNORAMUS, n.  A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge
+familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know
+nothing about.
+
+  Dumble was an ignoramus,
+  Mumble was for learning famous.
+  Mumble said one day to Dumble:
+  "Ignorance should be more humble.
+  Not a spark have you of knowledge
+  That was got in any college."
+  Dumble said to Mumble:  "Truly
+  You're self-satisfied unduly.
+  Of things in college I'm denied
+  A knowledge--you of all beside."
+
+Borelli
+
+
+ILLUMINATI, n.  A sect of Spanish heretics of the latter part of the
+sixteenth century; so called because they were light weights--
+_cunctationes illuminati_.
+
+ILLUSTRIOUS, adj.  Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and
+detraction.
+
+IMAGINATION, n.  A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint
+ownership.
+
+IMBECILITY, n.  A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting
+censorious critics of this dictionary.
+
+IMMIGRANT, n.  An unenlightened person who thinks one country better
+than another.
+
+IMMODEST, adj.  Having a strong sense of one's own merit, coupled with
+a feeble conception of worth in others.
+
+  There was once a man in Ispahan
+      Ever and ever so long ago,
+  And he had a head, the phrenologists said,
+      That fitted him for a show.
+
+  For his modesty's bump was so large a lump
+      (Nature, they said, had taken a freak)
+  That its summit stood far above the wood
+      Of his hair, like a mountain peak.
+
+  So modest a man in all Ispahan,
+      Over and over again they swore--
+  So humble and meek, you would vainly seek;
+      None ever was found before.
+
+  Meantime the hump of that awful bump
+      Into the heavens contrived to get
+  To so great a height that they called the wight
+      The man with the minaret.
+
+  There wasn't a man in all Ispahan
+      Prouder, or louder in praise of his chump:
+  With a tireless tongue and a brazen lung
+      He bragged of that beautiful bump
+
+  Till the Shah in a rage sent a trusty page
+      Bearing a sack and a bow-string too,
+  And that gentle child explained as he smiled:
+      "A little present for you."
+
+  The saddest man in all Ispahan,
+      Sniffed at the gift, yet accepted the same.
+  "If I'd lived," said he, "my humility
+      Had given me deathless fame!"
+
+Sukker Uffro
+
+
+IMMORAL, adj.  Inexpedient.  Whatever in the long run and with regard
+to the greater number of instances men find to be generally
+inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.  If man's
+notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of
+expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other
+way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from, and
+nowise dependent on, their consequences--then all philosophy is a
+lie and reason a disorder of the mind.
+
+IMMORTALITY, n.
+
+  A toy which people cry for,
+  And on their knees apply for,
+  Dispute, contend and lie for,
+      And if allowed
+      Would be right proud
+  Eternally to die for.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+IMPALE, v.t.  In popular usage to pierce with any weapon which remains
+fixed in the wound.  This, however, is inaccurate; to impale is,
+properly, to put to death by thrusting an upright sharp stake into the
+body, the victim being left in a sitting position.  This was a common
+mode of punishment among many of the nations of antiquity, and is
+still in high favor in China and other parts of Asia.  Down to the
+beginning of the fifteenth century it was widely employed in
+"churching" heretics and schismatics.  Wolecraft calls it the "stoole
+of repentynge," and among the common people it was jocularly known as
+"riding the one legged horse."  Ludwig Salzmann informs us that in
+Thibet impalement is considered the most appropriate punishment for
+crimes against religion; and although in China it is sometimes awarded
+for secular offences, it is most frequently adjudged in cases of
+sacrilege.  To the person in actual experience of impalement it must
+be a matter of minor importance by what kind of civil or religious
+dissent he was made acquainted with its discomforts; but doubtless he
+would feel a certain satisfaction if able to contemplate himself in
+the character of a weather-cock on the spire of the True Church.
+
+IMPARTIAL, adj.  Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage
+from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
+conflicting opinions.
+
+IMPENITENCE, n.  A state of mind intermediate in point of time between
+sin and punishment.
+
+IMPIETY, n.  Your irreverence toward my deity.
+
+IMPOSITION, n.  The act of blessing or consecrating by the laying on
+of hands--a ceremony common to many ecclesiastical systems, but
+performed with the frankest sincerity by the sect known as Thieves.
+
+  "Lo! by the laying on of hands,"
+      Say parson, priest and dervise,
+  "We consecrate your cash and lands
+      To ecclesiastical service.
+  No doubt you'll swear till all is blue
+  At such an imposition.  Do."
+
+Pollo Doncas
+
+
+IMPOSTOR n.  A rival aspirant to public honors.
+
+IMPROBABILITY, n.
+
+  His tale he told with a solemn face
+  And a tender, melancholy grace.
+      Improbable 'twas, no doubt,
+      When you came to think it out,
+      But the fascinated crowd
+      Their deep surprise avowed
+  And all with a single voice averred
+  'Twas the most amazing thing they'd heard--
+  All save one who spake never a word,
+      But sat as mum
+      As if deaf and dumb,
+  Serene, indifferent and unstirred.
+      Then all the others turned to him
+      And scrutinized him limb from limb--
+      Scanned him alive;
+      But he seemed to thrive
+      And tranquiler grow each minute,
+      As if there were nothing in it.
+  "What! what!" cried one, "are you not amazed
+  At what our friend has told?"  He raised
+  Soberly then his eyes and gazed
+      In a natural way
+      And proceeded to say,
+  As he crossed his feet on the mantel-shelf:
+  "O no--not at all; I'm a liar myself."
+
+IMPROVIDENCE, n.  Provision for the needs of to-day from the revenues
+of to-morrow.
+
+IMPUNITY, n.  Wealth.
+
+INADMISSIBLE, adj.  Not competent to be considered.  Said of certain
+kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be
+entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of
+proceedings before themselves alone.  Hearsay evidence is inadmissible
+because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for
+examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political,
+commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay
+evidence.  There is no religion in the world that has any other basis
+than hearsay evidence.  Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the
+Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long
+dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known
+to have been sworn in any sense.  Under the rules of evidence as they
+now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its
+support any evidence admissible in a court of law.  It cannot be
+proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was
+such as person as Julius Caesar, such an empire as Assyria.
+
+But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily
+be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were
+a scourge to mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which
+certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a
+flaw; it is still unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based on it
+were sound in logic and in law.  Nothing in any existing court was
+ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery
+for which so many suffered death.  If there were no witches, human
+testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
+
+INAUSPICIOUSLY, adv.  In an unpromising manner, the auspices being
+unfavorable.  Among the Romans it was customary before undertaking any
+important action or enterprise to obtain from the augurs, or state
+prophets, some hint of its probable outcome; and one of their favorite
+and most trustworthy modes of divination consisted in observing the
+flight of birds--the omens thence derived being called _auspices_.
+Newspaper reporters and certain miscreant lexicographers have decided
+that the word--always in the plural--shall mean "patronage" or
+"management"; as, "The festivities were under the auspices of the
+Ancient and Honorable Order of Body-Snatchers"; or, "The hilarities
+were auspicated by the Knights of Hunger."
+
+  A Roman slave appeared one day
+  Before the Augur.  "Tell me, pray,
+  If--" here the Augur, smiling, made
+  A checking gesture and displayed
+  His open palm, which plainly itched,
+  For visibly its surface twitched.
+  A _denarius_ (the Latin nickel)
+  Successfully allayed the tickle,
+  And then the slave proceeded:  "Please
+  Inform me whether Fate decrees
+  Success or failure in what I
+  To-night (if it be dark) shall try.
+  Its nature?  Never mind--I think
+  'Tis writ on this"--and with a wink
+  Which darkened half the earth, he drew
+  Another denarius to view,
+  Its shining face attentive scanned,
+  Then slipped it into the good man's hand,
+  Who with great gravity said:  "Wait
+  While I retire to question Fate."
+  That holy person then withdrew
+  His scared clay and, passing through
+  The temple's rearward gate, cried "Shoo!"
+  Waving his robe of office.  Straight
+  Each sacred peacock and its mate
+  (Maintained for Juno's favor) fled
+  With clamor from the trees o'erhead,
+  Where they were perching for the night.
+  The temple's roof received their flight,
+  For thither they would always go,
+  When danger threatened them below.
+  Back to the slave the Augur went:
+  "My son, forecasting the event
+  By flight of birds, I must confess
+  The auspices deny success."
+  That slave retired, a sadder man,
+  Abandoning his secret plan--
+  Which was (as well the craft seer
+  Had from the first divined) to clear
+  The wall and fraudulently seize
+  On Juno's poultry in the trees.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+INCOME, n.  The natural and rational gauge and measure of
+respectability, the commonly accepted standards being artificial,
+arbitrary and fallacious; for, as "Sir Sycophas Chrysolater" in the
+play has justly remarked, "the true use and function of property (in
+whatsoever it consisteth--coins, or land, or houses, or merchant-stuff,
+or anything which may be named as holden of right to one's own
+subservience) as also of honors, titles, preferments and place, and
+all favor and acquaintance of persons of quality or ableness, are but
+to get money.  Hence it followeth that all things are truly to be
+rated as of worth in measure of their serviceableness to that end; and
+their possessors should take rank in agreement thereto, neither the
+lord of an unproducing manor, howsoever broad and ancient, nor he who
+bears an unremunerate dignity, nor yet the pauper favorite of a king,
+being esteemed of level excellency with him whose riches are of daily
+accretion; and hardly should they whose wealth is barren claim and
+rightly take more honor than the poor and unworthy."
+
+INCOMPATIBILITY, n.  In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly
+the taste for domination.  Incompatibility may, however, consist of a
+meek-eyed matron living just around the corner.  It has even been
+known to wear a moustache.
+
+INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj.  Unable to exist if something else exists.  Two
+things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for
+one of them, but not enough for both--as Walt Whitman's poetry and
+God's mercy to man.  Incompossibility, it will be seen, is only
+incompatibility let loose.  Instead of such low language as "Go heel
+yourself--I mean to kill you on sight," the words, "Sir, we are
+incompossible," would convey an equally significant intimation and in
+stately courtesy are altogether superior.
+
+INCUBUS, n.  One of a race of highly improper demons who, though
+probably not wholly extinct, may be said to have seen their best
+nights.  For a complete account of _incubi_ and _succubi_, including
+_incubae_ and _succubae_, see the _Liber Demonorum_ of Protassus
+(Paris, 1328), which contains much curious information that would be
+out of place in a dictionary intended as a text-book for the public
+schools.
+
+Victor Hugo relates that in the Channel Islands Satan himself--
+tempted more than elsewhere by the beauty of the women, doubtless--
+sometimes plays at _incubus_, greatly to the inconvenience and alarm
+of the good dames who wish to be loyal to their marriage vows,
+generally speaking.  A certain lady applied to the parish priest to
+learn how they might, in the dark, distinguish the hardy intruder from
+their husbands.  The holy man said they must feel his brow for horns;
+but Hugo is ungallant enough to hint a doubt of the efficacy of the
+test.
+
+INCUMBENT, n.  A person of the liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
+
+INDECISION, n.  The chief element of success; "for whereas," saith Sir
+Thomas Brewbold, "there is but one way to do nothing and divers way to
+do something, whereof, to a surety, only one is the right way, it
+followeth that he who from indecision standeth still hath not so many
+chances of going astray as he who pusheth forwards"--a most clear
+and satisfactory exposition of the matter.
+
+"Your prompt decision to attack," said General Grant on a certain
+occasion to General Gordon Granger, "was admirable; you had but five
+minutes to make up your mind in."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the victorious subordinate, "it is a great
+thing to know exactly what to do in an emergency.  When in doubt
+whether to attack or retreat I never hesitate a moment--I toss up a
+copper."
+
+"Do you mean to say that's what you did this time?"
+
+"Yes, General; but for Heaven's sake don't reprimand me:  I
+disobeyed the coin."
+
+INDIFFERENT, adj.  Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.
+
+  "You tiresome man!" cried Indolentio's wife,
+  "You've grown indifferent to all in life."
+  "Indifferent?" he drawled with a slow smile;
+  "I would be, dear, but it is not worth while."
+
+Apuleius M. Gokul
+
+
+INDIGESTION, n.  A disease which the patient and his friends
+frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the
+salvation of mankind.  As the simple Red Man of the western wild put
+it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force:  "Plenty well, no
+pray; big bellyache, heap God."
+
+INDISCRETION, n.  The guilt of woman.
+
+INEXPEDIENT, adj.  Not calculated to advance one's interests.
+
+INFANCY, n.  The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth,
+"Heaven lies about us."  The world begins lying about us pretty soon
+afterward.
+
+INFERIAE, n.  [Latin]  Among the Greeks and Romans, sacrifices for
+propitiation of the _Dii Manes_, or souls of the dead heroes; for the
+pious ancients could not invent enough gods to satisfy their spiritual
+needs, and had to have a number of makeshift deities, or, as a sailor
+might say, jury-gods, which they made out of the most unpromising
+materials.  It was while sacrificing a bullock to the spirit of
+Agamemnon that Laiaides, a priest of Aulis, was favored with an
+audience of that illustrious warrior's shade, who prophetically
+recounted to him the birth of Christ and the triumph of Christianity,
+giving him also a rapid but tolerably complete review of events down
+to the reign of Saint Louis.  The narrative ended abruptly at that
+point, owing to the inconsiderate crowing of a cock, which compelled
+the ghosted King of Men to scamper back to Hades.  There is a fine
+mediaeval flavor to this story, and as it has not been traced back
+further than Pere Brateille, a pious but obscure writer at the court
+of Saint Louis, we shall probably not err on the side of presumption
+in considering it apocryphal, though Monsignor Capel's judgment of the
+matter might be different; and to that I bow--wow.
+
+INFIDEL, n.  In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian
+religion; in Constantinople, one who does.  (See GIAOUR.)  A kind of
+scoundrel imperfectly reverent of, and niggardly contributory to,
+divines, ecclesiastics, popes, parsons, canons, monks, mollahs,
+voodoos, presbyters, hierophants, prelates, obeah-men, abbes, nuns,
+missionaries, exhorters, deacons, friars, hadjis, high-priests,
+muezzins, brahmins, medicine-men, confessors, eminences, elders,
+primates, prebendaries, pilgrims, prophets, imaums, beneficiaries,
+clerks, vicars-choral, archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors,
+preachers, padres, abbotesses, caloyers, palmers, curates, patriarchs,
+bonezs, santons, beadsmen, canonesses, residentiaries, diocesans,
+deans, subdeans, rural deans, abdals, charm-sellers, archdeacons,
+hierarchs, class-leaders, incumbents, capitulars, sheiks, talapoins,
+postulants, scribes, gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers, sextons,
+reverences, revivalists, cenobites, perpetual curates, chaplains,
+mudjoes, readers, novices, vicars, pastors, rabbis, ulemas, lamas,
+sacristans, vergers, dervises, lectors, church wardens, cardinals,
+prioresses, suffragans, acolytes, rectors, cures, sophis, mutifs and
+pumpums.
+
+INFLUENCE, n.  In politics, a visionary _quo_ given in exchange for a
+substantial _quid_.
+
+INFRALAPSARIAN, n.  One who ventures to believe that Adam need not have
+sinned unless he had a mind to--in opposition to the Supralapsarians,
+who hold that that luckless person's fall was decreed from the
+beginning.  Infralapsarians are sometimes called Sublapsarians without
+material effect upon the importance and lucidity of their views about
+Adam.
+
+  Two theologues once, as they wended their way
+  To chapel, engaged in colloquial fray--
+  An earnest logomachy, bitter as gall,
+  Concerning poor Adam and what made him fall.
+  "'Twas Predestination," cried one--"for the Lord
+  Decreed he should fall of his own accord."
+  "Not so--'twas Free will," the other maintained,
+  "Which led him to choose what the Lord had ordained."
+  So fierce and so fiery grew the debate
+  That nothing but bloodshed their dudgeon could sate;
+  So off flew their cassocks and caps to the ground
+  And, moved by the spirit, their hands went round.
+  Ere either had proved his theology right
+  By winning, or even beginning, the fight,
+  A gray old professor of Latin came by,
+  A staff in his hand and a scowl in his eye,
+  And learning the cause of their quarrel (for still
+  As they clumsily sparred they disputed with skill
+  Of foreordinational freedom of will)
+  Cried:  "Sirrahs! this reasonless warfare compose:
+  Atwixt ye's no difference worthy of blows.
+  The sects ye belong to--I'm ready to swear
+  Ye wrongly interpret the names that they bear.
+  _You_--Infralapsarian son of a clown!--
+  Should only contend that Adam slipped down;
+  While _you_--you Supralapsarian pup!--
+  Should nothing aver but that Adam slipped up.
+  It's all the same whether up or down
+  You slip on a peel of banana brown.
+  Even Adam analyzed not his blunder,
+  But thought he had slipped on a peal of thunder!
+
+G.J.
+
+
+INGRATE, n.  One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise
+an object of charity.
+
+  "All men are ingrates," sneered the cynic.  "Nay,"
+      The good philanthropist replied;
+  "I did great service to a man one day
+  Who never since has cursed me to repay,
+              Nor vilified."
+
+  "Ho!" cried the cynic, "lead me to him straight--
+      With veneration I am overcome,
+  And fain would have his blessing."  "Sad your fate--
+  He cannot bless you, for I grieve to state
+              This man is dumb."
+
+Ariel Selp
+
+
+INJURY, n.  An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight.
+
+INJUSTICE, n.  A burden which of all those that we load upon others
+and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the
+back.
+
+INK, n.  A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic and
+water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
+intellectual crime.  The properties of ink are peculiar and
+contradictory:  it may be used to make reputations and unmake them; to
+blacken them and to make them white; but it is most generally and
+acceptably employed as a mortar to bind together the stones of an
+edifice of fame, and as a whitewash to conceal afterward the rascal
+quality of the material.  There are men called journalists who have
+established ink baths which some persons pay money to get into, others
+to get out of.  Not infrequently it occurs that a person who has paid
+to get in pays twice as much to get out.
+
+INNATE, adj.  Natural, inherent--as innate ideas, that is to say,
+ideas that we are born with, having had them previously imparted to
+us.  The doctrine of innate ideas is one of the most admirable faiths
+of philosophy, being itself an innate idea and therefore inaccessible
+to disproof, though Locke foolishly supposed himself to have given it
+"a black eye."  Among innate ideas may be mentioned the belief in
+one's ability to conduct a newspaper, in the greatness of one's
+country, in the superiority of one's civilization, in the importance
+of one's personal affairs and in the interesting nature of one's
+diseases.
+
+IN'ARDS, n.  The stomach, heart, soul and other bowels.  Many eminent
+investigators do not class the soul as an in'ard, but that acute
+observer and renowned authority, Dr. Gunsaulus, is persuaded that the
+mysterious organ known as the spleen is nothing less than our
+immortal part.  To the contrary, Professor Garrett P. Servis holds
+that man's soul is that prolongation of his spinal marrow which forms
+the pith of his no tail; and for demonstration of his faith points
+confidently to the fact that tailed animals have no souls.
+Concerning these two theories, it is best to suspend judgment by
+believing both.
+
+INSCRIPTION, n.  Something written on another thing.  Inscriptions are
+of many kinds, but mostly memorial, intended to commemorate the fame
+of some illustrious person and hand down to distant ages the record of
+his services and virtues.  To this class of inscriptions belongs the
+name of John Smith, penciled on the Washington monument.  Following
+are examples of memorial inscriptions on tombstones:  (See EPITAPH.)
+
+  "In the sky my soul is found,
+  And my body in the ground.
+  By and by my body'll rise
+  To my spirit in the skies,
+  Soaring up to Heaven's gate.
+          1878."
+
+  "Sacred to the memory of Jeremiah Tree.  Cut down May 9th, 1862,
+aged 27 yrs. 4 mos. and 12 ds.  Indigenous."
+
+      "Affliction sore long time she boar,
+          Phisicians was in vain,
+      Till Deth released the dear deceased
+          And left her a remain.
+  Gone to join Ananias in the regions of bliss."
+
+  "The clay that rests beneath this stone
+  As Silas Wood was widely known.
+  Now, lying here, I ask what good
+  It was to let me be S. Wood.
+  O Man, let not ambition trouble you,
+  Is the advice of Silas W."
+
+  "Richard Haymon, of Heaven.  Fell to Earth Jan. 20, 1807, and had
+the dust brushed off him Oct. 3, 1874."
+
+INSECTIVORA, n.
+
+  "See," cries the chorus of admiring preachers,
+  "How Providence provides for all His creatures!"
+  "His care," the gnat said, "even the insects follows:
+  For us He has provided wrens and swallows."
+
+Sempen Railey
+
+
+INSURANCE, n.  An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player
+is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating
+the man who keeps the table.
+
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  My dear sir, that is a fine house--pray let me
+      insure it.
+  HOUSE OWNER:  With pleasure.  Please make the annual premium so
+      low that by the time when, according to the tables of your
+      actuary, it will probably be destroyed by fire I will have
+      paid you considerably less than the face of the policy.
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  O dear, no--we could not afford to do that.
+      We must fix the premium so that you will have paid more.
+  HOUSE OWNER:  How, then, can _I_ afford _that_?
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  Why, your house may burn down at any time.
+      There was Smith's house, for example, which--
+  HOUSE OWNER:  Spare me--there were Brown's house, on the
+      contrary, and Jones's house, and Robinson's house, which--
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  Spare _me_!
+  HOUSE OWNER:  Let us understand each other.  You want me to pay
+      you money on the supposition that something will occur
+      previously to the time set by yourself for its occurrence.  In
+      other words, you expect me to bet that my house will not last
+      so long as you say that it will probably last.
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  But if your house burns without insurance it
+      will be a total loss.
+  HOUSE OWNER:  Beg your pardon--by your own actuary's tables I
+      shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I
+      would otherwise have paid to you--amounting to more than the
+      face of the policy they would have bought.  But suppose it to
+      burn, uninsured, before the time upon which your figures are
+      based.  If I could not afford that, how could you if it were
+      insured?
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  O, we should make ourselves whole from our
+      luckier ventures with other clients.  Virtually, they pay your
+      loss.
+  HOUSE OWNER:  And virtually, then, don't I help to pay their
+      losses?  Are not their houses as likely as mine to burn before
+      they have paid you as much as you must pay them?  The case
+      stands this way:  you expect to take more money from your
+      clients than you pay to them, do you not?
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  Certainly; if we did not--
+  HOUSE OWNER:  I would not trust you with my money.  Very well
+      then.  If it is _certain_, with reference to the whole body of
+      your clients, that they lose money on you it is _probable_,
+      with reference to any one of them, that _he_ will.  It is
+      these individual probabilities that make the aggregate
+      certainty.
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  I will not deny it--but look at the figures in
+      this pamph--
+  HOUSE OWNER:  Heaven forbid!
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  You spoke of saving the premiums which you would
+      otherwise pay to me.  Will you not be more likely to squander
+      them?  We offer you an incentive to thrift.
+  HOUSE OWNER:  The willingness of A to take care of B's money is
+      not peculiar to insurance, but as a charitable institution you
+      command esteem.  Deign to accept its expression from a
+      Deserving Object.
+
+INSURRECTION, n.  An unsuccessful revolution.  Disaffection's failure
+to substitute misrule for bad government.
+
+INTENTION, n.  The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of
+influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence,
+immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
+
+INTERPRETER, n.  One who enables two persons of different languages to
+understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
+the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
+
+INTERREGNUM, n.  The period during which a monarchical country is
+governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne.  The experiment
+of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most
+unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to make it warm
+again.
+
+INTIMACY, n.  A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for
+their mutual destruction.
+
+  Two Seidlitz powders, one in blue
+  And one in white, together drew
+  And having each a pleasant sense
+  Of t'other powder's excellence,
+  Forsook their jackets for the snug
+  Enjoyment of a common mug.
+  So close their intimacy grew
+  One paper would have held the two.
+  To confidences straight they fell,
+  Less anxious each to hear than tell;
+  Then each remorsefully confessed
+  To all the virtues he possessed,
+  Acknowledging he had them in
+  So high degree it was a sin.
+  The more they said, the more they felt
+  Their spirits with emotion melt,
+  Till tears of sentiment expressed
+  Their feelings.  Then they effervesced!
+  So Nature executes her feats
+  Of wrath on friends and sympathetes
+  The good old rule who won't apply,
+  That you are you and I am I.
+
+INTRODUCTION, n.  A social ceremony invented by the devil for the
+gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies.  The
+introduction attains its most malevolent development in this country,
+being, indeed, closely related to our political system.  Every
+American being the equal of every other American, it follows that
+everybody has the right to know everybody else, which implies the
+right to introduce without request or permission.  The Declaration of
+Independence should have read thus:
+
+      "We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all men are
+  created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
+  inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right to
+  make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an
+  incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly the
+  liberty to introduce persons to one another without first
+  ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies; and
+  the pursuit of another's happiness with a running pack of
+  strangers."
+
+INVENTOR, n.  A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels,
+levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
+
+IRRELIGION, n.  The principal one of the great faiths of the world.
+
+ITCH, n.  The patriotism of a Scotchman.
+
+
+
+
+J
+
+
+
+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 people on converging lines, toward a
+common origin in remote antiquity.  Among these are the fables of
+"Teddy the Giant Killer," "The Sleeping John Sharp Williams," "Little
+Red Riding Hood and the Sugar Trust," "Beauty and the Brisbane," "The
+Seven Aldermen of Ephesus," "Rip Van Fairbanks," and so forth.  The
+fable which Goethe so affectingly relates under the title of "The
+Erl-King" was known two thousand years ago in Greece as "The Demos and
+the Infant Industry."  One of the most general and ancient of these
+myths is that Arabian tale of "Ali Baba and the Forty Rockefellers."
+
+LOSS, n.  Privation of that which we had, or had not.  Thus, in the
+latter sense, it is said of a defeated candidate that he "lost his
+election"; and of that eminent man, the poet Gilder, that he has "lost
+his mind."  It is in the former and more legitimate sense, that the
+word is used in the famous epitaph:
+
+  Here Huntington's ashes long have lain
+  Whose loss is our eternal gain,
+  For while he exercised all his powers
+  Whatever he gained, the loss was ours.
+
+LOVE, n.  A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of
+the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.
+This disease, like _caries_ and many other ailments, is prevalent only
+among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous
+nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from
+its ravages.  It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the
+physician than to the patient.
+
+LOW-BRED, adj.  "Raised" instead of brought up.
+
+LUMINARY, n.  One who throws light upon a subject; as an editor by not
+writing about it.
+
+LUNARIAN, n.  An inhabitant of the moon, as distinguished from
+Lunatic, one whom the moon inhabits.  The Lunarians have been
+described by Lucian, Locke and other observers, but without much
+agreement.  For example, Bragellos avers their anatomical identity
+with Man, but Professor Newcomb says they are more like the hill
+tribes of Vermont.
+
+LYRE, n.  An ancient instrument of torture.  The word is now used in a
+figurative sense to denote the poetic faculty, as in the following
+fiery lines of our great poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox:
+
+  I sit astride Parnassus with my lyre,
+  And pick with care the disobedient wire.
+  That stupid shepherd lolling on his crook
+  With deaf attention scarcely deigns to look.
+  I bide my time, and it shall come at length,
+  When, with a Titan's energy and strength,
+  I'll grab a fistful of the strings, and O,
+  The word shall suffer when I let them go!
+
+Farquharson Harris
+
+
+
+
+
+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 might poor way to spell
+muskeeter.
+
+MOUTH, n.  In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of
+the heart.
+
+MUGWUMP, n.  In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted
+to the vice of independence.  A term of contempt.
+
+MULATTO, n.  A child of two races, ashamed of both.
+
+MULTITUDE, n.  A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue.  In
+a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.  "In a multitude
+of counsellors there is wisdom," saith the proverb.  If many men of
+equal individual wisdom are wiser than any one of them, it must be
+that they acquire the excess of wisdom by the mere act of getting
+together.  Whence comes it?  Obviously from nowhere--as well say
+that a range of mountains is higher than the single mountains
+composing it.  A multitude is as wise as its wisest member if it obey
+him; if not, it is no wiser than its most foolish.
+
+MUMMY, n.  An ancient Egyptian, formerly in universal use among modern
+civilized nations as medicine, and now engaged in supplying art with
+an excellent pigment.  He is handy, too, in museums in gratifying the
+vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower
+animals.
+
+  By means of the Mummy, mankind, it is said,
+  Attests to the gods its respect for the dead.
+  We plunder his tomb, be he sinner or saint,
+  Distil him for physic and grind him for paint,
+  Exhibit for money his poor, shrunken frame,
+  And with levity flock to the scene of the shame.
+  O, tell me, ye gods, for the use of my rhyme:
+  For respecting the dead what's the limit of time?
+
+Scopas Brune
+
+
+MUSTANG, n.  An indocile horse of the western plains.  In English
+society, the American wife of an English nobleman.
+
+MYRMIDON, n.  A follower of Achilles--particularly when he didn't
+lead.
+
+MYTHOLOGY, n.  The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
+origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
+from the true accounts which it invents later.
+
+
+
+
+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 juded by the light that the
+doer had when he performed it.
+
+OUTDO, v.t.  To make an enemy.
+
+OUT-OF-DOORS, n.  That part of one's environment upon which no
+government has been able to collect taxes.  Chiefly useful to inspire
+poets.
+
+  I climbed to the top of a mountain one day
+      To see the sun setting in glory,
+  And I thought, as I looked at his vanishing ray,
+      Of a perfectly splendid story.
+
+  'Twas about an old man and the ass he bestrode
+      Till the strength of the beast was o'ertested;
+  Then the man would carry him miles on the road
+      Till Neddy was pretty well rested.
+
+  The moon rising solemnly over the crest
+      Of the hills to the east of my station
+  Displayed her broad disk to the darkening west
+      Like a visible new creation.
+
+  And I thought of a joke (and I laughed till I cried)
+      Of an idle young woman who tarried
+  About a church-door for a look at the bride,
+      Although 'twas herself that was married.
+
+  To poets all Nature is pregnant with grand
+      Ideas--with thought and emotion.
+  I pity the dunces who don't understand
+      The speech of earth, heaven and ocean.
+
+Stromboli Smith
+
+
+OVATION, n.  In ancient Rome, a definite, formal pageant in honor of
+one who had been disserviceable to the enemies of the nation.  A
+lesser "triumph."  In modern English the word is improperly used to
+signify any loose and spontaneous expression of popular homage to the
+hero of the hour and place.
+
+  "I had an ovation!" the actor man said,
+      But I thought it uncommonly queer,
+  That people and critics by him had been led
+          By the ear.
+
+  The Latin lexicon makes his absurd
+      Assertion as plain as a peg;
+  In "ovum" we find the true root of the word.
+          It means egg.
+
+Dudley Spink
+
+
+OVEREAT, v.  To dine.
+
+  Hail, Gastronome, Apostle of Excess,
+  Well skilled to overeat without distress!
+  Thy great invention, the unfatal feast,
+  Shows Man's superiority to Beast.
+
+John Boop
+
+
+OVERWORK, n.  A dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries
+who want to go fishing.
+
+OWE, v.  To have (and to hold) a debt.  The word formerly signified
+not indebtedness, but possession; it meant "own," and in the minds of
+debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and
+liabilities.
+
+OYSTER, n.  A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the
+hardihood to eat without removing its entrails!  The shells are
+sometimes given to the poor.
+
+
+
+
+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."
+
+PALMISTRY, n.  The 947th method (according to Mimbleshaw's
+classification) of obtaining money by false pretences.  It consists in
+"reading character" in the wrinkles made by closing the hand.  The
+pretence is not altogether false; character can really be read very
+accurately in this way, for the wrinkles in every hand submitted
+plainly spell the word "dupe."  The imposture consists in not reading
+it aloud.
+
+PANDEMONIUM, n.  Literally, the Place of All the Demons.  Most of them
+have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a
+lecture hall by the Audible Reformer.  When disturbed by his voice the
+ancient echoes clamor appropriate responses most gratifying to his
+pride of distinction.
+
+PANTALOONS, n.  A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male.  The
+garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of
+flexion.  Supposed to have been invented by a humorist.  Called
+"trousers" by the enlightened and "pants" by the unworthy.
+
+PANTHEISM, n.  The doctrine that everything is God, in
+contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
+
+PANTOMIME, n.  A play in which the story is told without violence to
+the language.  The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.
+
+PARDON, v.  To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime.  To
+add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
+
+PASSPORT, n.  A document treacherously inflicted upon a citizen going
+abroad, exposing him as an alien and pointing him out for special
+reprobation and outrage.
+
+PAST, n.  That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we
+have a slight and regrettable acquaintance.  A moving line called the
+Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future.  These
+two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually
+effacing the other, are entirely unlike.  The one is dark with sorrow
+and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy.  The
+Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song.  In the
+one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential
+prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing,
+beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease.  Yet the Past is
+the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow.  They
+are one--the knowledge and the dream.
+
+PASTIME, n.  A device for promoting dejection.  Gentle exercise for
+intellectual debility.
+
+PATIENCE, n.  A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
+
+PATRIOT, n.  One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to
+those of the whole.  The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
+
+PATRIOTISM, n.  Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one
+ambitious to illuminate his name.
+
+In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the
+last resort of a scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened
+but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
+
+PEACE, n.  In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
+periods of fighting.
+
+  O, what's the loud uproar assailing
+      Mine ears without cease?
+  'Tis the voice of the hopeful, all-hailing
+      The horrors of peace.
+
+  Ah, Peace Universal; they woo it--
+      Would marry it, too.
+  If only they knew how to do it
+      'Twere easy to do.
+
+  They're working by night and by day
+      On their problem, like moles.
+  Have mercy, O Heaven, I pray,
+      On their meddlesome souls!
+
+Ro Amil
+
+
+PEDESTRIAN, n.  The variable (an audible) part of the roadway for an
+automobile.
+
+PEDIGREE, n.  The known part of the route from an arboreal ancestor
+with a swim bladder to an urban descendant with a cigarette.
+
+PENITENT, adj.  Undergoing or awaiting punishment.
+
+PERFECTION, n.  An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the
+actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.
+
+The editor of an English magazine having received a letter
+pointing out the erroneous nature of his views and style, and signed
+"Perfection," promptly wrote at the foot of the letter:  "I don't
+agree with you," and mailed it to Matthew Arnold.
+
+PERIPATETIC, adj.  Walking about.  Relating to the philosophy of
+Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in
+order to avoid his pupil's objections.  A needless precaution--they
+knew no more of the matter than he.
+
+PERORATION, n.  The explosion of an oratorical rocket.  It dazzles,
+but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous
+peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in
+preparing it.
+
+PERSEVERANCE, n.  A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an
+inglorious success.
+
+  "Persevere, persevere!" cry the homilists all,
+  Themselves, day and night, persevering to bawl.
+  "Remember the fable of tortoise and hare--
+  The one at the goal while the other is--where?"
+  Why, back there in Dreamland, renewing his lease
+  Of life, all his muscles preserving the peace,
+  The goal and the rival forgotten alike,
+  And the long fatigue of the needless hike.
+  His spirit a-squat in the grass and the dew
+  Of the dogless Land beyond the Stew,
+  He sleeps, like a saint in a holy place,
+  A winner of all that is good in a race.
+
+Sukker Uffro
+
+
+PESSIMISM, n.  A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the
+observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his
+scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.
+
+PHILANTHROPIST, n.  A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has
+trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
+
+PHILISTINE, n.  One whose mind is the creature of its environment,
+following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment.  He is
+sometimes learned, frequently prosperous, commonly clean and always
+solemn.
+
+PHILOSOPHY, n.  A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
+
+PHOENIX, n.  The classical prototype of the modern "small hot bird."
+
+PHONOGRAPH, n.  An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.
+
+PHOTOGRAPH, n.  A picture painted by the sun without instruction in
+art.  It is a little better than the work of an Apache, but not quite
+so good as that of a Cheyenne.
+
+PHRENOLOGY, n.  The science of picking the pocket through the scalp.
+It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe
+with.
+
+PHYSICIAN, n.  One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs
+when well.
+
+PHYSIOGNOMY, n.  The art of determining the character of another by
+the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which
+is the standard of excellence.
+
+  "There is no art," says Shakespeare, foolish man,
+      "To read the mind's construction in the face."
+  The physiognomists his portrait scan,
+      And say:  "How little wisdom here we trace!
+  He knew his face disclosed his mind and heart,
+  So, in his own defence, denied our art."
+
+Lavatar Shunk
+
+
+PIANO, n.  A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor.  It
+is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the
+audience.
+
+PICKANINNY, n.  The young of the _Procyanthropos_, or _Americanus
+dominans_.  It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.
+
+PICTURE, n.  A representation in two dimensions of something wearisome
+in three.
+
+  "Behold great Daubert's picture here on view--
+  Taken from Life."  If that description's true,
+  Grant, heavenly Powers, that I be taken, too.
+
+Jali Hane
+
+
+PIE, n.  An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.
+
+  Cold pie was highly esteemed by the remains.
+
+Rev. Dr. Mucker
+
+(in a funeral sermon over a British nobleman)
+
+  Cold pie is a detestable
+  American comestible.
+  That's why I'm done--or undone--
+  So far from that dear London.
+
+(from the headstone of a British nobleman in Kalamazoo)
+
+
+PIETY, n.  Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed
+resemblance to man.
+
+  The pig is taught by sermons and epistles
+  To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.
+
+Judibras
+
+
+PIG, n.  An animal (_Porcus omnivorus_) closely allied to the human
+race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is
+inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.
+
+PIGMY, n.  One of a tribe of very small men found by ancient travelers
+in many parts of the world, but by modern in Central Africa only.  The
+Pigmies are so called to distinguish them from the bulkier Caucasians
+--who are Hogmies.
+
+PILGRIM, n.  A traveler that is taken seriously.  A Pilgrim Father was
+one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms
+through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could
+personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
+
+PILLORY, n.  A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction
+--prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere
+virtues and blameless lives.
+
+PIRACY, n.  Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
+
+PITIFUL, adj.  The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary
+encounter with oneself.
+
+PITY, n.  A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
+
+PLAGIARISM, n.  A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable
+priority and an honorable subsequence.
+
+PLAGIARIZE, v.  To take the thought or style of another writer whom
+one has never, never read.
+
+PLAGUE, n.  In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for
+admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the
+Immune.  The plague as we of to-day have the happiness to know it is
+merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless
+objectionableness.
+
+PLAN, v.t.  To bother about the best method of accomplishing an
+accidental result.
+
+PLATITUDE, n.  The fundamental element and special glory of popular
+literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke.  The wisdom of
+a million fools in the diction of a dullard.  A fossil sentiment in
+artificial rock.  A moral without the fable.  All that is mortal of a
+departed truth.  A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality.  The Pope's-nose
+of a featherless peacock.  A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the
+sea of thought.  The cackle surviving the egg.  A desiccated epigram.
+
+PLATONIC, adj.  Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates.  Platonic
+Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a
+frost.
+
+PLAUDITS, n.  Coins with which the populace pays those who tickle and
+devour it.
+
+PLEASE, v.  To lay the foundation for a superstructure of imposition.
+
+PLEASURE, n.  The least hateful form of dejection.
+
+PLEBEIAN, n.  An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained
+nothing but his hands.  Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a
+saturated solution.
+
+PLEBISCITE, n.  A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign.
+
+PLENIPOTENTIARY, adj.  Having full power.  A Minister Plenipotentiary
+is a diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he
+never exert it.
+
+PLEONASM, n.  An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.
+
+PLOW, n.  An implement that cries aloud for hands accustomed to the
+pen.
+
+PLUNDER, v.  To take the property of another without observing the
+decent and customary reticences of theft.  To effect a change of
+ownership with the candid concomitance of a brass band.  To wrest the
+wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanished opportunity.
+
+POCKET, n.  The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience.  In
+woman this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her
+conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of
+others.
+
+POETRY, n.  A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the
+Magazines.
+
+POKER, n.  A game said to be played with cards for some purpose to
+this lexicographer unknown.
+
+POLICE, n.  An armed force for protection and participation.
+
+POLITENESS, n.  The most acceptable hypocrisy.
+
+POLITICS, n.  A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of
+principles.  The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
+
+POLITICIAN, n.  An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the
+superstructure of organized society is reared.  When he wriggles he
+mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.
+As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being
+alive.
+
+POLYGAMY, n.  A house of atonement, or expiatory chapel, fitted with
+several stools of repentance, as distinguished from monogamy, which
+has but one.
+
+POPULIST, n.  A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found
+in the old red soapstone underlying Kansas; characterized by an
+uncommon spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the
+power of flight, though Professors Morse and Whitney, pursuing
+independent lines of thought, have ingeniously pointed out that had he
+possessed it he would have gone elsewhere.  In the picturesque speech
+of his period, some fragments of which have come down to us, he was
+known as "The Matter with Kansas."
+
+PORTABLE, adj.  Exposed to a mutable ownership through vicissitudes of
+possession.
+
+  His light estate, if neither he did make it
+  Nor yet its former guardian forsake it,
+  Is portable improperty, I take it.
+
+Worgum Slupsky
+
+
+PORTUGUESE, n.pl.  A species of geese indigenous to Portugal.  They
+are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed
+with garlic.
+
+POSITIVE, adj.  Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
+
+POSITIVISM, n.  A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and
+affirms our ignorance of the Apparent.  Its longest exponent is Comte,
+its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.
+
+POSTERITY, n.  An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a
+popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure
+competitor.
+
+POTABLE, n.  Suitable for drinking.  Water is said to be potable;
+indeed, some declare it our natural beverage, although even they find
+it palatable only when suffering from the recurrent disorder known as
+thirst, for which it is a medicine.  Upon nothing has so great and
+diligent ingenuity been brought to bear in all ages and in all
+countries, except the most uncivilized, as upon the invention of
+substitutes for water.  To hold that this general aversion to that
+liquid has no basis in the preservative instinct of the race is to be
+unscientific--and without science we are as the snakes and toads.
+
+POVERTY, n.  A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform.  The
+number of plans for its abolition equals that of the reformers who
+suffer from it, plus that of the philosophers who know nothing about
+it.  Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues
+and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a
+prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.
+
+PRAY, v.  To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf
+of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
+
+PRE-ADAMITE, n.  One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory
+race of antedated Creation and lived under conditions not easily
+conceived.  Melsius believed them to have inhabited "the Void" and to
+have been something intermediate between fishes and birds.  Little its
+known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and
+theologians with a controversy.
+
+PRECEDENT, n.  In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in
+the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a
+Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of
+doing as he pleases.  As there are precedents for everything, he has
+only to ignore those that make against his interest and accentuate
+those in the line of his desire.  Invention of the precedent elevates
+the trial-at-law from the low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the
+noble attitude of a dirigible arbitrament.
+
+PRECIPITATE, adj.  Anteprandial.
+
+  Precipitate in all, this sinner
+  Took action first, and then his dinner.
+
+Judibras
+
+
+PREDESTINATION, n.  The doctrine that all things occur according to
+programme.  This doctrine should not be confused with that of
+foreordination, which means that all things are programmed, but does
+not affirm their occurrence, that being only an implication from other
+doctrines by which this is entailed.  The difference is great enough
+to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
+With the distinction of the two doctrines kept well in mind, and a
+reverent belief in both, one may hope to escape perdition if spared.
+
+PREDICAMENT, n.  The wage of consistency.
+
+PREDILECTION, n.  The preparatory stage of disillusion.
+
+PRE-EXISTENCE, n.  An unnoted factor in creation.
+
+PREFERENCE, n.  A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the
+erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.
+
+An ancient philosopher, expounding his conviction that life is no
+better than death, was asked by a disciple why, then, he did not die.
+"Because," he replied, "death is no better than life."
+
+It is longer.
+
+PREHISTORIC, adj.  Belonging to an early period and a museum.
+Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.
+
+  He lived in a period prehistoric,
+  When all was absurd and phantasmagoric.
+  Born later, when Clio, celestial recorder,
+  Set down great events in succession and order,
+  He surely had seen nothing droll or fortuitous
+  In anything here but the lies that she threw at us.
+
+Orpheus Bowen
+
+
+PREJUDICE, n.  A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
+
+PRELATE, n.  A church officer having a superior degree of holiness and
+a fat preferment.  One of Heaven's aristocracy.  A gentleman of God.
+
+PREROGATIVE, n.  A sovereign's right to do wrong.
+
+PRESBYTERIAN, n.  One who holds the conviction that the government
+authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.
+
+PRESCRIPTION, n.  A physician's guess at what will best prolong the
+situation with least harm to the patient.
+
+PRESENT, n.  That part of eternity dividing the domain of
+disappointment from the realm of hope.
+
+PRESENTABLE, adj.  Hideously appareled after the manner of the time
+and place.
+
+In Boorioboola-Gha a man is presentable on occasions of ceremony
+if he have his abdomen painted a bright blue and wear a cow's tail; in
+New York he may, if it please him, omit the paint, but after sunset he
+must wear two tails made of the wool of a sheep and dyed black.
+
+PRESIDE, v.  To guide the action of a deliberative body to a desirable
+result.  In Journalese, to perform upon a musical instrument; as, "He
+presided at the piccolo."
+
+  The Headliner, holding the copy in hand,
+      Read with a solemn face:
+  "The music was very uncommonly grand--
+          The best that was every provided,
+          For our townsman Brown presided
+      At the organ with skill and grace."
+  The Headliner discontinued to read,
+      And, spread the paper down
+  On the desk, he dashed in at the top of the screed:
+      "Great playing by President Brown."
+
+Orpheus Bowen
+
+
+PRESIDENCY, n.  The greased pig in the field game of American
+politics.
+
+PRESIDENT, n.  The leading figure in a small group of men of whom--
+and of whom only--it is positively known that immense numbers of
+their countrymen did not want any of them for President.
+
+  If that's an honor surely 'tis a greater
+  To have been a simple and undamned spectator.
+  Behold in me a man of mark and note
+  Whom no elector e'er denied a vote!--
+  An undiscredited, unhooted gent
+  Who might, for all we know, be President
+  By acclamation.  Cheer, ye varlets, cheer--
+  I'm passing with a wide and open ear!
+
+Jonathan Fomry
+
+
+PREVARICATOR, n.  A liar in the caterpillar state.
+
+PRICE, n.  Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of
+conscience in demanding it.
+
+PRIMATE, n.  The head of a church, especially a State church supported
+by involuntary contributions.  The Primate of England is the
+Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies
+Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead.  He is
+commonly dead.
+
+PRISON, n.  A place of punishments and rewards.  The poet assures us
+that--
+
+  "Stone walls do not a prison make,"
+
+but a combination of the stone wall, the political parasite and the
+moral instructor is no garden of sweets.
+
+PRIVATE, n.  A military gentleman with a field-marshal's baton in his
+knapsack and an impediment in his hope.
+
+PROBOSCIS, n.  The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him
+in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him.
+For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
+
+Asked how he knew that an elephant was going on a journey, the
+illustrious Jo. Miller cast a reproachful look upon his tormentor, and
+answered, absently:  "When it is ajar," and threw himself from a high
+promontory into the sea.  Thus perished in his pride the most famous
+humorist of antiquity, leaving to mankind a heritage of woe!  No
+successor worthy of the title has appeared, though Mr. Edward Bok, of
+_The Ladies' Home Journal_, is much respected for the purity and
+sweetness of his personal character.
+
+PROJECTILE, n.  The final arbiter in international disputes.  Formerly
+these disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants,
+with such simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could
+supply--the sword, the spear, and so forth.  With the growth of
+prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into
+favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous.  Its
+capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at the point of
+propulsion.
+
+PROOF, n.  Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of
+unlikelihood.  The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to
+that of only one.
+
+PROOF-READER, n.  A malefactor who atones for making your writing
+nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
+
+PROPERTY, n.  Any material thing, having no particular value, that may
+be held by A against the cupidity of B.  Whatever gratifies the
+passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others.  The
+object of man's brief rapacity and long indifference.
+
+PROPHECY, n.  The art and practice of selling one's credibility for
+future delivery.
+
+PROSPECT, n.  An outlook, usually forbidding.  An expectation, usually
+forbidden.
+
+  Blow, blow, ye spicy breezes--
+      O'er Ceylon blow your breath,
+  Where every prospect pleases,
+      Save only that of death.
+
+Bishop Sheber
+
+
+PROVIDENTIAL, adj.  Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the
+person so describing it.
+
+PRUDE, n.  A bawd hiding behind the back of her demeanor.
+
+PUBLISH, n.  In literary affairs, to become the fundamental element in
+a cone of critics.
+
+PUSH, n.  One of the two things mainly conducive to success,
+especially in politics.  The other is Pull.
+
+PYRRHONISM, n.  An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor.  It
+consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism.  Its
+modern professors have added that.
+
+
+
+
+Q
+
+
+
+QUEEN, n.  A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king,
+and through whom it is ruled when there is not.
+
+QUILL, n.  An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly
+wielded by an ass.  This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its
+modern equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting
+Presence.
+
+QUIVER, n.  A portable sheath in which the ancient statesman and the
+aboriginal lawyer carried their lighter arguments.
+
+  He extracted from his quiver,
+      Did the controversial Roman,
+  An argument well fitted
+  To the question as submitted,
+  Then addressed it to the liver,
+      Of the unpersuaded foeman.
+
+Oglum P. Boomp
+
+
+QUIXOTIC, adj.  Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote.  An insight into
+the beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily
+denied to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman's name
+is pronounced Ke-ho-tay.
+
+  When ignorance from out of our lives can banish
+  Philology, 'tis folly to know Spanish.
+
+Juan Smith
+
+
+QUORUM, n.  A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to
+have their own way and their own way of having it.  In the United
+States Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on
+Finance and a messenger from the White House; in the House of
+Representatives, of the Speaker and the devil.
+
+QUOTATION, n.  The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
+The words erroneously repeated.
+
+  Intent on making his quotation truer,
+  He sought the page infallible of Brewer,
+  Then made a solemn vow that he would be
+  Condemned eternally.  Ah, me, ah, me!
+
+Stumpo Gaker
+
+
+QUOTIENT, n.  A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging
+to one person is contained in the pocket of another--usually about
+as many times as it can be got there.
+
+
+
+
+R
+
+
+
+RABBLE, n.  In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority
+tempered by fraudulent elections.  The rabble is like the sacred
+Simurgh, of Arabian fable--omnipotent on condition that it do
+nothing.  (The word is Aristocratese, and has no exact equivalent in
+our tongue, but means, as nearly as may be, "soaring swine.")
+
+RACK, n.  An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading
+devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth.  As a call to
+the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now
+held in light popular esteem.
+
+RANK, n.  Relative elevation in the scale of human worth.
+
+  He held at court a rank so high
+  That other noblemen asked why.
+  "Because," 'twas answered, "others lack
+  His skill to scratch the royal back."
+
+Aramis Jukes
+
+
+RANSOM, n.  The purchase of that which neither belongs to the seller,
+nor can belong to the buyer.  The most unprofitable of investments.
+
+RAPACITY, n.  Providence without industry.  The thrift of power.
+
+RAREBIT, n.  A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point
+out that it is not a rabbit.  To whom it may be solemnly explained
+that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and
+that _riz-de-veau a la financiere_ is not the smile of a calf prepared
+after the recipe of a she banker.
+
+RASCAL, n.  A fool considered under another aspect.
+
+RASCALITY, n.  Stupidity militant.  The activity of a clouded
+intellect.
+
+RASH, adj.  Insensible to the value of our advice.
+
+  "Now lay your bet with mine, nor let
+      These gamblers take your cash."
+  "Nay, this child makes no bet."  "Great snakes!
+      How can you be so rash?"
+
+Bootle P. Gish
+
+
+RATIONAL, adj.  Devoid of all delusions save those of observation,
+experience and reflection.
+
+RATTLESNAKE, n.  Our prostrate brother, _Homo ventrambulans_.
+
+RAZOR, n.  An instrument used by the Caucasian to enhance his beauty,
+by the Mongolian to make a guy of himself, and by the Afro-American to
+affirm his worth.
+
+REACH, n.  The radius of action of the human hand.  The area within
+which it is possible (and customary) to gratify directly the
+propensity to provide.
+
+  This is a truth, as old as the hills,
+      That life and experience teach:
+  The poor man suffers that keenest of ills,
+      An impediment in his reach.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+READING, n.  The general body of what one reads.  In our country it
+consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in "dialect" and
+humor in slang.
+
+  We know by one's reading
+  His learning and breeding;
+  By what draws his laughter
+  We know his Hereafter.
+  Read nothing, laugh never--
+  The Sphinx was less clever!
+
+Jupiter Muke
+
+
+RADICALISM, n.  The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the
+affairs of to-day.
+
+RADIUM, n.  A mineral that gives off heat and stimulates the organ
+that a scientist is a fool with.
+
+RAILROAD, n.  The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get
+away from where we are to where we are no better off.  For this purpose
+the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits
+him to make the transit with great expedition.
+
+RAMSHACKLE, adj.  Pertaining to a certain order of architecture,
+otherwise known as the Normal American.  Most of the public buildings
+of the United States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our
+earlier architects preferred the Ironic.  Recent additions to the
+White House in Washington are Theo-Doric, the ecclesiastic order of
+the Dorians.  They are exceedingly fine and cost one hundred dollars a
+brick.
+
+REALISM, n.  The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads.  The
+charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a
+measuring-worm.
+
+REALITY, n.  The dream of a mad philosopher.  That which would remain
+in the cupel if one should assay a phantom.  The nucleus of a vacuum.
+
+REALLY, adv.  Apparently.
+
+REAR, n.  In American military matters, that exposed part of the army
+that is nearest to Congress.
+
+REASON, v.i.  To weigh probabilities in the scales of desire.
+
+REASON, n.  Propensitate of prejudice.
+
+REASONABLE, adj.  Accessible to the infection of our own opinions.
+Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion.
+
+REBEL, n.  A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish
+it.
+
+RECOLLECT, v.  To recall with additions something not previously
+known.
+
+RECONCILIATION, n.  A suspension of hostilities.  An armed truce for
+the purpose of digging up the dead.
+
+RECONSIDER, v.  To seek a justification for a decision already made.
+
+RECOUNT, n.  In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded
+to the player against whom they are loaded.
+
+RECREATION, n.  A particular kind of dejection to relieve a general
+fatigue.
+
+RECRUIT, n.  A person distinguishable from a civilian by his uniform
+and from a soldier by his gait.
+
+  Fresh from the farm or factory or street,
+  His marching, in pursuit or in retreat,
+      Were an impressive martial spectacle
+  Except for two impediments--his feet.
+
+Thompson Johnson
+
+
+RECTOR, n.  In the Church of England, the Third Person of the
+parochial Trinity, the Curate and the Vicar being the other two.
+
+REDEMPTION, n.  Deliverance of sinners from the penalty of their sin,
+through their murder of the deity against whom they sinned.  The
+doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy
+religion, and whoso believeth in it shall not perish, but have
+everlasting life in which to try to understand it.
+
+  We must awake Man's spirit from his sin,
+      And take some special measure for redeeming it;
+  Though hard indeed the task to get it in
+      Among the angels any way but teaming it,
+      Or purify it otherwise than steaming it.
+  I'm awkward at Redemption--a beginner:
+  My method is to crucify the sinner.
+
+Golgo Brone
+
+
+REDRESS, n.  Reparation without satisfaction.
+
+Among the Anglo-Saxon a subject conceiving himself wronged by the
+king was permitted, on proving his injury, to beat a brazen image of
+the royal offender with a switch that was afterward applied to his own
+naked back.  The latter rite was performed by the public hangman, and
+it assured moderation in the plaintiff's choice of a switch.
+
+RED-SKIN, n.  A North American Indian, whose skin is not red--at
+least not on the outside.
+
+REDUNDANT, adj.  Superfluous; needless; _de trop_.
+
+  The Sultan said:  "There's evidence abundant
+  To prove this unbelieving dog redundant."
+  To whom the Grand Vizier, with mien impressive,
+  Replied:  "His head, at least, appears excessive."
+
+Habeeb Suleiman
+
+
+  Mr. Debs is a redundant citizen.
+
+Theodore Roosevelt
+
+
+REFERENDUM, n.  A law for submission of proposed legislation to a
+popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion.
+
+REFLECTION, n.  An action of the mind whereby we obtain a clearer view
+of our relation to the things of yesterday and are able to avoid the
+perils that we shall not again encounter.
+
+REFORM, v.  A thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to
+reformation.
+
+REFUGE, n.  Anything assuring protection to one in peril.  Moses and
+Joshua provided six cities of refuge--Bezer, Golan, Ramoth, Kadesh,
+Schekem and Hebron--to which one who had taken life inadvertently
+could flee when hunted by relatives of the deceased.  This admirable
+expedient supplied him with wholesome exercise and enabled them to
+enjoy the pleasures of the chase; whereby the soul of the dead man was
+appropriately honored by observances akin to the funeral games of
+early Greece.
+
+REFUSAL, n.  Denial of something desired; as an elderly maiden's hand
+in marriage, to a rich and handsome suitor; a valuable franchise to a
+rich corporation, by an alderman; absolution to an impenitent king, by
+a priest, and so forth.  Refusals are graded in a descending scale of
+finality thus:  the refusal absolute, the refusal conditional, the
+refusal tentative and the refusal feminine.  The last is called by
+some casuists the refusal assentive.
+
+REGALIA, n.  Distinguishing insignia, jewels and costume of such
+ancient and honorable orders as Knights of Adam; Visionaries of
+Detectable Bosh; the Ancient Order of Modern Troglodytes; the League
+of Holy Humbug; the Golden Phalanx of Phalangers; the Genteel Society
+of Expurgated Hoodlums; the Mystic Alliances of Gorgeous Regalians;
+Knights and Ladies of the Yellow Dog; the Oriental Order of Sons of
+the West; the Blatherhood of Insufferable Stuff; Warriors of the Long
+Bow; Guardians of the Great Horn Spoon; the Band of Brutes; the
+Impenitent Order of Wife-Beaters; the Sublime Legion of Flamboyant
+Conspicuants; Worshipers at the Electroplated Shrine; Shining
+Inaccessibles; Fee-Faw-Fummers of the Inimitable Grip; Jannissaries of
+the Broad-Blown Peacock; Plumed Increscencies of the Magic Temple; the
+Grand Cabal of Able-Bodied Sedentarians; Associated Deities of the
+Butter Trade; the Garden of Galoots; the Affectionate Fraternity of
+Men Similarly Warted; the Flashing Astonishers; Ladies of Horror;
+Cooperative Association for Breaking into the Spotlight; Dukes of Eden;
+Disciples Militant of the Hidden Faith; Knights-Champions of the
+Domestic Dog; the Holy Gregarians; the Resolute Optimists; the Ancient
+Sodality of Inhospitable Hogs; Associated Sovereigns of Mendacity;
+Dukes-Guardian of the Mystic Cess-Pool; the Society for Prevention of
+Prevalence; Kings of Drink; Polite Federation of Gents-Consequential;
+the Mysterious Order of the Undecipherable Scroll; Uniformed Rank of
+Lousy Cats; Monarchs of Worth and Hunger; Sons of the South Star;
+Prelates of the Tub-and-Sword.
+
+RELIGION, n.  A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the
+nature of the Unknowable.
+
+  "What is your religion my son?" inquired the Archbishop of Rheims.
+  "Pardon, monseigneur," replied Rochebriant; "I am ashamed of it."
+  "Then why do you not become an atheist?"
+  "Impossible!  I should be ashamed of atheism."
+  "In that case, monsieur, you should join the Protestants."
+
+RELIQUARY, n.  A receptacle for such sacred objects as pieces of the
+true cross, short-ribs of the saints, the ears of Balaam's ass, the
+lung of the cock that called Peter to repentance and so forth.
+Reliquaries are commonly of metal, and provided with a lock to prevent
+the contents from coming out and performing miracles at unseasonable
+times.  A feather from the wing of the Angel of the Annunciation once
+escaped during a sermon in Saint Peter's and so tickled the noses of
+the congregation that they woke and sneezed with great vehemence three
+times each.  It is related in the "Gesta Sanctorum" that a sacristan
+in the Canterbury cathedral surprised the head of Saint Dennis in the
+library.  Reprimanded by its stern custodian, it explained that it was
+seeking a body of doctrine.  This unseemly levity so raged the
+diocesan that the offender was publicly anathematized, thrown into the
+Stour and replaced by another head of Saint Dennis, brought from Rome.
+
+RENOWN, n.  A degree of distinction between notoriety and fame--a
+little more supportable than the one and a little more intolerable
+than the other.  Sometimes it is conferred by an unfriendly and
+inconsiderate hand.
+
+  I touched the harp in every key,
+      But found no heeding ear;
+  And then Ithuriel touched me
+      With a revealing spear.
+
+  Not all my genius, great as 'tis,
+      Could urge me out of night.
+  I felt the faint appulse of his,
+      And leapt into the light!
+
+W.J. Candleton
+
+
+REPARATION, n.  Satisfaction that is made for a wrong and deducted
+from the satisfaction felt in committing it.
+
+REPARTEE, n.  Prudent insult in retort.  Practiced by gentlemen with a
+constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to
+offend.  In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.
+
+REPENTANCE, n.  The faithful attendant and follower of Punishment.  It
+is usually manifest in a degree of reformation that is not
+inconsistent with continuity of sin.
+
+  Desirous to avoid the pains of Hell,
+  You will repent and join the Church, Parnell?
+  How needless!--Nick will keep you off the coals
+  And add you to the woes of other souls.
+
+Jomater Abemy
+
+
+REPLICA, n.  A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made
+the original.  It is so called to distinguish it from a "copy," which
+is made by another artist.  When the two are made with equal skill the
+replica is the more valuable, for it is supposed to be more beautiful
+than it looks.
+
+REPORTER, n.  A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it
+with a tempest of words.
+
+  "More dear than all my bosom knows, O thou
+  Whose 'lips are sealed' and will not disavow!"
+  So sang the blithe reporter-man as grew
+  Beneath his hand the leg-long "interview."
+
+Barson Maith
+
+
+REPOSE, v.i.  To cease from troubling.
+
+REPRESENTATIVE, n.  In national politics, a member of the Lower House
+in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.
+
+REPROBATION, n.  In theology, the state of a luckless mortal
+prenatally damned.  The doctrine of reprobation was taught by Calvin,
+whose joy in it was somewhat marred by the sad sincerity of his
+conviction that although some are foredoomed to perdition, others are
+predestined to salvation.
+
+REPUBLIC, n.  A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing
+governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to
+enforce an optional obedience.  In a republic, the foundation of
+public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from
+ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to.
+There are as many kinds of republics as there are graduations between
+the despotism whence they came and the anarchy whither they lead.
+
+REQUIEM, n.  A mass for the dead which the minor poets assure us the
+winds sing o'er the graves of their favorites.  Sometimes, by way of
+providing a varied entertainment, they sing a dirge.
+
+RESIDENT, adj.  Unable to leave.
+
+RESIGN, v.t.  To renounce an honor for an advantage.  To renounce an
+advantage for a greater advantage.
+
+  'Twas rumored Leonard Wood had signed
+      A true renunciation
+  Of title, rank and every kind
+      Of military station--
+      Each honorable station.
+
+  By his example fired--inclined
+      To noble emulation,
+  The country humbly was resigned
+      To Leonard's resignation--
+      His Christian resignation.
+
+Politian Greame
+
+
+RESOLUTE, adj.  Obstinate in a course that we approve.
+
+RESPECTABILITY, n.  The offspring of a _liaison_ between a bald head
+and a bank account.
+
+RESPIRATOR, n.  An apparatus fitted over the nose and mouth of an
+inhabitant of London, whereby to filter the visible universe in its
+passage to the lungs.
+
+RESPITE, n.  A suspension of hostilities against a sentenced assassin,
+to enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have
+been done by the prosecuting attorney.  Any break in the continuity of
+a disagreeable expectation.
+
+  Altgeld upon his incandescent bed
+  Lay, an attendant demon at his head.
+
+  "O cruel cook, pray grant me some relief--
+  Some respite from the roast, however brief."
+
+  "Remember how on earth I pardoned all
+  Your friends in Illinois when held in thrall."
+
+  "Unhappy soul! for that alone you squirm
+  O'er fire unquenched, a never-dying worm.
+
+  "Yet, for I pity your uneasy state,
+  Your doom I'll mollify and pains abate.
+
+  "Naught, for a season, shall your comfort mar,
+  Not even the memory of who you are."
+
+  Throughout eternal space dread silence fell;
+  Heaven trembled as Compassion entered Hell.
+
+  "As long, sweet demon, let my respite be
+  As, governing down here, I'd respite thee."
+
+  "As long, poor soul, as any of the pack
+  You thrust from jail consumed in getting back."
+
+  A genial chill affected Altgeld's hide
+  While they were turning him on t'other side.
+
+Joel Spate Woop
+
+
+RESPLENDENT, adj.  Like a simple American citizen beduking himself in
+his lodge, or affirming his consequence in the Scheme of Things as an
+elemental unit of a parade.
+
+      The Knights of Dominion were so resplendent in their velvet-
+  and-gold that their masters would hardly have known them.
+
+"Chronicles of the Classes"
+
+
+RESPOND, v.i.  To make answer, or disclose otherwise a consciousness
+of having inspired an interest in what Herbert Spencer calls "external
+coexistences," as Satan "squat like a toad" at the ear of Eve,
+responded to the touch of the angel's spear.  To respond in damages is
+to contribute to the maintenance of the plaintiff's attorney and,
+incidentally, to the gratification of the plaintiff.
+
+RESPONSIBILITY, n.  A detachable burden easily shifted to the
+shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor.  In the days
+of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.
+
+  Alas, things ain't what we should see
+  If Eve had let that apple be;
+  And many a feller which had ought
+  To set with monarchses of thought,
+  Or play some rosy little game
+  With battle-chaps on fields of fame,
+  Is downed by his unlucky star
+  And hollers:  "Peanuts!--here you are!"
+
+"The Sturdy Beggar"
+
+
+RESTITUTION, n.  The founding or endowing of universities and public
+libraries by gift or bequest.
+
+RESTITUTOR, n.  Benefactor; philanthropist.
+
+RETALIATION, n.  The natural rock upon which is reared the Temple of
+Law.
+
+RETRIBUTION, n.  A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon
+the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by
+evicting them.
+
+In the lines following, addressed to an Emperor in exile by Father
+Gassalasca Jape, the reverend poet appears to hint his sense of the
+imprudence of turning about to face Retribution when it is taking
+exercise:
+
+  What, what! Dom Pedro, you desire to go
+      Back to Brazil to end your days in quiet?
+  Why, what assurance have you 'twould be so?
+      'Tis not so long since you were in a riot,
+      And your dear subjects showed a will to fly at
+  Your throat and shake you like a rat.  You know
+  That empires are ungrateful; are you certain
+  Republics are less handy to get hurt in?
+
+REVEILLE, n.  A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields
+no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted.  In the
+American army it is ingeniously called "rev-e-lee," and to that
+pronunciation our countrymen have pledged their lives, their
+misfortunes and their sacred dishonor.
+
+REVELATION, n.  A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed
+all that he knew.  The revealing is done by the commentators, who know
+nothing.
+
+REVERENCE, n.  The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a
+man.
+
+REVIEW, v.t.
+
+  To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it,
+      Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)
+  At work upon a book, and so read out of it
+      The qualities that you have first read into it.
+
+REVOLUTION, n.  In politics, an abrupt change in the form of
+misgovernment.  Specifically, in American history, the substitution of
+the rule of an Administration for that of a Ministry, whereby the
+welfare and happiness of the people were advanced a full half-inch.
+Revolutions are usually accompanied by a considerable effusion of
+blood, but are accounted worth it--this appraisement being made by
+beneficiaries whose blood had not the mischance to be shed.  The
+French revolution is of incalculable value to the Socialist of to-day;
+when he pulls the string actuating its bones its gestures are
+inexpressibly terrifying to gory tyrants suspected of fomenting law
+and order.
+
+RHADOMANCER, n.  One who uses a divining-rod in prospecting for
+precious metals in the pocket of a fool.
+
+RIBALDRY, n.  Censorious language by another concerning oneself.
+
+RIBROASTER, n.  Censorious language by oneself concerning another.
+The word is of classical refinement, and is even said to have been
+used in a fable by Georgius Coadjutor, one of the most fastidious
+writers of the fifteenth century--commonly, indeed, regarded as the
+founder of the Fastidiotic School.
+
+RICE-WATER, n.  A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular
+novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the
+conscience.  It is said to be rich in both obtundite and lethargine,
+and is brewed in a midnight fog by a fat witch of the Dismal Swamp.
+
+RICH, adj.  Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property
+of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the
+luckless.  That is the view that prevails in the underworld, where the
+Brotherhood of Man finds its most logical development and candid
+advocacy.  To denizens of the midworld the word means good and wise.
+
+RICHES, n.
+
+      A gift from Heaven signifying, "This is my beloved son, in
+  whom I am well pleased."
+
+John D. Rockefeller
+
+
+      The reward of toil and virtue.
+
+J.P. Morgan
+
+
+      The savings of many in the hands of one.
+
+Eugene Debs
+
+To these excellent definitions the inspired lexicographer feels
+that he can add nothing of value.
+
+RIDICULE, n.  Words designed to show that the person of whom they are
+uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who
+utters them.  It may be graphic, mimetic or merely rident.
+Shaftesbury is quoted as having pronounced it the test of truth--a
+ridiculous assertion, for many a solemn fallacy has undergone
+centuries of ridicule with no abatement of its popular acceptance.
+What, for example, has been more valorously derided than the doctrine
+of Infant Respectability?
+
+RIGHT, n.  Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right
+to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have
+measles, and the like.  The first of these rights was once universally
+believed to be derived directly from the will of God; and this is
+still sometimes affirmed _in partibus infidelium_ outside the
+enlightened realms of Democracy; as the well known lines of Sir
+Abednego Bink, following:
+
+      By what right, then, do royal rulers rule?
+          Whose is the sanction of their state and pow'r?
+      He surely were as stubborn as a mule
+          Who, God unwilling, could maintain an hour
+  His uninvited session on the throne, or air
+  His pride securely in the Presidential chair.
+
+      Whatever is is so by Right Divine;
+          Whate'er occurs, God wills it so.  Good land!
+      It were a wondrous thing if His design
+          A fool could baffle or a rogue withstand!
+  If so, then God, I say (intending no offence)
+  Is guilty of contributory negligence.
+
+RIGHTEOUSNESS, n.  A sturdy virtue that was once found among the
+Pantidoodles inhabiting the lower part of the peninsula of Oque.  Some
+feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it
+into several European countries, but it appears to have been
+imperfectly expounded.  An example of this faulty exposition is found
+in the only extant sermon of the pious Bishop Rowley, a characteristic
+passage from which is here given:
+
+      "Now righteousness consisteth not merely in a holy state of
+  mind, nor yet in performance of religious rites and obedience to
+  the letter of the law.  It is not enough that one be pious and
+  just:  one must see to it that others also are in the same state;
+  and to this end compulsion is a proper means.  Forasmuch as my
+  injustice may work ill to another, so by his injustice may evil be
+  wrought upon still another, the which it is as manifestly my duty
+  to estop as to forestall mine own tort.  Wherefore if I would be
+  righteous I am bound to restrain my neighbor, by force if needful,
+  in all those injurious enterprises from which, through a better
+  disposition and by the help of Heaven, I do myself refrain."
+
+RIME, n.  Agreeing sounds in the terminals of verse, mostly bad.  The
+verses themselves, as distinguished from prose, mostly dull.  Usually
+(and wickedly) spelled "rhyme."
+
+RIMER, n.  A poet regarded with indifference or disesteem.
+
+  The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,
+  The sound surceases and the sense expires.
+  Then the domestic dog, to east and west,
+  Expounds the passions burning in his breast.
+  The rising moon o'er that enchanted land
+  Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.
+
+Mowbray Myles
+
+
+RIOT, n.  A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent
+bystanders.
+
+R.I.P.  A careless abbreviation of _requiescat in pace_, attesting an
+indolent goodwill to the dead.  According to the learned Dr. Drigge,
+however, the letters originally meant nothing more than _reductus in
+pulvis_.
+
+RITE, n.  A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept
+or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out
+of it.
+
+RITUALISM, n.  A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear
+freedom, keeping off the grass.
+
+ROAD, n.  A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is
+too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.
+
+  All roads, howsoe'er they diverge, lead to Rome,
+  Whence, thank the good Lord, at least one leads back home.
+
+Borey the Bald
+
+
+ROBBER, n.  A candid man of affairs.
+  It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling
+companion lodged at a wayside inn.  The surroundings were suggestive,
+and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn.  "Once
+there was a Farmer-General of the Revenues."  Saying nothing more, he
+was encouraged to continue.  "That," he said, "is the story."
+
+ROMANCE, n.  Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as
+They Are.  In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to
+probability, as a domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance
+it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination--free,
+lawless, immune to bit and rein.  Your novelist is a poor creature, as
+Carlyle might say--a mere reporter.  He may invent his characters
+and plot, but he must not imagine anything taking place that might not
+occur, albeit his entire narrative is candidly a lie.  Why he imposes
+this hard condition on himself, and "drags at each remove a
+lengthening chain" of his own forging he can explain in ten thick
+volumes without illuminating by so much as a candle's ray the black
+profound of his own ignorance of the matter.  There are great novels,
+for great writers have "laid waste their powers" to write them, but it
+remains true that far and away the most fascinating fiction that we
+have is "The Thousand and One Nights."
+
+ROPE, n.  An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they
+too are mortal.  It is put about the neck and remains in place one's
+whole life long.  It has been largely superseded by a more complex
+electrical device worn upon another part of the person; and this is
+rapidly giving place to an apparatus known as the preachment.
+
+ROSTRUM, n.  In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship.  In
+America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically
+expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.
+
+ROUNDHEAD, n.  A member of the Parliamentarian party in the English
+civil war--so called from his habit of wearing his hair short,
+whereas his enemy, the Cavalier, wore his long.  There were other
+points of difference between them, but the fashion in hair was the
+fundamental cause of quarrel.  The Cavaliers were royalists because
+the king, an indolent fellow, found it more convenient to let his hair
+grow than to wash his neck.  This the Roundheads, who were mostly
+barbers and soap-boilers, deemed an injury to trade, and the royal
+neck was therefore the object of their particular indignation.
+Descendants of the belligerents now wear their hair all alike, but the
+fires of animosity enkindled in that ancient strife smoulder to this
+day beneath the snows of British civility.
+
+RUBBISH, n.  Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies,
+literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions
+lying due south from Boreaplas.
+
+RUIN, v.  To destroy.  Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the
+virtue of maids.
+
+RUM, n.  Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total
+abstainers.
+
+RUMOR, n.  A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.
+
+  Sharp, irresistible by mail or shield,
+      By guard unparried as by flight unstayed,
+  O serviceable Rumor, let me wield
+      Against my enemy no other blade.
+  His be the terror of a foe unseen,
+      His the inutile hand upon the hilt,
+  And mine the deadly tongue, long, slender, keen,
+      Hinting a rumor of some ancient guilt.
+  So shall I slay the wretch without a blow,
+  Spare me to celebrate his overthrow,
+  And nurse my valor for another foe.
+
+Joel Buxter
+
+
+RUSSIAN, n.  A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul.  A
+Tartar Emetic.
+
+
+
+
+S
+
+
+
+SABBATH, n.  A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God
+made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.  Among the
+Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this
+is the Christian version:  "Remember the seventh day to make thy
+neighbor keep it wholly."  To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient
+that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early
+Fathers of the Church held other views.  So great is the sanctity of
+the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious
+jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is
+reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water
+version of the Fourth Commandment:
+
+  Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,
+  And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.
+
+Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the
+captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine
+ordinance.
+
+SACERDOTALIST, n.  One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a
+priest.  Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge
+that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the
+Neo-Dictionarians.
+
+SACRAMENT, n.  A solemn religious ceremony to which several degrees of
+authority and significance are attached.  Rome has seven sacraments,
+but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can
+afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity.  Some of the smaller
+sects have no sacraments at all--for which mean economy they will
+indubitable be damned.
+
+SACRED, adj.  Dedicated to some religious purpose; having a divine
+character; inspiring solemn thoughts or emotions; as, the Dalai Lama
+of Thibet; the Moogum of M'bwango; the temple of Apes in Ceylon; the
+Cow in India; the Crocodile, the Cat and the Onion of ancient Egypt;
+the Mufti of Moosh; the hair of the dog that bit Noah, etc.
+
+  All things are either sacred or profane.
+  The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
+  The latter to the devil appertain.
+
+Dumbo Omohundro
+
+
+SANDLOTTER, n.  A vertebrate mammal holding the political views of
+Denis Kearney, a notorious demagogue of San Francisco, whose audiences
+gathered in the open spaces (sandlots) of the town.  True to the
+traditions of his species, this leader of the proletariat was finally
+bought off by his law-and-order enemies, living prosperously silent
+and dying impenitently rich.  But before his treason he imposed upon
+California a constitution that was a confection of sin in a diction of
+solecisms.  The similarity between the words "sandlotter" and
+"sansculotte" is problematically significant, but indubitably
+suggestive.
+
+SAFETY-CLUTCH, n.  A mechanical device acting automatically to prevent
+the fall of an elevator, or cage, in case of an accident to the
+hoisting apparatus.
+
+  Once I seen a human ruin
+      In an elevator-well,
+  And his members was bestrewin'
+      All the place where he had fell.
+
+  And I says, apostrophisin'
+      That uncommon woful wreck:
+  "Your position's so surprisin'
+      That I tremble for your neck!"
+
+  Then that ruin, smilin' sadly
+      And impressive, up and spoke:
+  "Well, I wouldn't tremble badly,
+      For it's been a fortnight broke."
+
+  Then, for further comprehension
+      Of his attitude, he begs
+  I will focus my attention
+      On his various arms and legs--
+
+  How they all are contumacious;
+      Where they each, respective, lie;
+  How one trotter proves ungracious,
+      T'other one an _alibi_.
+
+  These particulars is mentioned
+      For to show his dismal state,
+  Which I wasn't first intentioned
+      To specifical relate.
+
+  None is worser to be dreaded
+      That I ever have heard tell
+  Than the gent's who there was spreaded
+      In that elevator-well.
+
+  Now this tale is allegoric--
+      It is figurative all,
+  For the well is metaphoric
+      And the feller didn't fall.
+
+  I opine it isn't moral
+      For a writer-man to cheat,
+  And despise to wear a laurel
+      As was gotten by deceit.
+
+  For 'tis Politics intended
+      By the elevator, mind,
+  It will boost a person splendid
+      If his talent is the kind.
+
+  Col. Bryan had the talent
+      (For the busted man is him)
+  And it shot him up right gallant
+      Till his head begun to swim.
+
+  Then the rope it broke above him
+      And he painful come to earth
+  Where there's nobody to love him
+      For his detrimented worth.
+
+  Though he's livin' none would know him,
+      Or at leastwise not as such.
+  Moral of this woful poem:
+      Frequent oil your safety-clutch.
+
+Porfer Poog
+
+
+SAINT, n.  A dead sinner revised and edited.
+
+The Duchess of Orleans relates that the irreverent old
+calumniator, Marshal Villeroi, who in his youth had known St. Francis
+de Sales, said, on hearing him called saint:  "I am delighted to hear
+that Monsieur de Sales is a saint.  He was fond of saying indelicate
+things, and used to cheat at cards.  In other respects he was a
+perfect gentleman, though a fool."
+
+SALACITY, n.  A certain literary quality frequently observed in
+popular novels, especially in those written by women and young girls,
+who give it another name and think that in introducing it they are
+occupying a neglected field of letters and reaping an overlooked
+harvest.  If they have the misfortune to live long enough they are
+tormented with a desire to burn their sheaves.
+
+SALAMANDER, n.  Originally a reptile inhabiting fire; later, an
+anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile.  Salamanders are now
+believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account
+having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it
+with a bucket of holy water.
+
+SARCOPHAGUS, n.  Among the Greeks a coffin which being made of a
+certain kind of carnivorous stone, had the peculiar property of
+devouring the body placed in it.  The sarcophagus known to modern
+obsequiographers is commonly a product of the carpenter's art.
+
+SATAN, n.  One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in
+sashcloth and axes.  Being instated as an archangel, Satan made
+himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from
+Heaven.  Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a
+moment and at last went back.  "There is one favor that I should like
+to ask," said he.
+
+"Name it."
+
+"Man, I understand, is about to be created.  He will need laws."
+
+"What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn
+of eternity with hatred of his soul--you ask for the right to make
+his laws?"
+
+"Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them
+himself."
+
+It was so ordered.
+
+SATIETY, n.  The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten
+its contents, madam.
+
+SATIRE, n.  An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the
+vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with
+imperfect tenderness.  In this country satire never had more than a
+sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we
+are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all
+humor, being tolerant and sympathetic.  Moreover, although Americans
+are "endowed by their Creator" with abundant vice and folly, it is not
+generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the
+satirist is popularly regarded as a sour-spirited knave, and his ever
+victim's outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent.
+
+  Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung
+  In the dead language of a mummy's tongue,
+  For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well--
+  Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell.
+  Had it been such as consecrates the Bible
+  Thou hadst not perished by the law of libel.
+
+Barney Stims
+
+
+SATYR, n.  One of the few characters of the Grecian mythology accorded
+recognition in the Hebrew.  (Leviticus, xvii, 7.)  The satyr was at
+first a member of the dissolute community acknowledging a loose
+allegiance with Dionysius, but underwent many transformations and
+improvements.  Not infrequently he is confounded with the faun, a
+later and decenter creation of the Romans, who was less like a man and
+more like a goat.
+
+SAUCE, n.  The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment.
+A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one
+sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine.  For every sauce invented
+and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.
+
+SAW, n.  A trite popular saying, or proverb.  (Figurative and
+colloquial.)  So called because it makes its way into a wooden head.
+Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.
+
+      A penny saved is a penny to squander.
+
+      A man is known by the company that he organizes.
+
+      A bad workman quarrels with the man who calls him that.
+
+      A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
+
+      Better late than before anybody has invited you.
+
+      Example is better than following it.
+
+      Half a loaf is better than a whole one if there is much else.
+
+      Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.
+
+      What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
+
+      Least said is soonest disavowed.
+
+      He laughs best who laughs least.
+
+      Speak of the Devil and he will hear about it.
+
+      Of two evils choose to be the least.
+
+      Strike while your employer has a big contract.
+
+      Where there's a will there's a won't.
+
+SCARABAEUS, n.  The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to
+our familiar "tumble-bug."  It was supposed to symbolize immortality,
+the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity.  Its habit
+of incubating its eggs in a ball of ordure may also have commended it
+to the favor of the priesthood, and may some day assure it an equal
+reverence among ourselves.  True, the American beetle is an inferior
+beetle, but the American priest is an inferior priest.
+
+SCARABEE, n.  The same as scarabaeus.
+
+              He fell by his own hand
+                  Beneath the great oak tree.
+              He'd traveled in a foreign land.
+              He tried to make her understand
+              The dance that's called the Saraband,
+                  But he called it Scarabee.
+  He had called it so through an afternoon,
+      And she, the light of his harem if so might be,
+      Had smiled and said naught.  O the body was fair to see,
+  All frosted there in the shine o' the moon--
+                      Dead for a Scarabee
+  And a recollection that came too late.
+                          O Fate!
+                  They buried him where he lay,
+                  He sleeps awaiting the Day,
+                          In state,
+  And two Possible Puns, moon-eyed and wan,
+  Gloom over the grave and then move on.
+                      Dead for a Scarabee!
+                                                     Fernando Tapple
+
+SCARIFICATION, n.  A form of penance practised by the mediaeval pious.
+The rite was performed, sometimes with a knife, sometimes with a hot
+iron, but always, says Arsenius Asceticus, acceptably if the penitent
+spared himself no pain nor harmless disfigurement.  Scarification,
+with other crude penances, has now been superseded by benefaction.
+The founding of a library or endowment of a university is said to
+yield to the penitent a sharper and more lasting pain than is
+conferred by the knife or iron, and is therefore a surer means of
+grace.  There are, however, two grave objections to it as a
+penitential method:  the good that it does and the taint of justice.
+
+SCEPTER, n.  A king's staff of office, the sign and symbol of his
+authority.  It was originally a mace with which the sovereign
+admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the
+bones of their proponents.
+
+SCIMITAR, n.  A curved sword of exceeding keenness, in the conduct of
+which certain Orientals attain a surprising proficiency, as the
+incident here related will serve to show.  The account is translated
+from the Japanese of Shusi Itama, a famous writer of the thirteenth
+century.
+
+      When the great Gichi-Kuktai was Mikado he condemned to
+  decapitation Jijiji Ri, a high officer of the Court.  Soon after
+  the hour appointed for performance of the rite what was his
+  Majesty's surprise to see calmly approaching the throne the man
+  who should have been at that time ten minutes dead!
+      "Seventeen hundred impossible dragons!" shouted the enraged
+  monarch.  "Did I not sentence you to stand in the market-place and
+  have your head struck off by the public executioner at three
+  o'clock?  And is it not now 3:10?"
+      "Son of a thousand illustrious deities," answered the
+  condemned minister, "all that you say is so true that the truth is
+  a lie in comparison.  But your heavenly Majesty's sunny and
+  vitalizing wishes have been pestilently disregarded.  With joy I
+  ran and placed my unworthy body in the market-place.  The
+  executioner appeared with his bare scimitar, ostentatiously
+  whirled it in air, and then, tapping me lightly upon the neck,
+  strode away, pelted by the populace, with whom I was ever a
+  favorite.  I am come to pray for justice upon his own dishonorable
+  and treasonous head."
+      "To what regiment of executioners does the black-boweled
+  caitiff belong?" asked the Mikado.
+      "To the gallant Ninety-eight Hundred and Thirty-seventh--I
+  know the man.  His name is Sakko-Samshi."
+      "Let him be brought before me," said the Mikado to an
+  attendant, and a half-hour later the culprit stood in the
+  Presence.
+      "Thou bastard son of a three-legged hunchback without thumbs!"
+  roared the sovereign--"why didst thou but lightly tap the neck
+  that it should have been thy pleasure to sever?"
+      "Lord of Cranes an Cherry Blooms," replied the executioner,
+  unmoved, "command him to blow his nose with his fingers."
+      Being commanded, Jijiji Ri laid hold of his nose and trumpeted
+  like an elephant, all expecting to see the severed head flung
+  violently from him.  Nothing occurred:  the performance prospered
+  peacefully to the close, without incident.
+      All eyes were now turned on the executioner, who had grown as
+  white as the snows on the summit of Fujiama.  His legs trembled
+  and his breath came in gasps of terror.
+      "Several kinds of spike-tailed brass lions!" he cried; "I am a
+  ruined and disgraced swordsman!  I struck the villain feebly
+  because in flourishing the scimitar I had accidentally passed it
+  through my own neck!  Father of the Moon, I resign my office."
+      So saying, he gasped his top-knot, lifted off his head, and
+  advancing to the throne laid it humbly at the Mikado's feet.
+
+SCRAP-BOOK, n.  A book that is commonly edited by a fool.  Many
+persons of some small distinction compile scrap-books containing
+whatever they happen to read about themselves or employ others to
+collect.  One of these egotists was addressed in the lines following,
+by Agamemnon Melancthon Peters:
+
+  Dear Frank, that scrap-book where you boast
+      You keep a record true
+  Of every kind of peppered roast
+          That's made of you;
+
+  Wherein you paste the printed gibes
+      That revel round your name,
+  Thinking the laughter of the scribes
+          Attests your fame;
+
+  Where all the pictures you arrange
+      That comic pencils trace--
+  Your funny figure and your strange
+          Semitic face--
+
+  Pray lend it me.  Wit I have not,
+      Nor art, but there I'll list
+  The daily drubbings you'd have got
+          Had God a fist.
+
+SCRIBBLER, n.  A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to
+one's own.
+
+SCRIPTURES, n.  The sacred books of our holy religion, as
+distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other
+faiths are based.
+
+SEAL, n.  A mark impressed upon certain kinds of documents to attest
+their authenticity and authority.  Sometimes it is stamped upon wax,
+and attached to the paper, sometimes into the paper itself.  Sealing,
+in this sense, is a survival of an ancient custom of inscribing
+important papers with cabalistic words or signs to give them a magical
+efficacy independent of the authority that they represent.  In the
+British museum are preserved many ancient papers, mostly of a
+sacerdotal character, validated by necromantic pentagrams and other
+devices, frequently initial letters of words to conjure with; and in
+many instances these are attached in the same way that seals are
+appended now.  As nearly every reasonless and apparently meaningless
+custom, rite or observance of modern times had origin in some remote
+utility, it is pleasing to note an example of ancient nonsense
+evolving in the process of ages into something really useful.  Our
+word "sincere" is derived from _sine cero_, without wax, but the
+learned are not in agreement as to whether this refers to the absence
+of the cabalistic signs, or to that of the wax with which letters were
+formerly closed from public scrutiny.  Either view of the matter will
+serve one in immediate need of an hypothesis.  The initials L.S.,
+commonly appended to signatures of legal documents, mean _locum
+sigillis_, the place of the seal, although the seal is no longer used
+--an admirable example of conservatism distinguishing Man from the
+beasts that perish.  The words _locum sigillis_ are humbly suggested
+as a suitable motto for the Pribyloff Islands whenever they shall take
+their place as a sovereign State of the American Union.
+
+SEINE, n.  A kind of net for effecting an involuntary change of
+environment.  For fish it is made strong and coarse, but women are
+more easily taken with a singularly delicate fabric weighted with
+small, cut stones.
+
+  The devil casting a seine of lace,
+      (With precious stones 'twas weighted)
+  Drew it into the landing place
+      And its contents calculated.
+
+  All souls of women were in that sack--
+      A draft miraculous, precious!
+  But ere he could throw it across his back
+      They'd all escaped through the meshes.
+
+Baruch de Loppis
+
+
+SELF-ESTEEM, n.  An erroneous appraisement.
+
+SELF-EVIDENT, adj.  Evident to one's self and to nobody else.
+
+SELFISH, adj.  Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
+
+SENATE, n.  A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
+misdemeanors.
+
+SERIAL, n.  A literary work, usually a story that is not true,
+creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.
+Frequently appended to each installment is a "synposis of preceding
+chapters" for those who have not read them, but a direr need is a
+synposis of succeeding chapters for those who do not intend to read
+_them_.  A synposis of the entire work would be still better.
+
+The late James F. Bowman was writing a serial tale for a weekly
+paper in collaboration with a genius whose name has not come down to
+us.  They wrote, not jointly but alternately, Bowman supplying the
+installment for one week, his friend for the next, and so on, world
+without end, they hoped.  Unfortunately they quarreled, and one Monday
+morning when Bowman read the paper to prepare himself for his task, he
+found his work cut out for him in a way to surprise and pain him.  His
+collaborator had embarked every character of the narrative on a ship
+and sunk them all in the deepest part of the Atlantic.
+
+SEVERALTY, n.  Separateness, as, lands in severalty, i.e., lands held
+individually, not in joint ownership.  Certain tribes of Indians are
+believed now to be sufficiently civilized to have in severalty the
+lands that they have hitherto held as tribal organizations, and could
+not sell to the Whites for waxen beads and potato whiskey.
+
+  Lo! the poor Indian whose unsuited mind
+  Saw death before, hell and the grave behind;
+  Whom thrifty settler ne'er besought to stay--
+  His small belongings their appointed prey;
+  Whom Dispossession, with alluring wile,
+  Persuaded elsewhere every little while!
+  His fire unquenched and his undying worm
+  By "land in severalty" (charming term!)
+  Are cooled and killed, respectively, at last,
+  And he to his new holding anchored fast!
+
+SHERIFF, n.  In America the chief executive officer of a county, whose
+most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern
+States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.
+
+  John Elmer Pettibone Cajee
+  (I write of him with little glee)
+  Was just as bad as he could be.
+
+  'Twas frequently remarked:  "I swon!
+  The sun has never looked upon
+  So bad a man as Neighbor John."
+
+  A sinner through and through, he had
+  This added fault:  it made him mad
+  To know another man was bad.
+
+  In such a case he thought it right
+  To rise at any hour of night
+  And quench that wicked person's light.
+
+  Despite the town's entreaties, he
+  Would hale him to the nearest tree
+  And leave him swinging wide and free.
+
+  Or sometimes, if the humor came,
+  A luckless wight's reluctant frame
+  Was given to the cheerful flame.
+
+  While it was turning nice and brown,
+  All unconcerned John met the frown
+  Of that austere and righteous town.
+
+  "How sad," his neighbors said, "that he
+  So scornful of the law should be--
+  An anar c, h, i, s, t."
+
+  (That is the way that they preferred
+  To utter the abhorrent word,
+  So strong the aversion that it stirred.)
+
+  "Resolved," they said, continuing,
+  "That Badman John must cease this thing
+  Of having his unlawful fling.
+
+  "Now, by these sacred relics"--here
+  Each man had out a souvenir
+  Got at a lynching yesteryear--
+
+  "By these we swear he shall forsake
+  His ways, nor cause our hearts to ache
+  By sins of rope and torch and stake.
+
+  "We'll tie his red right hand until
+  He'll have small freedom to fulfil
+  The mandates of his lawless will."
+
+  So, in convention then and there,
+  They named him Sheriff.  The affair
+  Was opened, it is said, with prayer.
+
+J. Milton Sloluck
+
+
+SIREN, n.  One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt
+to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave.  Figuratively, any
+lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing
+performance.
+
+SLANG, n.  The grunt of the human hog (_Pignoramus intolerabilis_)
+with an audible memory.  The speech of one who utters with his tongue
+what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in
+accomplishing the feat of a parrot.  A means (under Providence) of
+setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.
+
+SMITHAREEN, n.  A fragment, a decomponent part, a remain.  The word is
+used variously, but in the following verse on a noted female reformer
+who opposed bicycle-riding by women because it "led them to the devil"
+it is seen at its best:
+
+  The wheels go round without a sound--
+      The maidens hold high revel;
+  In sinful mood, insanely gay,
+  True spinsters spin adown the way
+      From duty to the devil!
+  They laugh, they sing, and--ting-a-ling!
+      Their bells go all the morning;
+  Their lanterns bright bestar the night
+      Pedestrians a-warning.
+  With lifted hands Miss Charlotte stands,
+      Good-Lording and O-mying,
+  Her rheumatism forgotten quite,
+      Her fat with anger frying.
+  She blocks the path that leads to wrath,
+      Jack Satan's power defying.
+  The wheels go round without a sound
+      The lights burn red and blue and green.
+  What's this that's found upon the ground?
+      Poor Charlotte Smith's a smithareen!
+
+John William Yope
+
+
+SOPHISTRY, n.  The controversial method of an opponent, distinguished
+from one's own by superior insincerity and fooling.  This method is
+that of the later Sophists, a Grecian sect of philosophers who began
+by teaching wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in brief, whatever men
+ought to know, but lost themselves in a maze of quibbles and a fog of
+words.
+
+  His bad opponent's "facts" he sweeps away,
+  And drags his sophistry to light of day;
+  Then swears they're pushed to madness who resort
+  To falsehood of so desperate a sort.
+  Not so; like sods upon a dead man's breast,
+  He lies most lightly who the least is pressed.
+
+Polydore Smith
+
+
+SORCERY, n.  The ancient prototype and forerunner of political
+influence.  It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was
+punished by torture and death.  Augustine Nicholas relates that a poor
+peasant who had been accused of sorcery was put to the torture to
+compel a confession.  After enduring a few gentle agonies the
+suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively asked his
+tormentors if it were not possible to be a sorcerer without knowing
+it.
+
+SOUL, n.  A spiritual entity concerning which there hath been brave
+disputation.  Plato held that those souls which in a previous state of
+existence (antedating Athens) had obtained the clearest glimpses of
+eternal truth entered into the bodies of persons who became
+philosophers.  Plato himself was a philosopher.  The souls that had
+least contemplated divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and
+despots.  Dionysius I, who had threatened to decapitate the
+broad-browed philosopher, was a usurper and a despot.  Plato, doubtless,
+was not the first to construct a system of philosophy that could be
+quoted against his enemies; certainly he was not the last.
+
+"Concerning the nature of the soul," saith the renowned author of
+_Diversiones Sanctorum_, "there hath been hardly more argument than
+that of its place in the body.  Mine own belief is that the soul hath
+her seat in the abdomen--in which faith we may discern and interpret
+a truth hitherto unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men
+most devout.  He is said in the Scripture to 'make a god of his belly'
+--why, then, should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him
+to freshen his faith?  Who so well as he can know the might and
+majesty that he shrines?  Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach
+are one Divine Entity; and such was the belief of Promasius, who
+nevertheless erred in denying it immortality.  He had observed that
+its visible and material substance failed and decayed with the rest of
+the body after death, but of its immaterial essence he knew nothing.
+This is what we call the Appetite, and it survives the wreck and reek
+of mortality, to be rewarded or punished in another world, according
+to what it hath demanded in the flesh.  The Appetite whose coarse
+clamoring was for the unwholesome viands of the general market and the
+public refectory shall be cast into eternal famine, whilst that which
+firmly though civilly insisted on ortolans, caviare, terrapin,
+anchovies, _pates de foie gras_ and all such Christian comestibles
+shall flesh its spiritual tooth in the souls of them forever and ever,
+and wreak its divine thirst upon the immortal parts of the rarest and
+richest wines ever quaffed here below.  Such is my religious faith,
+though I grieve to confess that neither His Holiness the Pope nor His
+Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I equally and profoundly
+revere) will assent to its dissemination."
+
+SPOOKER, n.  A writer whose imagination concerns itself with
+supernatural phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks.  One of
+the most illustrious spookers of our time is Mr. William D. Howells,
+who introduces a well-credentialed reader to as respectable and
+mannerly a company of spooks as one could wish to meet.  To the terror
+that invests the chairman of a district school board, the Howells
+ghost adds something of the mystery enveloping a farmer from another
+township.
+
+STORY, n.  A narrative, commonly untrue.  The truth of the stories
+here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.
+
+One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated
+at dinner alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
+
+"Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_,
+is published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its
+authorship.  Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the
+Idiot of the Century.  Do you think that fair criticism?"
+
+"I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did
+not occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who
+wrote it."
+
+Mr. W.C. Morrow, who used to live in San Jose, California, was
+addicted to writing ghost stories which made the reader feel as if a
+stream of lizards, fresh from the ice, were streaking it up his back
+and hiding in his hair.  San Jose was at that time believed to be
+haunted by the visible spirit of a noted bandit named Vasquez, who had
+been hanged there.  The town was not very well lighted, and it is
+putting it mildly to say that San Jose was reluctant to be out o'
+nights.  One particularly dark night two gentlemen were abroad in the
+loneliest spot within the city limits, talking loudly to keep up their
+courage, when they came upon Mr. J.J. Owen, a well-known journalist.
+
+"Why, Owen," said one, "what brings you here on such a night as
+this?  You told me that this is one of Vasquez' favorite haunts!  And
+you are a believer.  Aren't you afraid to be out?"
+
+"My dear fellow," the journalist replied with a drear autumnal
+cadence in his speech, like the moan of a leaf-laden wind, "I am
+afraid to be in.  I have one of Will Morrow's stories in my pocket and
+I don't dare to go where there is light enough to read it."
+
+Rear-Admiral Schley and Representative Charles F. Joy were
+standing near the Peace Monument, in Washington, discussing the
+question, Is success a failure?  Mr. Joy suddenly broke off in the
+middle of an eloquent sentence, exclaiming:  "Hello!  I've heard that
+band before.  Santlemann's, I think."
+
+"I don't hear any band," said Schley.
+
+"Come to think, I don't either," said Joy; "but I see General
+Miles coming down the avenue, and that pageant always affects me in
+the same way as a brass band.  One has to scrutinize one's impressions
+pretty closely, or one will mistake their origin."
+
+While the Admiral was digesting this hasty meal of philosophy
+General Miles passed in review, a spectacle of impressive dignity.
+When the tail of the seeming procession had passed and the two
+observers had recovered from the transient blindness caused by its
+effulgence--
+
+"He seems to be enjoying himself," said the Admiral.
+
+"There is nothing," assented Joy, thoughtfully, "that he enjoys
+one-half so well."
+
+
+The illustrious statesman, Champ Clark, once lived about a mile
+from the village of Jebigue, in Missouri.  One day he rode into town
+on a favorite mule, and, hitching the beast on the sunny side of a
+street, in front of a saloon, he went inside in his character of
+teetotaler, to apprise the barkeeper that wine is a mocker.  It was a
+dreadfully hot day.  Pretty soon a neighbor came in and seeing Clark,
+said:
+
+"Champ, it is not right to leave that mule out there in the sun.
+He'll roast, sure!--he was smoking as I passed him."
+
+"O, he's all right," said Clark, lightly; "he's an inveterate
+smoker."
+
+The neighbor took a lemonade, but shook his head and repeated that
+it was not right.
+
+He was a conspirator.  There had been a fire the night before:  a
+stable just around the corner had burned and a number of horses had
+put on their immortality, among them a young colt, which was roasted
+to a rich nut-brown.  Some of the boys had turned Mr. Clark's mule
+loose and substituted the mortal part of the colt.  Presently another
+man entered the saloon.
+
+"For mercy's sake!" he said, taking it with sugar, "do remove that
+mule, barkeeper:  it smells."
+
+"Yes," interposed Clark, "that animal has the best nose in
+Missouri.  But if he doesn't mind, you shouldn't."
+
+In the course of human events Mr. Clark went out, and there,
+apparently, lay the incinerated and shrunken remains of his charger.
+The boys did not have any fun out of Mr. Clarke, who looked at the
+body and, with the non-committal expression to which he owes so much
+of his political preferment, went away.  But walking home late that
+night he saw his mule standing silent and solemn by the wayside in the
+misty moonlight.  Mentioning the name of Helen Blazes with uncommon
+emphasis, Mr. Clark took the back track as hard as ever he could hook
+it, and passed the night in town.
+
+General H.H. Wotherspoon, president of the Army War College, has a
+pet rib-nosed baboon, an animal of uncommon intelligence but
+imperfectly beautiful.  Returning to his apartment one evening, the
+General was surprised and pained to find Adam (for so the creature is
+named, the general being a Darwinian) sitting up for him and wearing
+his master's best uniform coat, epaulettes and all.
+
+"You confounded remote ancestor!" thundered the great strategist,
+"what do you mean by being out of bed after naps?--and with my coat
+on!"
+
+Adam rose and with a reproachful look got down on all fours in the
+manner of his kind and, scuffling across the room to a table, returned
+with a visiting-card:  General Barry had called and, judging by an
+empty champagne bottle and several cigar-stumps, had been hospitably
+entertained while waiting.  The general apologized to his faithful
+progenitor and retired.  The next day he met General Barry, who said:
+
+"Spoon, old man, when leaving you last evening I forgot to ask you
+about those excellent cigars.  Where did you get them?"
+
+General Wotherspoon did not deign to reply, but walked away.
+
+"Pardon me, please," said Barry, moving after him; "I was joking
+of course.  Why, I knew it was not you before I had been in the room
+fifteen minutes."
+
+SUCCESS, n.  The one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.  In
+literature, and particularly in poetry, the elements of success are
+exceedingly simple, and are admirably set forth in the following lines
+by the reverend Father Gassalasca Jape, entitled, for some mysterious
+reason, "John A. Joyce."
+
+  The bard who would prosper must carry a book,
+      Do his thinking in prose and wear
+  A crimson cravat, a far-away look
+      And a head of hexameter hair.
+  Be thin in your thought and your body'll be fat;
+  If you wear your hair long you needn't your hat.
+
+SUFFRAGE, n.  Expression of opinion by means of a ballot.  The right
+of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means,
+as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another
+man's choice, and is highly prized.  Refusal to do so has the bad name
+of "incivism."  The incivilian, however, cannot be properly arraigned
+for his crime, for there is no legitimate accuser.  If the accuser is
+himself guilty he has no standing in the court of opinion; if not, he
+profits by the crime, for A's abstention from voting gives greater
+weight to the vote of B.  By female suffrage is meant the right of a
+woman to vote as some man tells her to.  It is based on female
+responsibility, which is somewhat limited.  The woman most eager to
+jump out of her petticoat to assert her rights is first to jump back
+into it when threatened with a switching for misusing them.
+
+SYCOPHANT, n.  One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he
+may not be commanded to turn and be kicked.  He is sometimes an
+editor.
+
+  As the lean leech, its victim found, is pleased
+  To fix itself upon a part diseased
+  Till, its black hide distended with bad blood,
+  It drops to die of surfeit in the mud,
+  So the base sycophant with joy descries
+  His neighbor's weak spot and his mouth applies,
+  Gorges and prospers like the leech, although,
+  Unlike that reptile, he will not let go.
+  Gelasma, if it paid you to devote
+  Your talent to the service of a goat,
+  Showing by forceful logic that its beard
+  Is more than Aaron's fit to be revered;
+  If to the task of honoring its smell
+  Profit had prompted you, and love as well,
+  The world would benefit at last by you
+  And wealthy malefactors weep anew--
+  Your favor for a moment's space denied
+  And to the nobler object turned aside.
+  Is't not enough that thrifty millionaires
+  Who loot in freight and spoliate in fares,
+  Or, cursed with consciences that bid them fly
+  To safer villainies of darker dye,
+  Forswearing robbery and fain, instead,
+  To steal (they call it "cornering") our bread
+  May see you groveling their boots to lick
+  And begging for the favor of a kick?
+  Still must you follow to the bitter end
+  Your sycophantic disposition's trend,
+  And in your eagerness to please the rich
+  Hunt hungry sinners to their final ditch?
+  In Morgan's praise you smite the sounding wire,
+  And sing hosannas to great Havemeyer!
+  What's Satan done that him you should eschew?
+  He too is reeking rich--deducting _you_.
+
+SYLLOGISM, n.  A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor
+assumption and an inconsequent.  (See LOGIC.)
+
+SYLPH, n.  An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when
+the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory
+smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.  Sylphs were
+allied to gnomes, nymphs and salamanders, which dwelt, respectively,
+in earth, water and fire, all now insalubrious.  Sylphs, like fowls of
+the air, were male and female, to no purpose, apparently, for if they
+had progeny they must have nested in inaccessible places, none of the
+chicks having ever been seen.
+
+SYMBOL, n.  Something that is supposed to typify or stand for
+something else.  Many symbols are mere "survivals"--things which
+having no longer any utility continue to exist because we have
+inherited the tendency to make them; as funereal urns carved on
+memorial monuments.  They were once real urns holding the ashes of the
+dead.  We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that
+conceals our helplessness.
+
+SYMBOLIC, adj.  Pertaining to symbols and the use and interpretation
+of symbols.
+
+  They say 'tis conscience feels compunction;
+  I hold that that's the stomach's function,
+  For of the sinner I have noted
+  That when he's sinned he's somewhat bloated,
+  Or ill some other ghastly fashion
+  Within that bowel of compassion.
+  True, I believe the only sinner
+  Is he that eats a shabby dinner.
+  You know how Adam with good reason,
+  For eating apples out of season,
+  Was "cursed."  But that is all symbolic:
+  The truth is, Adam had the colic.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+
+
+
+T
+
+
+
+T, the twentieth letter of the English alphabet, was by the Greeks
+absurdly called _tau_.  In the alphabet whence ours comes it had the
+form of the rude corkscrew of the period, and when it stood alone
+(which was more than the Phoenicians could always do) signified
+_Tallegal_, translated by the learned Dr. Brownrigg, "tanglefoot."
+
+TABLE D'HOTE, n.  A caterer's thrifty concession to the universal
+passion for irresponsibility.
+
+  Old Paunchinello, freshly wed,
+      Took Madam P. to table,
+  And there deliriously fed
+      As fast as he was able.
+
+  "I dote upon good grub," he cried,
+      Intent upon its throatage.
+  "Ah, yes," said the neglected bride,
+      "You're in your _table d'hotage_."
+
+Associated Poets
+
+
+TAIL, n.  The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its
+natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of
+its own.  Excepting in its foetal state, Man is without a tail, a
+privation of which he attests an hereditary and uneasy consciousness
+by the coat-skirt of the male and the train of the female, and by a
+marked tendency to ornament that part of his attire where the tail
+should be, and indubitably once was.  This tendency is most observable
+in the female of the species, in whom the ancestral sense is strong
+and persistent.  The tailed men described by Lord Monboddo are now
+generally regarded as a product of an imagination unusually
+susceptible to influences generated in the golden age of our pithecan
+past.
+
+TAKE, v.t.  To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.
+
+TALK, v.t.  To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an
+impulse without purpose.
+
+TARIFF, n.  A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the
+domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.
+
+  The Enemy of Human Souls
+  Sat grieving at the cost of coals;
+  For Hell had been annexed of late,
+  And was a sovereign Southern State.
+
+  "It were no more than right," said he,
+  "That I should get my fuel free.
+  The duty, neither just nor wise,
+  Compels me to economize--
+  Whereby my broilers, every one,
+  Are execrably underdone.
+  What would they have?--although I yearn
+  To do them nicely to a turn,
+  I can't afford an honest heat.
+  This tariff makes even devils cheat!
+  I'm ruined, and my humble trade
+  All rascals may at will invade:
+  Beneath my nose the public press
+  Outdoes me in sulphureousness;
+  The bar ingeniously applies
+  To my undoing my own lies;
+  My medicines the doctors use
+  (Albeit vainly) to refuse
+  To me my fair and rightful prey
+  And keep their own in shape to pay;
+  The preachers by example teach
+  What, scorning to perform, I teach;
+  And statesmen, aping me, all make
+  More promises than they can break.
+  Against such competition I
+  Lift up a disregarded cry.
+  Since all ignore my just complaint,
+  By Hokey-Pokey!  I'll turn saint!"
+  Now, the Republicans, who all
+  Are saints, began at once to bawl
+  Against _his_ competition; so
+  There was a devil of a go!
+  They locked horns with him, tete-a-tete
+  In acrimonious debate,
+  Till Democrats, forlorn and lone,
+  Had hopes of coming by their own.
+  That evil to avert, in haste
+  The two belligerents embraced;
+  But since 'twere wicked to relax
+  A tittle of the Sacred Tax,
+  'Twas finally agreed to grant
+  The bold Insurgent-protestant
+  A bounty on each soul that fell
+  Into his ineffectual Hell.
+
+Edam Smith
+
+
+TECHNICALITY, n.  In an English court a man named Home was tried for
+slander in having accused his neighbor of murder.  His exact words
+were:  "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook
+upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and
+the other side upon the other shoulder."  The defendant was acquitted
+by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words
+did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook,
+that being only an inference.
+
+TEDIUM, n.  Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored.  Many
+fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an
+authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious
+source--the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum
+Laudamus_.  In this apparently natural derivation there is something
+that saddens.
+
+TEETOTALER, n.  One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally,
+sometimes tolerably totally.
+
+TELEPHONE, n.  An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
+advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
+
+TELESCOPE, n.  A device having a relation to the eye similar to that
+of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us
+with a multitude of needless details.  Luckily it is unprovided with a
+bell summoning us to the sacrifice.
+
+TENACITY, n.  A certain quality of the human hand in its relation to
+the coin of the realm.  It attains its highest development in the hand
+of authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in
+politics.  The following illustrative lines were written of a
+Californian gentleman in high political preferment, who has passed to
+his accounting:
+
+  Of such tenacity his grip
+  That nothing from his hand can slip.
+  Well-buttered eels you may o'erwhelm
+  In tubs of liquid slippery-elm
+  In vain--from his detaining pinch
+  They cannot struggle half an inch!
+  'Tis lucky that he so is planned
+  That breath he draws not with his hand,
+  For if he did, so great his greed
+  He'd draw his last with eager speed.
+  Nay, that were well, you say.  Not so
+  He'd draw but never let it go!
+
+THEOSOPHY, n.  An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion
+and all the mystery of science.  The modern Theosophist holds, with
+the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this
+earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough
+for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime
+does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to
+wish to become.  To be absolutely wise and good--that is perfection;
+and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that
+everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection.
+Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem
+neither wiser nor better than they were last year.  The greatest and
+fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had
+no cat.
+
+TIGHTS, n.  An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the
+general acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity.
+Public attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss
+Lillian Russell's refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as
+to her motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of
+ingenuity and sustained reflection.  It was Miss Hall's belief that
+nature had not endowed Miss Russell with beautiful legs.  This theory
+was impossible of acceptance by the male understanding, but the
+conception of a faulty female leg was of so prodigious originality as
+to rank among the most brilliant feats of philosophical speculation!
+It is strange that in all the controversy regarding Miss Russell's
+aversion to tights no one seems to have thought to ascribe it to what
+was known among the ancients as "modesty."  The nature of that
+sentiment is now imperfectly understood, and possibly incapable of
+exposition with the vocabulary that remains to us.  The study of lost
+arts has, however, been recently revived and some of the arts
+themselves recovered.  This is an epoch of _renaissances_, and there
+is ground for hope that the primitive "blush" may be dragged from its
+hiding-place amongst the tombs of antiquity and hissed on to the
+stage.
+
+TOMB, n.  The House of Indifference.  Tombs are now by common consent
+invested with a certain sanctity, but when they have been long
+tenanted it is considered no sin to break them open and rifle them,
+the famous Egyptologist, Dr. Huggyns, explaining that a tomb may be
+innocently "glened" as soon as its occupant is done "smellynge," the
+soul being then all exhaled.  This reasonable view is now generally
+accepted by archaeologists, whereby the noble science of Curiosity has
+been greatly dignified.
+
+TOPE, v.  To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig.
+In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping
+nations are in the forefront of civilization and power.  When pitted
+against the hard-drinking Christians the abstemious Mahometans go down
+like grass before the scythe.  In India one hundred thousand
+beef-eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two
+hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race.
+With what an easy grace the whisky-loving American pushed the temperate
+Spaniard out of his possessions!  From the time when the Berserkers
+ravaged all the coasts of western Europe and lay drunk in every
+conquered port it has been the same way:  everywhere the nations that
+drink too much are observed to fight rather well and not too
+righteously.  Wherefore the estimable old ladies who abolished the
+canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially
+augmented the nation's military power.
+
+TORTOISE, n.  A creature thoughtfully created to supply occasion for
+the following lines by the illustrious Ambat Delaso:
+
+
+TO MY PET TORTOISE
+
+
+  My friend, you are not graceful--not at all;
+  Your gait's between a stagger and a sprawl.
+
+  Nor are you beautiful:  your head's a snake's
+  To look at, and I do not doubt it aches.
+
+  As to your feet, they'd make an angel weep.
+  'Tis true you take them in whene'er you sleep.
+
+  No, you're not pretty, but you have, I own,
+  A certain firmness--mostly you're [sic] backbone.
+
+  Firmness and strength (you have a giant's thews)
+  Are virtues that the great know how to use--
+
+  I wish that they did not; yet, on the whole,
+  You lack--excuse my mentioning it--Soul.
+
+  So, to be candid, unreserved and true,
+  I'd rather you were I than I were you.
+
+  Perhaps, however, in a time to be,
+  When Man's extinct, a better world may see
+
+  Your progeny in power and control,
+  Due to the genesis and growth of Soul.
+
+  So I salute you as a reptile grand
+  Predestined to regenerate the land.
+
+  Father of Possibilities, O deign
+  To accept the homage of a dying reign!
+
+  In the far region of the unforeknown
+  I dream a tortoise upon every throne.
+
+  I see an Emperor his head withdraw
+  Into his carapace for fear of Law;
+
+  A King who carries something else than fat,
+  Howe'er acceptably he carries that;
+
+  A President not strenuously bent
+  On punishment of audible dissent--
+
+  Who never shot (it were a vain attack)
+  An armed or unarmed tortoise in the back;
+
+  Subject and citizens that feel no need
+  To make the March of Mind a wild stampede;
+
+  All progress slow, contemplative, sedate,
+  And "Take your time" the word, in Church and State.
+
+  O Tortoise, 'tis a happy, happy dream,
+  My glorious testudinous regime!
+
+  I wish in Eden you'd brought this about
+  By slouching in and chasing Adam out.
+
+TREE, n.  A tall vegetable intended by nature to serve as a penal
+apparatus, though through a miscarriage of justice most trees bear
+only a negligible fruit, or none at all.  When naturally fruited, the
+tree is a beneficient agency of civilization and an important factor
+in public morals.  In the stern West and the sensitive South its fruit
+(white and black respectively) though not eaten, is agreeable to the
+public taste and, though not exported, profitable to the general
+welfare.  That the legitimate relation of the tree to justice was no
+discovery of Judge Lynch (who, indeed, conceded it no primacy over the
+lamp-post and the bridge-girder) is made plain by the following
+passage from Morryster, who antedated him by two centuries:
+
+      While in yt londe I was carried to see ye Ghogo tree, whereof
+  I had hearde moch talk; but sayynge yt I saw naught remarkabyll in
+  it, ye hed manne of ye villayge where it grewe made answer as
+  followeth:
+      "Ye tree is not nowe in fruite, but in his seasonne you shall
+  see dependynge fr. his braunches all soch as have affroynted ye
+  King his Majesty."
+      And I was furder tolde yt ye worde "Ghogo" sygnifyeth in yr
+  tong ye same as "rapscal" in our owne.
+
+_Trauvells in ye Easte_
+
+
+TRIAL, n.  A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the
+blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.  In order to
+effect this purpose it is necessary to supply a contrast in the person
+of one who is called the defendant, the prisoner, or the accused.  If
+the contrast is made sufficiently clear this person is made to undergo
+such an affliction as will give the virtuous gentlemen a comfortable
+sense of their immunity, added to that of their worth.  In our day the
+accused is usually a human being, or a socialist, but in mediaeval
+times, animals, fishes, reptiles and insects were brought to trial.  A
+beast that had taken human life, or practiced sorcery, was duly
+arrested, tried and, if condemned, put to death by the public
+executioner.  Insects ravaging grain fields, orchards or vineyards
+were cited to appeal by counsel before a civil tribunal, and after
+testimony, argument and condemnation, if they continued _in
+contumaciam_ the matter was taken to a high ecclesiastical court,
+where they were solemnly excommunicated and anathematized.  In a
+street of Toledo, some pigs that had wickedly run between the
+viceroy's legs, upsetting him, were arrested on a warrant, tried and
+punished.  In Naples an ass was condemned to be burned at the stake,
+but the sentence appears not to have been executed.  D'Addosio relates
+from the court records many trials of pigs, bulls, horses, cocks,
+dogs, goats, etc., greatly, it is believed, to the betterment of their
+conduct and morals.  In 1451 a suit was brought against the leeches
+infesting some ponds about Berne, and the Bishop of Lausanne,
+instructed by the faculty of Heidelberg University, directed that some
+of "the aquatic worms" be brought before the local magistracy.  This
+was done and the leeches, both present and absent, were ordered to
+leave the places that they had infested within three days on pain of
+incurring "the malediction of God."  In the voluminous records of this
+_cause celebre_ nothing is found to show whether the offenders braved
+the punishment, or departed forthwith out of that inhospitable
+jurisdiction.
+
+TRICHINOSIS, n.  The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.
+
+Moses Mendlessohn having fallen ill sent for a Christian
+physician, who at once diagnosed the philosopher's disorder as
+trichinosis, but tactfully gave it another name.  "You need an
+immediate change of diet," he said; "you must eat six ounces of pork
+every other day."
+
+"Pork?" shrieked the patient--"pork?  Nothing shall induce me to
+touch it!"
+
+"Do you mean that?" the doctor gravely asked.
+
+"I swear it!"
+
+"Good!--then I will undertake to cure you."
+
+TRINITY, n.  In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches,
+three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one.  Subordinate
+deities of the polytheistic faith, such as devils and angels, are not
+dowered with the power of combination, and must urge individually
+their claims to adoration and propitiation.  The Trinity is one of the
+most sublime mysteries of our holy religion.  In rejecting it because
+it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of
+theological fundamentals.  In religion we believe only what we do not
+understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that
+contradicts an incomprehensible one.  In that case we believe the
+former as a part of the latter.
+
+TROGLODYTE, n.  Specifically, a cave-dweller of the paleolithic
+period, after the Tree and before the Flat.  A famous community of
+troglodytes dwelt with David in the Cave of Adullam.  The colony
+consisted of "every one that was in distress, and every one that was
+in debt, and every one that was discontented"--in brief, all the
+Socialists of Judah.
+
+TRUCE, n.  Friendship.
+
+TRUTH, n.  An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.
+Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the
+most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of
+existing with increasing activity to the end of time.
+
+TRUTHFUL, adj.  Dumb and illiterate.
+
+TRUST, n.  In American politics, a large corporation composed in
+greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in
+the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors
+and public enemies.
+
+TURKEY, n.  A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious
+anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and
+gratitude.  Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.
+
+TWICE, adv.  Once too often.
+
+TYPE, n.  Pestilent bits of metal suspected of destroying
+civilization and enlightenment, despite their obvious agency in this
+incomparable dictionary.
+
+TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n.  An African insect (_Glossina morsitans_)
+whose bite is commonly regarded as nature's most efficacious remedy
+for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American
+novelist (_Mendax interminabilis_).
+
+
+
+
+U
+
+
+
+UBIQUITY, n.  The gift or power of being in all places at one time,
+but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an
+attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.  This important
+distinction between ubiquity and omnipresence was not clear to the
+mediaeval Church and there was much bloodshed about it.  Certain
+Lutherans, who affirmed the presence everywhere of Christ's body were
+known as Ubiquitarians.  For this error they were doubtless damned,
+for Christ's body is present only in the eucharist, though that
+sacrament may be performed in more than one place simultaneously.  In
+recent times ubiquity has not always been understood--not even by
+Sir Boyle Roche, for example, who held that a man cannot be in two
+places at once unless he is a bird.
+
+UGLINESS, n.  A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue
+without humility.
+
+ULTIMATUM, n.  In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to
+concessions.
+
+Having received an ultimatum from Austria, the Turkish Ministry
+met to consider it.
+
+"O servant of the Prophet," said the Sheik of the Imperial Chibouk
+to the Mamoosh of the Invincible Army, "how many unconquerable
+soldiers have we in arms?"
+
+"Upholder of the Faith," that dignitary replied after examining
+his memoranda, "they are in numbers as the leaves of the forest!"
+
+"And how many impenetrable battleships strike terror to the hearts
+of all Christian swine?" he asked the Imaum of the Ever Victorious
+Navy.
+
+"Uncle of the Full Moon," was the reply, "deign to know that they
+are as the waves of the ocean, the sands of the desert and the stars
+of Heaven!"
+
+For eight hours the broad brow of the Sheik of the Imperial
+Chibouk was corrugated with evidences of deep thought:  he was
+calculating the chances of war.  Then, "Sons of angels," he said, "the
+die is cast!  I shall suggest to the Ulema of the Imperial Ear that he
+advise inaction.  In the name of Allah, the council is adjourned."
+
+UN-AMERICAN, adj.  Wicked, intolerable, heathenish.
+
+UNCTION, n.  An oiling, or greasing.  The rite of extreme unction
+consists in touching with oil consecrated by a bishop several parts of
+the body of one engaged in dying.  Marbury relates that after the rite
+had been administered to a certain wicked English nobleman it was
+discovered that the oil had not been properly consecrated and no other
+could be obtained.  When informed of this the sick man said in anger:
+"Then I'll be damned if I die!"
+
+"My son," said the priest, "this is what we fear."
+
+UNDERSTANDING, n.  A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to
+know a house from a horse by the roof on the house.  Its nature and
+laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and
+Kant, who lived in a horse.
+
+  His understanding was so keen
+  That all things which he'd felt, heard, seen,
+  He could interpret without fail
+  If he was in or out of jail.
+  He wrote at Inspiration's call
+  Deep disquisitions on them all,
+  Then, pent at last in an asylum,
+  Performed the service to compile 'em.
+  So great a writer, all men swore,
+  They never had not read before.
+
+Jorrock Wormley
+
+
+UNITARIAN, n.  One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.
+
+UNIVERSALIST, n.  One who forgoes the advantage of a Hell for persons
+of another faith.
+
+URBANITY, n.  The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to
+dwellers in all cities but New York.  Its commonest expression is
+heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not inconsistent with
+disregard of the rights of others.
+
+  The owner of a powder mill
+  Was musing on a distant hill--
+      Something his mind foreboded--
+  When from the cloudless sky there fell
+  A deviled human kidney!  Well,
+      The man's mill had exploded.
+  His hat he lifted from his head;
+  "I beg your pardon, sir," he said;
+      "I didn't know 'twas loaded."
+
+Swatkin
+
+
+USAGE, n.  The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and
+Third being Custom and Conventionality.  Imbued with a decent
+reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to
+produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
+
+UXORIOUSNESS, n.  A perverted affection that has strayed to one's own
+wife.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+
+VALOR, n.  A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler's
+hope.
+
+"Why have you halted?" roared the commander of a division and
+Chickamauga, who had ordered a charge; "move forward, sir, at once."
+
+"General," said the commander of the delinquent brigade, "I am
+persuaded that any further display of valor by my troops will bring
+them into collision with the enemy."
+
+VANITY, n.  The tribute of a fool to the worth of the nearest ass.
+
+  They say that hens do cackle loudest when
+      There's nothing vital in the eggs they've laid;
+      And there are hens, professing to have made
+  A study of mankind, who say that men
+  Whose business 'tis to drive the tongue or pen
+      Make the most clamorous fanfaronade
+      O'er their most worthless work; and I'm afraid
+  They're not entirely different from the hen.
+  Lo! the drum-major in his coat of gold,
+      His blazing breeches and high-towering cap--
+  Imperiously pompous, grandly bold,
+      Grim, resolute, an awe-inspiring chap!
+  Who'd think this gorgeous creature's only virtue
+  Is that in battle he will never hurt you?
+
+Hannibal Hunsiker
+
+
+VIRTUES, n.pl.  Certain abstentions.
+
+VITUPERATION, n.  Satire, as understood by dunces and all such as
+suffer from an impediment in their wit.
+
+VOTE, n.  The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a
+fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
+
+
+
+
+W
+
+
+
+W (double U) has, of all the letters in our alphabet, the only
+cumbrous name, the names of the others being monosyllabic.  This
+advantage of the Roman alphabet over the Grecian is the more valued
+after audibly spelling out some simple Greek word, like
+_epixoriambikos_.  Still, it is now thought by the learned that other
+agencies than the difference of the two alphabets may have been
+concerned in the decline of "the glory that was Greece" and the rise
+of "the grandeur that was Rome."  There can be no doubt, however, that
+by simplifying the name of W (calling it "wow," for example) our
+civilization could be, if not promoted, at least better endured.
+
+WALL STREET, n.  A symbol of sin for every devil to rebuke.  That
+Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every
+unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven.  Even the great and
+good Andrew Carnegie has made his profession of faith in the matter.
+
+  Carnegie the dauntless has uttered his call
+  To battle:  "The brokers are parasites all!"
+  Carnegie, Carnegie, you'll never prevail;
+  Keep the wind of your slogan to belly your sail,
+  Go back to your isle of perpetual brume,
+  Silence your pibroch, doff tartan and plume:
+  Ben Lomond is calling his son from the fray--
+  Fly, fly from the region of Wall Street away!
+  While still you're possessed of a single baubee
+  (I wish it were pledged to endowment of me)
+  'Twere wise to retreat from the wars of finance
+  Lest its value decline ere your credit advance.
+  For a man 'twixt a king of finance and the sea,
+  Carnegie, Carnegie, your tongue is too free!
+
+Anonymus Bink
+
+
+WAR, n.  A by-product of the arts of peace.  The most menacing
+political condition is a period of international amity.  The student
+of history who has not been taught to expect the unexpected may justly
+boast himself inaccessible to the light.  "In time of peace prepare
+for war" has a deeper meaning than is commonly discerned; it means,
+not merely that all things earthly have an end--that change is the
+one immutable and eternal law--but that the soil of peace is thickly
+sown with the seeds of war and singularly suited to their germination
+and growth.  It was when Kubla Khan had decreed his "stately pleasure
+dome"--when, that is to say, there were peace and fat feasting in
+Xanadu--that he
+
+                      heard from afar
+  Ancestral voices prophesying war.
+
+One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of
+men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable.  Let us
+have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of
+that elemental distrust that is the security of nations.  War loves to
+come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide
+the night.
+
+WASHINGTONIAN, n.  A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of
+governing himself for the advantage of good government.  In justice to
+him it should be said that he did not want to.
+
+  They took away his vote and gave instead
+  The right, when he had earned, to _eat_ his bread.
+  In vain--he clamors for his "boss," pour soul,
+  To come again and part him from his roll.
+
+Offenbach Stutz
+
+
+WEAKNESSES, n.pl.  Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she
+holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the
+service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.
+
+WEATHER, n.  The climate of the hour.  A permanent topic of
+conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have
+inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal
+ancestors whom it keenly concerned.  The setting up official weather
+bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments
+are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle.
+
+  Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
+  And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be--
+  Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
+  With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
+  While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
+  From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
+  He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
+  On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote--
+  For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
+  "Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."
+
+Halcyon Jones
+
+
+WEDDING, n.  A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one,
+one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become
+supportable.
+
+WEREWOLF, n.  A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man.  All
+werewolves are of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to
+gratify a beastial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are as
+humane as is consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.
+
+Some Bavarian peasants having caught a wolf one evening, tied it
+to a post by the tail and went to bed.  The next morning nothing was
+there!  Greatly perplexed, they consulted the local priest, who told
+them that their captive was undoubtedly a werewolf and had resumed its
+human form during the night.  "The next time that you take a wolf," the
+good man said, "see that you chain it by the leg, and in the morning
+you will find a Lutheran."
+
+WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n.  In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected
+affliction that strikes hard.
+
+  Should you ask me whence this laughter,
+  Whence this audible big-smiling,
+  With its labial extension,
+  With its maxillar distortion
+  And its diaphragmic rhythmus
+  Like the billowing of an ocean,
+  Like the shaking of a carpet,
+  I should answer, I should tell you:
+  From the great deeps of the spirit,
+  From the unplummeted abysmus
+  Of the soul this laughter welleth
+  As the fountain, the gug-guggle,
+  Like the river from the canon [sic],
+  To entoken and give warning
+  That my present mood is sunny.
+  Should you ask me further question--
+  Why the great deeps of the spirit,
+  Why the unplummeted abysmus
+  Of the soule extrudes this laughter,
+  This all audible big-smiling,
+  I should answer, I should tell you
+  With a white heart, tumpitumpy,
+  With a true tongue, honest Injun:
+  William Bryan, he has Caught It,
+  Caught the Whangdepootenawah!
+
+  Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank,
+  Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,
+  Standing silent in the kneedeep
+  With his wing-tips crossed behind him
+  And his neck close-reefed before him,
+  With his bill, his william, buried
+  In the down upon his bosom,
+  With his head retracted inly,
+  While his shoulders overlook it?
+  Does the sandhill crane, the shankank,
+  Shiver grayly in the north wind,
+  Wishing he had died when little,
+  As the sparrow, the chipchip, does?
+  No 'tis not the Shankank standing,
+  Standing in the gray and dismal
+  Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep.
+  No, 'tis peerless William Bryan
+  Realizing that he's Caught It,
+  Caught the Whangdepootenawah!
+
+WHEAT, n.  A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some
+difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread.  The French are
+said to eat more bread _per capita_ of population than any other
+people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff
+palatable.
+
+WHITE, adj. and n.  Black.
+
+WIDOW, n.  A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to
+take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one
+of the most marked features of his character.
+
+WINE, n.  Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union
+as "liquor," sometimes as "rum."  Wine, madam, is God's next best gift
+to man.
+
+WIT, n.  The salt with which the American humorist spoils his
+intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
+
+WITCH, n.  (1)  Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league
+with the devil.  (2)  A beautiful and attractive young woman, in
+wickedness a league beyond the devil.
+
+WITTICISM, n.  A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldom
+noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a "joke."
+
+WOMAN, n.
+
+      An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a
+  rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.  It is credited by
+  many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility
+  acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the
+  postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion,
+  deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld,
+  it roareth now.  The species is the most widely distributed of all
+  beasts of prey, infesting all habitable parts of the globe, from
+  Greenland's spicy mountains to India's moral strand.  The popular
+  name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind.
+  The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the
+  American variety (_felis pugnans_), is omnivorous and can be
+  taught not to talk.
+
+Balthasar Pober
+
+
+WORMS'-MEAT, n.  The finished product of which we are the raw
+material.  The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the
+Grantarium.  Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that
+houses it, but "this too must pass away."  Probably the silliest work
+in which a human being can engage is construction of a tomb for
+himself.  The solemn purpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by
+contrast the foreknown futility.
+
+  Ambitious fool! so mad to be a show!
+  How profitless the labor you bestow
+      Upon a dwelling whose magnificence
+  The tenant neither can admire nor know.
+
+  Build deep, build high, build massive as you can,
+  The wanton grass-roots will defeat the plan
+      By shouldering asunder all the stones
+  In what to you would be a moment's span.
+
+  Time to the dead so all unreckoned flies
+  That when your marble is all dust, arise,
+      If wakened, stretch your limbs and yawn--
+  You'll think you scarcely can have closed your eyes.
+
+  What though of all man's works your tomb alone
+  Should stand till Time himself be overthrown?
+      Would it advantage you to dwell therein
+  Forever as a stain upon a stone?
+
+Joel Huck
+
+
+WORSHIP, n.  Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and
+fine finish of Deus Creatus.  A popular form of abjection, having an
+element of pride.
+
+WRATH, n.  Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to
+exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, "the wrath of God,"
+"the day of wrath," etc.  Amongst the ancients the wrath of kings was
+deemed sacred, for it could usually command the agency of some god for
+its fit manifestation, as could also that of a priest.  The Greeks
+before Troy were so harried by Apollo that they jumped out of the
+frying-pan of the wrath of Chryses into the fire of the wrath of
+Achilles, though Agamemnon, the sole offender, was neither fried nor
+roasted.  A similar noted immunity was that of David when he incurred
+the wrath of Yahveh by numbering his people, seventy thousand of whom
+paid the penalty with their lives.  God is now Love, and a director of
+the census performs his work without apprehension of disaster.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+
+X in our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility
+to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will
+doubtless last as long as the language.  X is the sacred symbol of ten
+dollars, and in such words as Xmas, Xn, etc., stands for Christ, not,
+as is popular supposed, because it represents a cross, but because the
+corresponding letter in the Greek alphabet is the initial of his name
+--_Xristos_.  If it represented a cross it would stand for St.
+Andrew, who "testified" upon one of that shape.  In the algebra of
+psychology x stands for Woman's mind.  Words beginning with X are
+Grecian and will not be defined in this standard English dictionary.
+
+
+
+
+Y
+
+
+
+YANKEE, n.  In Europe, an American.  In the Northern States of our
+Union, a New Englander.  In the Southern States the word is unknown.
+(See DAMNYANK.)
+
+YEAR, n.  A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
+
+YESTERDAY, n.  The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire
+past of age.
+
+  But yesterday I should have thought me blest
+      To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak
+      Of middle life and look adown the bleak
+  And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,
+  Where solemn shadows all the land invest
+      And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak
+      Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak
+  The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest.
+  Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame
+      To stay the shadow on the dial's face
+  At manhood's noonmark!  Now, in God His name
+      I chide aloud the little interspace
+  Disparting me from Certitude, and fain
+  Would know the dream and vision ne'er again.
+
+Baruch Arnegriff
+
+
+It is said that in his last illness the poet Arnegriff was
+attended at different times by seven doctors.
+
+YOKE, n.  An implement, madam, to whose Latin name, _jugum_, we owe
+one of the most illuminating words in our language--a word that
+defines the matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy.
+A thousand apologies for withholding it.
+
+YOUTH, n.  The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum,
+Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of
+endowing a living Homer.
+
+      Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth
+  again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with
+  whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and
+  cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice never
+  is heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and,
+  howling, is cast into Baltimost!
+
+Polydore Smith
+
+
+
+
+Z
+
+
+
+ZANY, n.  A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with
+ludicrous incompetence the _buffone_, or clown, and was therefore the
+ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters
+of the play.  The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as
+we to-day have the unhappiness to know him.  In the zany we see an
+example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission.  Another
+excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the
+rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the
+devil.
+
+ZANZIBARI, n.  An inhabitant of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, off the
+eastern coast of Africa.  The Zanzibaris, a warlike people, are best
+known in this country through a threatening diplomatic incident that
+occurred a few years ago.  The American consul at the capital occupied
+a dwelling that faced the sea, with a sandy beach between.  Greatly to
+the scandal of this official's family, and against repeated
+remonstrances of the official himself, the people of the city
+persisted in using the beach for bathing.  One day a woman came down
+to the edge of the water and was stooping to remove her attire (a pair
+of sandals) when the consul, incensed beyond restraint, fired a charge
+of bird-shot into the most conspicuous part of her person.
+Unfortunately for the existing _entente cordiale_ between two great
+nations, she was the Sultana.
+
+ZEAL, n.  A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and
+inexperienced.  A passion that goeth before a sprawl.
+
+  When Zeal sought Gratitude for his reward
+  He went away exclaiming:  "O my Lord!"
+  "What do you want?" the Lord asked, bending down.
+  "An ointment for my cracked and bleeding crown."
+
+Jum Coople
+
+
+ZENITH, n.  The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man
+standing or a growing cabbage.  A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot
+is not considered as having a zenith, though from this view of the
+matter there was once a considerably dissent among the learned, some
+holding that the posture of the body was immaterial.  These were
+called Horizontalists, their opponents, Verticalists.  The
+Horizontalist heresy was finally extinguished by Xanobus, the
+philosopher-king of Abara, a zealous Verticalist.  Entering an
+assembly of philosophers who were debating the matter, he cast a
+severed human head at the feet of his opponents and asked them to
+determine its zenith, explaining that its body was hanging by the
+heels outside.  Observing that it was the head of their leader, the
+Horizontalists hastened to profess themselves converted to whatever
+opinion the Crown might be pleased to hold, and Horizontalism took its
+place among _fides defuncti_.
+
+ZEUS, n.  The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter
+and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog.  Some explorers
+who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to
+have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought
+that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his
+monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives
+are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he
+worships under many sacred names.
+
+ZIGZAG, v.t.  To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one
+carrying the white man's burden.  (From _zed_, _z_, and _jag_, an
+Icelandic word of unknown meaning.)
+
+  He zedjagged so uncomen wyde
+  Thet non coude pas on eyder syde;
+  So, to com saufly thruh, I been
+  Constreynet for to doodge betwene.
+
+Munwele
+
+
+ZOOLOGY, n.  The science and history of the animal kingdom, including
+its king, the House Fly (_Musca maledicta_).  The father of Zoology
+was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother
+has not come down to us.  Two of the science's most illustrious
+expounders were Buffon and Oliver Goldsmith, from both of whom we
+learn (_L'Histoire generale des animaux_ and _A History of Animated
+Nature_) that the domestic cow sheds its horn every two years.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Devil's Dictionary by Bierce
+#3 in our series by Ambrose Bierce  [From Wiretap]
+
+
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+THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
+
+by Ambrose Bierce
+
+July, 1997  [Etext #972]
+[Date last updated: January 6, 2007]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Devil's Dictionary by Bierce
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+The Internet Wiretap 1st Online Edition of
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
+by
+AMBROSE BIERCE
+
+
+
+Entered by Aloysius of &tSftDotIotE
+aloysius@west.darkside.com
+
+
+
+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 ingenius 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 [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself.
+Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and
+the hope of Hell.
+
+ABORIGINIES, n.  Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a
+newly discovered country.  They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
+
+ABRACADABRA.
+
+  By _Abracadabra_ we signify
+      An infinite number of things.
+  'Tis the answer to What? and How? and Why?
+  And Whence? and Whither? -- a word whereby
+      The Truth (with the comfort it brings)
+  Is open to all who grope in night,
+  Crying for Wisdom's holy light.
+
+  Whether the word is a verb or a noun
+      Is knowledge beyond my reach.
+  I only know that 'tis handed down.
+          From sage to sage,
+          From age to age --
+      An immortal part of speech!
+
+  Of an ancient man the tale is told
+  That he lived to be ten centuries old,
+      In a cave on a mountain side.
+      (True, he finally died.)
+  The fame of his wisdom filled the land,
+  For his head was bald, and you'll understand
+      His beard was long and white
+      And his eyes uncommonly bright.
+
+  Philosophers gathered from far and near
+  To sit at his feet and hear and hear,
+          Though he never was heard
+          To utter a word
+      But "_Abracadabra, abracadab_,
+          _Abracada, abracad_,
+      _Abraca, abrac, abra, ab!_"
+          'Twas all he had,
+  'Twas all they wanted to hear, and each
+  Made copious notes of the mystical speech,
+          Which they published next --
+          A trickle of text
+  In the meadow of commentary.
+      Mighty big books were these,
+      In a number, as leaves of trees;
+  In learning, remarkably -- 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 contended.
+          Now man is tormented
+  Until to buy babes he has squandered
+  His money.  And so I have pondered
+          This thing, and thought may be
+          'T were better that Baby
+  The First had been eagled or condored.
+
+Ro Amil
+
+
+BACCHUS, n.  A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse
+for getting drunk.
+
+  Is public worship, then, a sin,
+      That for devotions paid to Bacchus
+  The lictors dare to run us in,
+      And resolutely thump and whack us?
+
+Jorace
+
+
+BACK, n.  That part of your friend which it is your privilege to
+contemplate in your adversity.
+
+BACKBITE, v.t.  To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find
+you.
+
+BAIT, n.  A preparation that renders the hook more palatable.  The
+best kind is beauty.
+
+BAPTISM, n.  A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself
+in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever.  It is
+performed with water in two ways -- by immersion, or plunging, and by
+aspersion, or sprinkling.
+
+  But whether the plan of immersion
+  Is better than simple aspersion
+      Let those immersed
+      And those aspersed
+  Decide by the Authorized Version,
+  And by matching their agues tertian.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+BAROMETER, n.  An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of
+weather we are having.
+
+BARRACK, n.  A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of
+which it is their business to deprive others.
+
+BASILISK, n.  The cockatrice.  A sort of serpent hatched form 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 worm by Jesters of the Court of Heaven.
+
+CAPITAL, n.  The seat of misgovernment.  That which provides the fire,
+the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the
+anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the
+disgrace before meat.  _Capital Punishment_, a penalty regarding the
+justice and expediency of which many worthy persons -- including all
+the assassins -- entertain grave misgivings.
+
+CARMELITE, n.  A mendicant friar of the order of Mount Carmel.
+
+  As Death was a-rising out one day,
+  Across Mount Camel he took his way,
+      Where he met a mendicant monk,
+      Some three or four quarters drunk,
+  With a holy leer and a pious grin,
+  Ragged and fat and as saucy as sin,
+      Who held out his hands and cried:
+  "Give, give in Charity's name, I pray.
+  Give in the name of the Church.  O give,
+  Give that her holy sons may live!"
+      And Death replied,
+      Smiling long and wide:
+      "I'll give, holy father, I'll give thee -- a ride."
+
+      With a rattle and bang
+      Of his bones, he sprang
+  From his famous Pale Horse, with his spear;
+      By the neck and the foot
+      Seized the fellow, and put
+  Him astride with his face to the rear.
+
+  The Monarch laughed loud with a sound that fell
+  Like clods on the coffin's sounding shell:
+  "Ho, ho!  A beggar on horseback, they say,
+      Will ride to the devil!" -- and _thump_
+      Fell the flat of his dart on the rump
+  Of the charger, which galloped away.
+
+  Faster and faster and faster it flew,
+  Till the rocks and the flocks and the trees that grew
+  By the road were dim and blended and blue
+      To the wild, wild eyes
+      Of the rider -- in size
+      Resembling a couple of blackberry pies.
+  Death laughed again, as a tomb might laugh
+      At a burial service spoiled,
+      And the mourners' intentions foiled
+      By the body erecting
+      Its head and objecting
+  To further proceedings in its behalf.
+
+  Many a year and many a day
+  Have passed since these events away.
+  The monk has long been a dusty corse,
+  And Death has never recovered his horse.
+      For the friar got hold of its tail,
+      And steered it within the pale
+  Of the monastery gray,
+  Where the beast was stabled and fed
+  With barley and oil and bread
+  Till fatter it grew than the fattest friar,
+  And so in due course was appointed Prior.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+CARNIVOROUS, adj.  Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorous
+vegetarian, his heirs and assigns.
+
+CARTESIAN, adj.  Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author
+of the celebrated dictum, _Cogito ergo sum_ -- whereby he was pleased
+to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence.  The dictum
+might be improved, however, thus:  _Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum_ --
+"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an
+approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
+
+CAT, n.  A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be
+kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
+
+  This is a dog,
+      This is a cat.
+  This is a frog,
+      This is a rat.
+  Run, dog, mew, cat.
+  Jump, frog, gnaw, rat.
+
+Elevenson
+
+
+CAVILER, n.  A critic of our own work.
+
+CEMETERY, n.  An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies,
+poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager.  The
+inscriptions following will serve to illustrate the success attained
+in these Olympian games:
+
+      His virtues were so conspicuous that his enemies, unable to
+  overlook them, denied them, and his friends, to whose loose lives
+  they were a rebuke, represented them as vices.  They are here
+  commemorated by his family, who shared them.
+      In the earth we here prepare a
+      Place to lay our little Clara.
+
+Thomas M. and Mary Frazer
+
+      P.S. -- Gabriel will raise her.
+
+CENTAUR, n.  One of a race of persons who lived before the division of
+labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who
+followed the primitive economic maxim, "Every man his own horse."  The
+best of the lot was Chiron, who to the wisdom and virtues of the horse
+added the fleetness of man.  The scripture story of the head of John
+the Baptist on a charger shows that pagan myths have somewhat
+sophisticated sacred history.
+
+CERBERUS, n.  The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the
+entrance -- against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody,
+sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the
+entrance.  Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the
+poets have credited him with as many as a hundred.  Professor
+Graybill, whose clerky erudition and profound knowledge of Greek give
+his opinion great weight, has averaged all the estimates, and makes
+the number twenty-seven -- a judgment that would be entirely
+conclusive is 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, strange," 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 better his temporal ones.
+
+CLIO, n.  One of the nine Muses.  Clio's function was to preside over
+history -- which she did with great dignity, many of the prominent
+citizens of Athens occupying seats on the platform, the meetings being
+addressed by Messrs. Xenophon, Herodotus and other popular speakers.
+
+CLOCK, n.  A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern
+for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.
+
+  A busy man complained one day:
+  "I get no time!"  "What's that you say?"
+  Cried out his friend, a lazy quiz;
+  "You have, sir, all the time there is.
+  There's plenty, too, and don't you doubt it --
+  We're never for an hour without it."
+
+Purzil Crofe
+
+
+CLOSE-FISTED, adj.  Unduly desirous of keeping that which many
+meritorious persons wish to obtain.
+
+  "Close-fisted Scotchman!" Johnson cried
+      To thrifty J. Macpherson;
+  "See me -- I'm ready to divide
+      With any worthy person."
+  Sad Jamie:  "That is very true --
+      The boast requires no backing;
+  And all are worthy, sir, to you,
+      Who have what you are lacking."
+
+Anita M. Bobe
+
+
+COENOBITE, n.  A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the
+sin of wickedness; and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a
+brotherhood of awful examples.
+
+  O Coenobite, O coenobite,
+      Monastical gregarian,
+  You differ from the anchorite,
+      That solitudinarian:
+  With vollied prayers you wound Old Nick;
+  With dropping shots he makes him sick.
+
+Quincy Giles
+
+
+COMFORT, n.  A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's
+uneasiness.
+
+COMMENDATION, n.  The tribute that we pay to achievements that
+resembles, but do not equal, our own.
+
+COMMERCE, n.  A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the
+goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money
+belonging to E.
+
+COMMONWEALTH, n.  An administrative entity operated by an incalculable
+multitude of political parasites, logically active but fortuitously
+efficient.
+
+  This commonwealth's capitol's corridors view,
+  So thronged with a hungry and indolent crew
+  Of clerks, pages, porters and all attaches
+  Whom rascals appoint and the populace pays
+  That a cat cannot slip through the thicket of shins
+  Nor hear its own shriek for the noise of their chins.
+  On clerks and on pages, and porters, and all,
+  Misfortune attend and disaster befall!
+  May life be to them a succession of hurts;
+  May fleas by the bushel inhabit their shirts;
+  May aches and diseases encamp in their bones,
+  Their lungs full of tubercles, bladders of stones;
+  May microbes, bacilli, their tissues infest,
+  And tapeworms securely their bowels digest;
+  May corn-cobs be snared without hope in their hair,
+  And frequent impalement their pleasure impair.
+  Disturbed be their dreams by the awful discourse
+  Of audible sofas sepulchrally hoarse,
+  By chairs acrobatic and wavering floors --
+  The mattress that kicks and the pillow that snores!
+  Sons of cupidity, cradled in sin!
+  Your criminal ranks may the death angel thin,
+  Avenging the friend whom I couldn't work in.
+
+K.Q.
+
+
+COMPROMISE, n.  Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives
+each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought
+not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his
+due.
+
+COMPULSION, n.  The eloquence of power.
+
+CONDOLE, v.i.  To show that bereavement is a smaller evil than
+sympathy.
+
+CONFIDANT, CONFIDANTE, n.  One entrusted by A with the secrets of B,
+confided by _him_ to C.
+
+CONGRATULATION, n.  The civility of envy.
+
+CONGRESS, n.  A body of men who meet to repeal laws.
+
+CONNOISSEUR, n.  A specialist who knows everything about something and
+nothing about anything else.
+  An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision,
+some wine was pouted on his lips to revive him.  "Pauillac, 1873," he
+murmured and died.
+
+CONSERVATIVE, n.  A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as
+distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with
+others.
+
+CONSOLATION, n.  The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate
+than yourself.
+
+CONSUL, n.  In American politics, a person who having failed to secure
+an office from the people is given one by the Administration on
+condition that he leave the country.
+
+CONSULT, v.i.  To seek another's disapproval of a course already
+decided on.
+
+CONTEMPT, n.  The feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too
+formidable safely to be opposed.
+
+CONTROVERSY, n.  A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the
+injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.
+
+  In controversy with the facile tongue --
+  That bloodless warfare of the old and young --
+  So seek your adversary to engage
+  That on himself he shall exhaust his rage,
+  And, like a snake that's fastened to the ground,
+  With his own fangs inflict the fatal wound.
+  You ask me how this miracle is done?
+  Adopt his own opinions, one by one,
+  And taunt him to refute them; in his wrath
+  He'll sweep them pitilessly from his path.
+  Advance then gently all you wish to prove,
+  Each proposition prefaced with, "As you've
+  So well remarked," or, "As you wisely say,
+  And I cannot dispute," or, "By the way,
+  This view of it which, better far expressed,
+  Runs through your argument."  Then leave the rest
+  To him, secure that he'll perform his trust
+  And prove your views intelligent and just.
+
+Conmore Apel Brune
+
+
+CONVENT, n.  A place of retirement for woman who wish for leisure to
+meditate upon the vice of idleness.
+
+CONVERSATION, n.  A fair to 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
+  Though 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."
+
+  Cover 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.  The 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
+characterize 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 be 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 naturalist 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 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 range 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 and 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, omniscience, 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 the nations have been divided and bloody battles
+caused by the difference between foreordination and predestination,
+and that millions of treasure have been expended in the effort to
+prove and disprove its compatibility with freedom of the will and the
+efficacy of prayer, praise, and a religious life, -- recalling these
+awful facts in the history of the word, I stand appalled before the
+mighty problem of its signification, abase my spiritual eyes, fearing
+to contemplate its portentous magnitude, reverently uncover and humbly
+refer it to His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons and His Grace Bishop Potter.
+
+FORGETFULNESS, n.  A gift of God bestowed upon doctors in compensation
+for their destitution of conscience.
+
+FORK, n.  An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead
+animals into the mouth.  Formerly the knife was employed for this
+purpose, and by many worthy persons is still thought to have many
+advantages over the other tool, which, however, they do not altogether
+reject, but use to assist in charging the knife.  The immunity of
+these persons from swift and awful death is one of the most striking
+proofs of God's mercy to those that hate Him.
+
+FORMA PAUPERIS.  [Latin]  In the character of a poor person -- a
+method by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately
+permitted to lose his case.
+
+  When Adam long ago in Cupid's awful court
+      (For Cupid ruled ere Adam was invented)
+  Sued for Eve's favor, says an ancient law report,
+      He stood and pleaded unhabilimented.
+
+  "You sue _in forma pauperis_, I see," Eve cried;
+      "Actions can't here be that way prosecuted."
+  So all poor Adam's motions coldly were denied:
+      He went away -- as he had come -- nonsuited.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+FRANKALMOIGNE, n.  The tenure by which a religious corporation holds
+lands on condition of praying for the soul of the donor.  In mediaeval
+times many of the wealthiest fraternities obtained their estates in
+this simple and cheap manner, and once when Henry VIII of England sent
+an officer to confiscate certain vast possessions which a fraternity
+of monks held by frankalmoigne, "What!" said the Prior, "would you
+master stay our benefactor's soul in Purgatory?"  "Ay," said the
+officer, coldly, "an ye will not pray him thence for naught he must
+e'en roast."  "But look you, my son," persisted the good man, "this
+act hath rank as robbery of God!"  "Nay, nay, good father, my master
+the king doth but deliver him from the manifold temptations of too
+great wealth."
+
+FREEBOOTER, n.  A conqueror in a small way of business, whose
+annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
+
+FREEDOM, n.  Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half
+dozen of restraint's infinite multitude of methods.  A political
+condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual
+monopoly.  Liberty.  The distinction between freedom and liberty is
+not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a
+living specimen of either.
+
+  Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,
+      Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
+  On every wind, indeed, that blows
+          I hear her yell.
+
+  She screams whenever monarchs meet,
+      And parliaments as well,
+  To bind the chains about her feet
+          And toll her knell.
+
+  And when the sovereign people cast
+      The votes they cannot spell,
+  Upon the pestilential blast
+          Her clamors swell.
+
+  For all to whom the power's given
+      To sway or to compel,
+  Among themselves apportion Heaven
+          And give her Hell.
+
+Blary O'Gary
+
+
+FREEMASONS, n.  An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and
+fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II,
+among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the
+dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces
+all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming
+up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of
+Chaos and Formless Void.  The order was founded at different times by
+Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious,
+Thothmes, and Buddha.  Its emblems and symbols have been found in the
+Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the
+Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the
+Egyptian Pyramids -- always by a Freemason.
+
+FRIENDLESS, adj.  Having no favors to bestow.  Destitute of fortune.
+Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.
+
+FRIENDSHIP, n.  A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but
+only one in foul.
+
+  The sea was calm and the sky was blue;
+  Merrily, merrily sailed we two.
+      (High barometer maketh glad.)
+  On the tipsy ship, with a dreadful shout,
+  The tempest descended and we fell out.
+      (O the walking is nasty bad!)
+
+Armit Huff Bettle
+
+
+FROG, n.  A reptile with edible legs.  The first mention of frogs in
+profane literature is in Homer's narrative of the war between them and
+the mice.  Skeptical persons have doubted Homer's authorship of the
+work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr. Schliemann has
+set the question forever at rest by uncovering the bones of the slain
+frogs.  One of the forms of moral suasion by which Pharaoh was
+besought to favor the Israelities was a plague of frogs, but Pharaoh,
+who liked them _fricasees_, remarked, with truly oriental stoicism,
+that he could stand it as long as the frogs and the Jews could; so the
+programme was changed.  The frog is a diligent songster, having a good
+voice but no ear.  The libretto of his favorite opera, as written by
+Aristophanes, is brief, simple and effective -- "brekekex-koax"; the
+music is apparently by that eminent composer, Richard Wagner.  Horses
+have a frog in each hoof -- a thoughtful provision of nature, enabling
+them to shine in a hurdle race.
+
+FRYING-PAN, n.  One part of the penal apparatus employed in that
+punitive institution, a woman's kitchen.  The frying-pan was invented
+by Calvin, and by him used in cooking span-long infants that had died
+without baptism; and observing one day the horrible torment of a tramp
+who had incautiously pulled a fried babe from the waste-dump and
+devoured it, it occurred to the great divine to rob death of its
+terrors by introducing the frying-pan into every household in Geneva.
+Thence it spread to all corners of the world, and has been of
+invaluable assistance in the propagation of his sombre faith.  The
+following lines (said to be from the pen of his Grace Bishop Potter)
+seem to imply that the usefulness of this utensil is not limited to
+this world; but as the consequences of its employment in this life
+reach over into the life to come, so also itself may be found on the
+other side, rewarding its devotees:
+
+  Old Nick was summoned to the skies.
+      Said Peter:  "Your intentions
+  Are good, but you lack enterprise
+      Concerning new inventions.
+
+  "Now, broiling in 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 an an uncommon allowance of limbs, and he saw it in more
+than one place at a time.  The good man was coming away from dinner at
+the time and explains that if he had not been "heavy with eating" he
+would have seized the demon at all hazards.  Atholston relates that a
+ghoul was caught by some sturdy peasants in a churchyard at Sudbury
+and ducked in a horsepond.  (He appears to think that so distinguished
+a criminal should have been ducked in a tank of rosewater.)  The water
+turned at once to blood "and so contynues unto ys daye."  The pond has
+since been bled with a ditch.  As late as the beginning of the
+fourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the crypt of the cathedral
+at Amiens and the whole population surrounded the place.  Twenty armed
+men with a priest at their head, bearing a crucifix, entered and
+captured the ghoul, which, thinking to escape by the stratagem, had
+transformed itself to the semblance of a well known citizen, but was
+nevertheless hanged, drawn and quartered in the midst of hideous
+popular orgies.  The citizen whose shape the demon had assumed was so
+affected by the sinister occurrence that he never again showed himself
+in Amiens and his fate remains a mystery.
+
+GLUTTON, n.  A person who escapes the evils of moderation by
+committing dyspepsia.
+
+GNOME, n.  In North-European mythology, a dwarfish imp inhabiting the
+interior parts of the earth and having special custody of mineral
+treasures.  Bjorsen, who died in 1765, says gnomes were common enough
+in the southern parts of Sweden in his boyhood, and he frequently saw
+them scampering on the hills in the evening twilight.  Ludwig
+Binkerhoof saw three as recently as 1792, in the Black Forest, and
+Sneddeker avers that in 1803 they drove a party of miners out of a
+Silesian mine.  Basing our computations upon data supplied by these
+statements, we find that the gnomes were probably extinct as early as
+1764.
+
+GNOSTICS, n.  A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion
+between the early Christians and the Platonists.  The former would not
+go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin
+of the fusion managers.
+
+GNU, n.  An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state
+resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag.  In its wild condition it is
+something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.
+
+  A hunter from Kew caught a distant view
+      Of a peacefully meditative gnu,
+  And he said:  "I'll pursue, and my hands imbrue
+      In its blood at a closer interview."
+  But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw
+      O'er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;
+  And he said as he flew:  "It is well I withdrew
+      Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew
+      That really meritorious gnu."
+
+Jarn Leffer
+
+
+GOOD, adj.  Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer.
+Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.
+
+GOOSE, n.  A bird that supplies quills for writing.  These, by some
+occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various
+degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character,
+so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person
+called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript
+of the fowl's thought and feeling.  The difference in geese, as
+discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable:  many are found
+to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be
+very great geese indeed.
+
+GORGON, n.
+
+  The Gorgon was a maiden bold
+  Who turned to stone the Greeks of old
+  That looked upon her awful brow.
+  We dig them out of ruins now,
+  And swear that workmanship so bad
+  Proves all the ancient sculptors mad.
+
+GOUT, n.  A physician's name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.
+
+GRACES, n.  Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne,
+who attended upon Venus, serving without salary.  They were at no
+expense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and
+dressed according to the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened to
+be blowing.
+
+GRAMMAR, n.  A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet
+for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to
+distinction.
+
+GRAPE, n.
+
+  Hail noble fruit! -- by Homer sung,
+      Anacreon and Khayyam;
+  Thy praise is ever on the tongue
+      Of better men than I am.
+
+  The lyre in my hand has never swept,
+      The song I cannot offer:
+  My humbler service pray accept --
+      I'll help to kill the scoffer.
+  The water-drinkers and the cranks
+      Who load their skins with liquor --
+  I'll gladly bear their belly-tanks
+      And tap them with my sticker.
+
+  Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools
+      When e'er we let the wine rest.
+  Here's death to Prohibition's fools,
+      And every kind of vine-pest!
+
+Jamrach Holobom
+
+
+GRAPESHOT, n.  An argument which the future is preparing in answer to
+the demands of American Socialism.
+
+GRAVE, n.  A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of
+the medical student.
+
+  Beside a lonely grave I stood --
+      With brambles 'twas encumbered;
+  The winds were moaning in the wood,
+      Unheard by him who slumbered,
+
+  A rustic standing near, I said:
+      "He cannot hear it blowing!"
+  "'Course not," said he:  "the feller's dead --
+      He can't hear nowt [sic] that's going."
+
+  "Too true," I said; "alas, too true --
+      No sound his sense can quicken!"
+  "Well, mister, wot is that to you? --
+      The deadster ain't a-kickin'."
+
+  I knelt and prayed:  "O Father, smile
+      On him, and mercy show him!"
+  That countryman looked on the while,
+      And said:  "Ye didn't know him."
+
+Pobeter Dunko
+
+
+GRAVITATION, n.  The tendency of all bodies to approach one another
+with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain --
+the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength
+of their tendency to approach one another.  This is a lovely and
+edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B,
+makes B the proof of A.
+
+GREAT, adj.
+
+  "I'm great," the Lion said -- "I reign
+  The monarch of the wood and plain!"
+
+  The Elephant replied:  "I'm great --
+  No quadruped can match my weight!"
+
+  "I'm great -- no animal has half
+  So long a neck!" said the Giraffe.
+
+  "I'm great," the Kangaroo said -- "see
+  My femoral muscularity!"
+
+  The 'Possum said:  "I'm great -- behold,
+  My tail is lithe and bald and cold!"
+
+  An Oyster fried was understood
+  To say:  "I'm great because I'm good!"
+
+  Each reckons greatness to consist
+  In that in which he heads the list,
+
+  And Vierick thinks he tops his class
+  Because he is the greatest ass.
+
+Arion Spurl Doke
+
+
+GUILLOTINE, n.  A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders
+with good reason.
+  In his great work on _Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution_, the
+learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture
+-- the shrug -- among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles
+and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracing 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 sed of the
+_Flashawful flabbergastor_, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial
+value, admirably adapted to this climate.  The good Secretary was
+instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with
+soil.  This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line
+of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look
+backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a
+lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point.  Contact with the
+earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary
+saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke and
+fierce evolution.  He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless,
+then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himself
+thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators
+along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak
+prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages,
+and audibly refusing to be comforted.  "Great Scott! what is that?"
+cried a surveyor's chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fading
+line of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon.  "That,"
+said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again
+centering his attention upon his instrument, "is the Meridian of
+Washington."
+
+
+
+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 harrangue-
+outang.
+
+HARBOR, n.  A place where ships taking shelter from stores are exposed
+to the fury of the customs.
+
+HARMONISTS, n.  A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from
+Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for
+the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.
+
+HASH, x.  There is no definition for this word -- nobody knows what
+hash is.
+
+HATCHET, n.  A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.
+
+  "O bury the hatchet, irascible Red,
+  For peace is a blessing," the White Man said.
+      The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred,
+  With imposing rites, in the White Man's head.
+
+John Lukkus
+
+
+HATRED, n.  A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
+superiority.
+
+HEAD-MONEY, n.  A capitation tax, or poll-tax.
+
+  In ancient times there lived a king
+  Whose tax-collectors could not wring
+  From all his subjects gold enough
+  To make the royal way less rough.
+  For pleasure's highway, like the dames
+  Whose premises adjoin it, claims
+  Perpetual repairing.  So
+  The tax-collectors in a row
+  Appeared before the throne to pray
+  Their master to devise some way
+  To swell the revenue.  "So great,"
+  Said they, "are the demands of state
+  A tithe of all that we collect
+  Will scarcely meet them.  Pray reflect:
+  How, if one-tenth we must resign,
+  Can we exist on t'other nine?"
+  The monarch asked them in reply:
+  "Has it occurred to you to try
+  The advantage of economy?"
+  "It has," the spokesman said:  "we sold
+  All of our gray garrotes of gold;
+  With plated-ware we now compress
+  The necks of those whom we assess.
+  Plain iron forceps we employ
+  To mitigate the miser's joy
+  Who hoards, with greed that never tires,
+  That which your Majesty requires."
+  Deep lines of thought were seen to plow
+  Their way across the royal brow.
+  "Your state is desperate, no question;
+  Pray favor me with a suggestion."
+  "O King of Men," the spokesman said,
+  "If you'll impose upon each head
+  A tax, the augmented revenue
+  We'll cheerfully divide with you."
+  As flashes of the sun illume
+  The parted storm-cloud's sullen gloom,
+  The king smiled grimly.  "I decree
+  That it be so -- and, not to be
+  In generosity outdone,
+  Declare you, each and every one,
+  Exempted from the operation
+  Of this new law of capitation.
+  But lest the people censure me
+  Because they're bound and you are free,
+  'Twere well some clever scheme were laid
+  By you this poll-tax to evade.
+  I'll leave you now while you confer
+  With my most trusted minister."
+  The monarch from the throne-room walked
+  And straightway in among them stalked
+  A silent man, with brow concealed,
+  Bare-armed -- his gleaming axe revealed!
+
+G.J.
+
+
+HEARSE, n.  Death's baby-carriage.
+
+HEART, n.  An automatic, muscular blood-pump.  Figuratively, this
+useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments -- a
+very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once
+universal belief.  It is now known that the sentiments and emotions
+reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of
+the gastric fluid.  The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a
+feeling -- tender or not, according to the age of the animal from
+which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a
+caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a
+pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a
+hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh
+of sensibility -- these things have been patiently ascertained by M.
+Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity.  (See, also,
+my monograph, _The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and
+Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion_ -- 4to, 687 pp.)  In a
+scientific work entitled, I believe, _Delectatio Demonorum_ (John
+Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a
+striking illustration; and for further light consult Professor Dam's
+famous treatise on _Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration_.
+
+HEAT, n.
+
+  Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode
+      Of motion, but I know now how he's proving
+  His point; but this I know -- hot words bestowed
+      With skill will set the human fist a-moving,
+  And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
+  _Crede expertum_ -- I have seen them, child.
+
+Gorton Swope
+
+
+HEATHEN, n.  A benighted creature who has the folly to worship
+something that he can see and feel.  According to Professor Howison,
+of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.
+
+  "The Hebrews are heathens!" says Howison.  He's
+      A Christian philosopher.  I'm
+  A scurril agnostical chap, if you please,
+      Addicted too much to the crime
+      Of religious discussion in my rhyme.
+
+  Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree
+      On a _modus vivendi_ -- not they! --
+  Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,
+      And I haven't been reared in a way
+      To joy in the thick of the fray.
+
+  For this of my creed is the soul and the gist,
+      And the truth of it I aver:
+  Who differs from me in his faith is an 'ist,
+      And 'ite, an 'ie, or an 'er --
+      And I'm down upon him or her!
+
+  Let Howison urge with perfunctory chin
+      Toleration -- that's all very well,
+  But a roast is "nuts" to his nostril thin,
+      And he's running -- I know by the smell --
+      A secret and personal Hell!
+
+Bissell Gip
+
+
+HEAVEN, n.  A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with
+talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention
+while you expound your own.
+
+HEBREW, n.  A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an
+altogether superior creation.
+
+HELPMATE, n.  A wife, or bitter half.
+
+  "Now, why is yer wife called a helpmate, Pat?"
+      Says the priest.  "Since the time 'o yer wooin'
+  She's niver [sic] assisted in what ye were at --
+      For it's naught ye are ever doin'."
+
+  "That's true of yer Riverence [sic]," Patrick replies,
+      And no sign of contrition envices;
+  "But, bedad, it's a fact which the word implies,
+      For she helps to mate the expinses [sic]!"
+
+Marley Wottel
+
+
+HEMP, n.  A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of
+neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open
+air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.
+
+HERMIT, n.  A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.
+
+HERS, pron.  His.
+
+HIBERNATE, v.i.  To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion.
+There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of
+various animals.  Many believe that the bear hibernates during the
+whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking its paws.  It is
+admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so lean
+that it had to try twice before it can cast a shadow.  Three or four
+centuries ago, in England, no fact was better attested than that
+swallows passed the winter months in the mud at the bottom of their
+brooks, clinging together in globular masses.  They have apparently
+been compelled to give up the custom and 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 it 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, profession 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 the grammarians than it is to the author of this
+incomparable dictionary.  Conception of two myselfs is difficult, but
+fine.  The frank yet graceful use of "I" distinguishes a good writer
+from a bad; the latter carries it with the manner of a thief trying to
+cloak his loot.
+
+ICHOR, n.  A fluid that serves the gods and goddesses in place of
+blood.
+
+  Fair Venus, speared by Diomed,
+  Restrained the raging chief and said:
+  "Behold, rash mortal, whom you've bled --
+  Your soul's stained white with ichorshed!"
+
+Mary Doke
+
+
+ICONOCLAST, n.  A breaker of idols, the worshipers whereof are
+imperfectly gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest
+that he unbuildeth but doth not reedify, that he pulleth down but
+pileth not up.  For the poor things would have other idols in place of
+those he thwacketh upon the mazzard and dispelleth.  But the
+iconoclast saith:  "Ye shall have none at all, for ye need them not;
+and if the rebuilder fooleth round hereabout, behold I will depress
+the head of him and sit thereon till he squawk it."
+
+IDIOT, n.  A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in
+human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.  The Idiot's
+activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action,
+but "pervades and regulates the whole."  He has the last word in
+everything; his decision is unappealable.  He sets the fashions and
+opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes
+conduct with a dead-line.
+
+IDLENESS, n.  A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of
+new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.
+
+IGNORAMUS, n.  A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge
+familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know
+nothing about.
+
+  Dumble was an ignoramus,
+  Mumble was for learning famous.
+  Mumble said one day to Dumble:
+  "Ignorance should be more humble.
+  Not a spark have you of knowledge
+  That was got in any college."
+  Dumble said to Mumble:  "Truly
+  You're self-satisfied unduly.
+  Of things in college I'm denied
+  A knowledge -- you of all beside."
+
+Borelli
+
+
+ILLUMINATI, n.  A sect of Spanish heretics of the latter part of the
+sixteenth century; so called because they were light weights --
+_cunctationes illuminati_.
+
+ILLUSTRIOUS, adj.  Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and
+detraction.
+
+IMAGINATION, n.  A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint
+ownership.
+
+IMBECILITY, n.  A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting
+censorious critics of this dictionary.
+
+IMMIGRANT, n.  An unenlightened person who thinks one country better
+than another.
+
+IMMODEST, adj.  Having a strong sense of one's own merit, coupled with
+a feeble conception of worth in others.
+
+  There was once a man in Ispahan
+      Ever and ever so long ago,
+  And he had a head, the phrenologists said,
+      That fitted him for a show.
+
+  For his modesty's bump was so large a lump
+      (Nature, they said, had taken a freak)
+  That its summit stood far above the wood
+      Of his hair, like a mountain peak.
+
+  So modest a man in all Ispahan,
+      Over and over again they swore --
+  So humble and meek, you would vainly seek;
+      None ever was found before.
+
+  Meantime the hump of that awful bump
+      Into the heavens contrived to get
+  To so great a height that they called the wight
+      The man with the minaret.
+
+  There wasn't a man in all Ispahan
+      Prouder, or louder in praise of his chump:
+  With a tireless tongue and a brazen lung
+      He bragged of that beautiful bump
+
+  Till the Shah in a rage sent a trusty page
+      Bearing a sack and a bow-string too,
+  And that gentle child explained as he smiled:
+      "A little present for you."
+
+  The saddest man in all Ispahan,
+      Sniffed at the gift, yet accepted the same.
+  "If I'd lived," said he, "my humility
+      Had given me deathless fame!"
+
+Sukker Uffro
+
+
+IMMORAL, adj.  Inexpedient.  Whatever in the long run and with regard
+to the greater number of instances men find to be generally
+inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.  If man's
+notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of
+expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other
+way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from, and
+nowise dependent on, their consequences -- then all philosophy is a
+lie and reason a disorder of the mind.
+
+IMMORTALITY, n.
+
+  A toy which people cry for,
+  And on their knees apply for,
+  Dispute, contend and lie for,
+      And if allowed
+      Would be right proud
+  Eternally to die for.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+IMPALE, v.t.  In popular usage to pierce with any weapon which remains
+fixed in the wound.  This, however, is inaccurate; to impale is,
+properly, to put to death by thrusting an upright sharp stake into the
+body, the victim being left in a sitting position.  This was a common
+mode of punishment among many of the nations of antiquity, and is
+still in high favor in China and other parts of Asia.  Down to the
+beginning of the fifteenth century it was widely employed in
+"churching" heretics and schismatics.  Wolecraft calls it the "stoole
+of repentynge," and among the common people it was jocularly known as
+"riding the one legged horse."  Ludwig Salzmann informs us that in
+Thibet impalement is considered the most appropriate punishment for
+crimes against religion; and although in China it is sometimes awarded
+for secular offences, it is most frequently adjudged in cases of
+sacrilege.  To the person in actual experience of impalement it must
+be a matter of minor importance by what kind of civil or religious
+dissent he was made acquainted with its discomforts; but doubtless he
+would feel a certain satisfaction if able to contemplate himself in
+the character of a weather-cock on the spire of the True Church.
+
+IMPARTIAL, adj.  Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage
+from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
+conflicting opinions.
+
+IMPENITENCE, n.  A state of mind intermediate in point of time between
+sin and punishment.
+
+IMPIETY, n.  Your irreverence toward my deity.
+
+IMPOSITION, n.  The act of blessing or consecrating by the laying on
+of hands -- a ceremony common to many ecclesiastical systems, but
+performed with the frankest sincerity by the sect known as Thieves.
+
+  "Lo! by the laying on of hands,"
+      Say parson, priest and dervise,
+  "We consecrate your cash and lands
+      To ecclesiastical service.
+  No doubt you'll swear till all is blue
+  At such an imposition.  Do."
+
+Pollo Doncas
+
+
+IMPOSTOR n.  A rival aspirant to public honors.
+
+IMPROBABILITY, n.
+
+  His tale he told with a solemn face
+  And a tender, melancholy grace.
+      Improbable 'twas, no doubt,
+      When you came to think it out,
+      But the fascinated crowd
+      Their deep surprise avowed
+  And all with a single voice averred
+  'Twas the most amazing thing they'd heard --
+  All save one who spake never a word,
+      But sat as mum
+      As if deaf and dumb,
+  Serene, indifferent and unstirred.
+      Then all the others turned to him
+      And scrutinized him limb from limb --
+      Scanned him alive;
+      But he seemed to thrive
+      And tranquiler grow each minute,
+      As if there were nothing in it.
+  "What! what!" cried one, "are you not amazed
+  At what our friend has told?"  He raised
+  Soberly then his eyes and gazed
+      In a natural way
+      And proceeded to say,
+  As he crossed his feet on the mantel-shelf:
+  "O no -- not at all; I'm a liar myself."
+
+IMPROVIDENCE, n.  Provision for the needs of to-day from the revenues
+of to-morrow.
+
+IMPUNITY, n.  Wealth.
+
+INADMISSIBLE, adj.  Not competent to be considered.  Said of certain
+kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be
+entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of
+proceedings before themselves alone.  Hearsay evidence is inadmissible
+because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for
+examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political,
+commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay
+evidence.  There is no religion in the world that has any other basis
+than hearsay evidence.  Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the
+Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long
+dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known
+to have been sworn in any sense.  Under the rules of evidence as they
+now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its
+support any evidence admissible in a court of law.  It cannot be
+proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was
+such as person as Julius Caesar, such an empire as Assyria.
+
+But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily
+be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were
+a scourge to mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which
+certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a
+flaw; it is still unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based on it
+were sound in logic and in law.  Nothing in any existing court was
+ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery
+for which so many suffered death.  If there were no witches, human
+testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
+
+INAUSPICIOUSLY, adv.  In an unpromising manner, the auspices being
+unfavorable.  Among the Romans it was customary before undertaking any
+important action or enterprise to obtain from the augurs, or state
+prophets, some hint of its probable outcome; and one of their favorite
+and most trustworthy modes of divination consisted in observing the
+flight of birds -- the omens thence derived being called _auspices_.
+Newspaper reporters and certain miscreant lexicographers have decided
+that the word -- always in the plural -- shall mean "patronage" or
+"management"; as, "The festivities were under the auspices of the
+Ancient and Honorable Order of Body-Snatchers"; or, "The hilarities
+were auspicated by the Knights of Hunger."
+
+  A Roman slave appeared one day
+  Before the Augur.  "Tell me, pray,
+  If --" here the Augur, smiling, made
+  A checking gesture and displayed
+  His open palm, which plainly itched,
+  For visibly its surface twitched.
+  A _denarius_ (the Latin nickel)
+  Successfully allayed the tickle,
+  And then the slave proceeded:  "Please
+  Inform me whether Fate decrees
+  Success or failure in what I
+  To-night (if it be dark) shall try.
+  Its nature?  Never mind -- I think
+  'Tis writ on this" -- and with a wink
+  Which darkened half the earth, he drew
+  Another denarius to view,
+  Its shining face attentive scanned,
+  Then slipped it into the good man's hand,
+  Who with great gravity said:  "Wait
+  While I retire to question Fate."
+  That holy person then withdrew
+  His scared clay and, passing through
+  The temple's rearward gate, cried "Shoo!"
+  Waving his robe of office.  Straight
+  Each sacred peacock and its mate
+  (Maintained for Juno's favor) fled
+  With clamor from the trees o'erhead,
+  Where they were perching for the night.
+  The temple's roof received their flight,
+  For thither they would always go,
+  When danger threatened them below.
+  Back to the slave the Augur went:
+  "My son, forecasting the event
+  By flight of birds, I must confess
+  The auspices deny success."
+  That slave retired, a sadder man,
+  Abandoning his secret plan --
+  Which was (as well the craft seer
+  Had from the first divined) to clear
+  The wall and fraudulently seize
+  On Juno's poultry in the trees.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+INCOME, n.  The natural and rational gauge and measure of
+respectability, the commonly accepted standards being artificial,
+arbitrary and fallacious; for, as "Sir Sycophas Chrysolater" in the
+play has justly remarked, "the true use and function of property (in
+whatsoever it consisteth -- coins, or land, or houses, or merchant-
+stuff, or anything which may be named as holden of right to one's own
+subservience) as also of honors, titles, preferments and place, and
+all favor and acquaintance of persons of quality or ableness, are but
+to get money.  Hence it followeth that all things are truly to be
+rated as of worth in measure of their serviceableness to that end; and
+their possessors should take rank in agreement thereto, neither the
+lord of an unproducing manor, howsoever broad and ancient, nor he who
+bears an unremunerate dignity, nor yet the pauper favorite of a king,
+being esteemed of level excellency with him whose riches are of daily
+accretion; and hardly should they whose wealth is barren claim and
+rightly take more honor than the poor and unworthy."
+
+INCOMPATIBILITY, n.  In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly
+the taste for domination.  Incompatibility may, however, consist of a
+meek-eyed matron living just around the corner.  It has even been
+known to wear a moustache.
+
+INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj.  Unable to exist if something else exists.  Two
+things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for
+one of them, but not enough for both -- as Walt Whitman's poetry and
+God's mercy to man.  Incompossibility, it will be seen, is only
+incompatibility let loose.  Instead of such low language as "Go heel
+yourself -- I mean to kill you on sight," the words, "Sir, we are
+incompossible," would convey and 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 brown 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 on the matter.
+  "Your prompt decision to attack," said Genera 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 be know exactly what to do in an emergency.  When in doubt
+whether to attack or retreat I never hesitate a moment -- I toss us 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 the
+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_.
+
+INFALAPSARIAN, 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 foreordination 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 AI 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
+important 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 no 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 don'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 century,
+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 the 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 infection 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 sift, 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 statue.  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,
+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 paints and throes,
+  As he stroked her toes,
+  Remarking with speech and manner just
+  Befitting his calling:  "Madam, I trust
+      That it doesn't hurt your twigs."
+
+B. Percival Dike
+
+
+LINEN, n.  "A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp,
+entails a great waste of hemp." -- Calcraft the Hangman.
+
+LITIGANT, n.  A person about to give up his skin for the hope of
+retaining his bones.
+
+LITIGATION, n.  A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of
+as a sausage.
+
+LIVER, n.  A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be
+bilious with.  The sentiments and emotions which every literary
+anatomist now knows to haunt the heart were anciently believed to
+infest the liver; and even Gascoygne, speaking of the emotional side
+of human nature, calls it "our hepaticall parte."  It was at one time
+considered the seat of life; hence its name -- liver, the thing we
+live with.  The liver is heaven's best gift to the goose; without it
+that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg _pate_.
+
+LL.D.  Letters indicating the degree _Legumptionorum Doctor_, one
+learned in laws, gifted with legal gumption.  Some suspicion is cast
+upon this derivation by the fact that the title was formerly _LL.d._,
+and conferred only upon gentlemen distinguished for their wealth.  At
+the date of this writing Columbia University is considering the
+expediency of making another degree for clergymen, in place of the old
+D.D. -- _Damnator Diaboli_.  The new honor will be known as _Sanctorum
+Custus_, and written _$$c_.  The name of the Rev. John Satan has been
+suggested as a suitable recipient by a lover of consistency, who
+points out that Professor Harry Thurston Peck has long enjoyed the
+advantage of a degree.
+
+LOCK-AND-KEY, n.  The distinguishing device of civilization and
+enlightenment.
+
+LODGER, n.  A less popular name for the Second Person of that
+delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.
+
+LOGIC, n.  The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with
+the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.  The
+basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor
+premise and a conclusion -- thus:
+  _Major Premise_:  Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as
+quickly as one man.
+  _Minor Premise_:  One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds;
+therefore --
+  _Conclusion_:  Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
+  This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by
+combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are
+twice blessed.
+
+LOGOMACHY, n.  A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds
+punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem -- a kind of contest in
+which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is
+denied the reward of success.
+
+  'Tis said by divers of the scholar-men
+  That poor Salmasius died of Milton's pen.
+  Alas! we cannot know if this is true,
+  For reading Milton's wit we perish too.
+
+LONGANIMITY, n.  The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance
+while maturing a plan of revenge.
+
+LONGEVITY, n.  Uncommon extension of the fear of death.
+
+LOOKING-GLASS, n.  A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting
+show for man's disillusion given.
+  The King of Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso
+looked saw, not his own image, but only that of the king.  A certain
+courtier who had long enjoyed the king's favor and was thereby
+enriched beyond any other subject of the realm, said to the king:
+"Give me, I pray, thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of
+thine august presence I may yet do homage before thy visible shadow,
+prostrating myself night and morning in the glory of thy benign
+countenance, as which nothing has so divine splendor, O Noonday Sun of
+the Universe!"
+  Please with the speech, the king commanded that the mirror be
+conveyed to the courtier's palace; but after, having gone thither
+without apprisal, he found it in an apartment where was naught but
+idle lumber.  And the mirror was dimmed with dust and overlaced with
+cobwebs.  This so angered him that he fisted it hard, shattering the
+glass, and was sorely hurt.  Enraged all the more by this mischance,
+he commanded that the ungrateful courtier be thrown into prison, and
+that the glass be repaired and taken back to his own palace; and this
+was done.  But when the king looked again on the mirror he saw not his
+image as before, but only the figure of a crowned ass, having a bloody
+bandage on one of its hinder hooves -- as the artificers and all who
+had looked upon it had before discerned but feared to report.  Taught
+wisdom and charity, the king restored his courtier to liberty, had the
+mirror set into the back of the throne and reigned many years with
+justice and humility; and one day when he fell asleep in death while
+on the throne, the whole court saw in the mirror the luminous figure
+of an angel, which remains to this day.
+
+LOQUACITY, n.  A disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb
+his tongue when you wish to talk.
+
+LORD, n.  In American society, an English tourist above the state of a
+costermonger, as, lord 'Aberdasher, Lord Hartisan and so forth.  The
+traveling Briton of lesser degree is addressed as "Sir," as, Sir 'Arry
+Donkiboi, or 'Amstead 'Eath.  The word "Lord" is sometimes used, also,
+as a title of the Supreme Being; but this is thought to be rather
+flattery than true reverence.
+
+  Miss Sallie Ann Splurge, of her own accord,
+  Wedded a wandering English lord --
+  Wedded and took him to dwell with her "paw,"
+  A parent who throve by the practice of Draw.
+  Lord Cadde I don't hesitate to declare
+  Unworthy the father-in-legal care
+  Of that elderly sport, notwithstanding the truth
+  That Cadde had renounced all the follies of youth;
+  For, sad to relate, he'd arrived at the stage
+  Of existence that's marked by the vices of age.
+  Among them, cupidity caused him to urge
+  Repeated demands on the pocket of Splurge,
+  Till, wrecked in his fortune, that gentleman saw
+  Inadequate aid in the practice of Draw,
+  And took, as a means of augmenting his pelf,
+  To the business of being a lord himself.
+  His neat-fitting garments he wilfully shed
+  And sacked himself strangely in checks instead;
+  Denuded his chin, but retained at each ear
+  A whisker that looked like a blasted career.
+  He painted his neck an incarnadine hue
+  Each morning and varnished it all that he knew.
+  The moony monocular set in his eye
+  Appeared to be scanning the Sweet Bye-and-Bye.
+  His head was enroofed with a billycock hat,
+  And his low-necked shoes were aduncous and flat.
+  In speech he eschewed his American ways,
+  Denying his nose to the use of his A's
+  And dulling their edge till the delicate sense
+  Of a babe at their temper could take no offence.
+  His H's -- 'twas most inexpressibly sweet,
+  The patter they made as they fell at his feet!
+  Re-outfitted thus, Mr. Splurge without fear
+  Began as Lord Splurge his recouping career.
+  Alas, the Divinity shaping his end
+  Entertained other views and decided to send
+  His lordship in horror, despair and dismay
+  From the land of the nobleman's natural prey.
+  For, smit with his Old World ways, Lady Cadde
+  Fell -- suffering Caesar! -- in love with her dad!
+
+G.J.
+
+
+LORE, n.  Learning -- particularly that sort which is not derived from
+a regular course of instruction but comes of the reading of occult
+books, or by nature.  This latter is commonly designated as folk-lore
+and embraces popularly myths and superstitions.  In Baring-Gould's
+_Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_ the reader will find many of these
+traced backward, through various people son 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 with 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, bleating 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 fell, 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 smoke 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 and 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 a
+lovely women; for a hard heart has a false tongue.
+
+MOUSQUETAIRE, n.  A long glove covering a part of the arm.  Worn in
+New Jersey.  But "mousquetaire" is a might poor way to spell
+muskeeter.
+
+MOUTH, n.  In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of
+the heart.
+
+MUGWUMP, n.  In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted
+to the vice of independence.  A term of contempt.
+
+MULATTO, n.  A child of two races, ashamed of both.
+
+MULTITUDE, n.  A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue.  In
+a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.  "In a multitude
+of counsellors there is wisdom," saith the proverb.  If many men of
+equal individual wisdom are wiser than any one of them, it must be
+that they acquire the excess of wisdom by the mere act of getting
+together.  Whence comes it?  Obviously from nowhere -- as well say
+that a range of mountains is higher than the single mountains
+composing it.  A multitude is as wise as its wisest member if it obey
+him; if not, it is no wiser than its most foolish.
+
+MUMMY, n.  An ancient Egyptian, formerly in universal use among modern
+civilized nations as medicine, and now engaged in supplying art with
+an excellent pigment.  He is handy, too, in museums in gratifying the
+vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower
+animals.
+
+  By means of the Mummy, mankind, it is said,
+  Attests to the gods its respect for the dead.
+  We plunder his tomb, be he sinner or saint,
+  Distil him for physic and grind him for paint,
+  Exhibit for money his poor, shrunken frame,
+  And with levity flock to the scene of the shame.
+  O, tell me, ye gods, for the use of my rhyme:
+  For respecting the dead what's the limit of time?
+
+Scopas Brune
+
+
+MUSTANG, n.  An indocile horse of the western plains.  In English
+society, the American wife of an English nobleman.
+
+MYRMIDON, n.  A follower of Achilles -- particularly when he didn't
+lead.
+
+MYTHOLOGY, n.  The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
+origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
+from the true accounts which it invents later.
+
+
+
+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 mudgobbling 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 and 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 joke.
+
+ORTHOGRAPHY, n.  The science of spelling by the eye instead of the
+ear.  Advocated with more heat than light by the outmates of every
+asylum for the insane.  They have had to concede a few things since
+the time of Chaucer, but are none the less hot in defence of those to
+be conceded hereafter.
+
+  A spelling reformer indicted
+  For fudge was before the court cicted.
+      The judge said:  "Enough --
+      His candle we'll snough,
+  And his sepulchre shall not be whicted."
+
+OSTRICH, n.  A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature
+has denied that hinder toe in which so many pious naturalists have
+seen a conspicuous evidence of design.  The absence of a good working
+pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out,
+the ostrich does not fly.
+
+OTHERWISE, adv.  No better.
+
+OUTCOME, n.  A particular type of disappointment.  By the kind of
+intelligence that sees in an exception a proof of the rule the wisdom
+of an act is judged by the outcome, the result.  This is immortal
+nonsense; the wisdom of an act is to be juded by the light that the
+doer had when he performed it.
+
+OUTDO, v.t.  To make an enemy.
+
+OUT-OF-DOORS, n.  That part of one's environment upon which no
+government has been able to collect taxes.  Chiefly useful to inspire
+poets.
+
+  I climbed to the top of a mountain one day
+      To see the sun setting in glory,
+  And I thought, as I looked at his vanishing ray,
+      Of a perfectly splendid story.
+
+  'Twas about an old man and the ass he bestrode
+      Till the strength of the beast was o'ertested;
+  Then the man would carry him miles on the road
+      Till Neddy was pretty well rested.
+
+  The moon rising solemnly over the crest
+      Of the hills to the east of my station
+  Displayed her broad disk to the darkening west
+      Like a visible new creation.
+
+  And I thought of a joke (and I laughed till I cried)
+      Of an idle young woman who tarried
+  About a church-door for a look at the bride,
+      Although 'twas herself that was married.
+
+  To poets all Nature is pregnant with grand
+      Ideas -- with thought and emotion.
+  I pity the dunces who don't understand
+      The speech of earth, heaven and ocean.
+
+Stromboli Smith
+
+
+OVATION, n.  n 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."
+
+PALMISTRY, n.  The 947th method (according to Mimbleshaw's
+classification) of obtaining money by false pretences.  It consists in
+"reading character" in the wrinkles made by closing the hand.  The
+pretence is not altogether false; character can really be read very
+accurately in this way, for the wrinkles in every hand submitted
+plainly spell the word "dupe."  The imposture consists in not reading
+it aloud.
+
+PANDEMONIUM, n.  Literally, the Place of All the Demons.  Most of them
+have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a
+lecture hall by the Audible Reformer.  When disturbed by his voice the
+ancient echoes clamor appropriate responses most gratifying to his
+pride of distinction.
+
+PANTALOONS, n.  A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male.  The
+garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of
+flexion.  Supposed to have been invented by a humorist.  Called
+"trousers" by the enlightened and "pants" by the unworthy.
+
+PANTHEISM, n.  The doctrine that everything is God, in
+contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
+
+PANTOMIME, n.  A play in which the story is told without violence to
+the language.  The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.
+
+PARDON, v.  To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime.  To
+add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
+
+PASSPORT, n.  A document treacherously inflicted upon a citizen going
+abroad, exposing him as an alien and pointing him out for special
+reprobation and outrage.
+
+PAST, n.  That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we
+have a slight and regrettable acquaintance.  A moving line called the
+Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future.  These
+two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually
+effacing the other, are entirely unlike.  The one is dark with sorrow
+and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy.  The
+Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song.  In the
+one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential
+prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing,
+beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease.  Yet the Past is
+the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow.  They
+are one -- the knowledge and the dream.
+
+PASTIME, n.  A device for promoting dejection.  Gentle exercise for
+intellectual debility.
+
+PATIENCE, n.  A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
+
+PATRIOT, n.  One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to
+those of the whole.  The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
+
+PATRIOTISM, n.  Combustible rubbish read to the torch of any one
+ambitious to illuminate his name.
+  In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the
+last resort of a scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened
+but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
+
+PEACE, n.  In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
+periods of fighting.
+
+  O, what's the loud uproar assailing
+      Mine ears without cease?
+  'Tis the voice of the hopeful, all-hailing
+      The horrors of peace.
+
+  Ah, Peace Universal; they woo it --
+      Would marry it, too.
+  If only they knew how to do it
+      'Twere easy to do.
+
+  They're working by night and by day
+      On their problem, like moles.
+  Have mercy, O Heaven, I pray,
+      On their meddlesome souls!
+
+Ro Amil
+
+
+PEDESTRIAN, n.  The variable (an audible) part of the roadway for an
+automobile.
+
+PEDIGREE, n.  The known part of the route from an arboreal ancestor
+with a swim bladder to an urban descendant with a cigarette.
+
+PENITENT, adj.  Undergoing or awaiting punishment.
+
+PERFECTION, n.  An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the
+actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.
+  The editor of an English magazine having received a letter
+pointing out the erroneous nature of his views and style, and signed
+"Perfection," promptly wrote at the foot of the letter:  "I don't
+agree with you," and mailed it to Matthew Arnold.
+
+PERIPATETIC, adj.  Walking about.  Relating to the philosophy of
+Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in
+order to avoid his pupil's objections.  A needless precaution -- they
+knew no more of the matter than he.
+
+PERORATION, n.  The explosion of an oratorical rocket.  It dazzles,
+but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous
+peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in
+preparing it.
+
+PERSEVERANCE, n.  A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an
+inglorious success.
+
+  "Persevere, persevere!" cry the homilists all,
+  Themselves, day and night, persevering to bawl.
+  "Remember the fable of tortoise and hare --
+  The one at the goal while the other is -- where?"
+  Why, back there in Dreamland, renewing his lease
+  Of life, all his muscles preserving the peace,
+  The goal and the rival forgotten alike,
+  And the long fatigue of the needless hike.
+  His spirit a-squat in the grass and the dew
+  Of the dogless Land beyond the Stew,
+  He sleeps, like a saint in a holy place,
+  A winner of all that is good in a race.
+
+Sukker Uffro
+
+
+PESSIMISM, n.  A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the
+observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his
+scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.
+
+PHILANTHROPIST, n.  A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has
+trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
+
+PHILISTINE, n.  One whose mind is the creature of its environment,
+following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment.  He is
+sometimes learned, frequently prosperous, commonly clean and always
+solemn.
+
+PHILOSOPHY, n.  A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
+
+PHOENIX, n.  The classical prototype of the modern "small hot bird."
+
+PHONOGRAPH, n.  An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.
+
+PHOTOGRAPH, n.  A picture painted by the sun without instruction in
+art.  It is a little better than the work of an Apache, but not quite
+so good as that of a Cheyenne.
+
+PHRENOLOGY, n.  The science of picking the pocket through the scalp.
+It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe
+with.
+
+PHYSICIAN, n.  One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs
+when well.
+
+PHYSIOGNOMY, n.  The art of determining the character of another by
+the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which
+is the standard of excellence.
+
+  "There is no art," says Shakespeare, foolish man,
+      "To read the mind's construction in the face."
+  The physiognomists his portrait scan,
+      And say:  "How little wisdom here we trace!
+  He knew his face disclosed his mind and heart,
+  So, in his own defence, denied our art."
+
+Lavatar Shunk
+
+
+PIANO, n.  A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor.  It
+is operated by pressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the
+audience.
+
+PICKANINNY, n.  The young of the _Procyanthropos_, or _Americanus
+dominans_.  It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.
+
+PICTURE, n.  A representation in two dimensions of something wearisome
+in three.
+
+  "Behold great Daubert's picture here on view --
+  Taken from Life."  If that description's true,
+  Grant, heavenly Powers, that I be taken, too.
+
+Jali Hane
+
+
+PIE, n.  An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.
+
+  Cold pie was highly esteemed by the remains.
+
+Rev. Dr. Mucker
+
+(in a funeral sermon over a British nobleman)
+
+  Cold pie is a detestable
+  American comestible.
+  That's why I'm done -- or undone --
+  So far from that dear London.
+
+(from the headstone of a British nobleman in Kalamazoo)
+
+
+PIETY, n.  Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed
+resemblance to man.
+
+  The pig is taught by sermons and epistles
+  To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.
+
+Judibras
+
+
+PIG, n.  An animal (_Porcus omnivorus_) closely allied to the human
+race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is
+inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.
+
+PIGMY, n.  One of a tribe of very small men found by ancient travelers
+in many parts of the world, but by modern in Central Africa only.  The
+Pigmies are so called to distinguish them from the bulkier Caucasians
+-- who are Hogmies.
+
+PILGRIM, n.  A traveler that is taken seriously.  A Pilgrim Father was
+one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms
+through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could
+personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
+
+PILLORY, n.  A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction
+-- prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere
+virtues and blameless lives.
+
+PIRACY, n.  Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
+
+PITIFUL, adj.  The state of an enemy of opponent after an imaginary
+encounter with oneself.
+
+PITY, n.  A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
+
+PLAGIARISM, n.  A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable
+priority and an honorable subsequence.
+
+PLAGIARIZE, v.  To take the thought or style of another writer whom
+one has never, never read.
+
+PLAGUE, n.  In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for
+admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the
+Immune.  The plague as we of to-day have the happiness to know it is
+merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless
+objectionableness.
+
+PLAN, v.t.  To bother about the best method of accomplishing an
+accidental result.
+
+PLATITUDE, n.  The fundamental element and special glory of popular
+literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke.  The wisdom of
+a million fools in the diction of a dullard.  A fossil sentiment in
+artificial rock.  A moral without the fable.  All that is mortal of a
+departed truth.  A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality.  The Pope's-nose
+of a featherless peacock.  A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the
+sea of thought.  The cackle surviving the egg.  A desiccated epigram.
+
+PLATONIC, adj.  Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates.  Platonic
+Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a
+frost.
+
+PLAUDITS, n.  Coins with which the populace pays those who tickle and
+devour it.
+
+PLEASE, v.  To lay the foundation for a superstructure of imposition.
+
+PLEASURE, n.  The least hateful form of dejection.
+
+PLEBEIAN, n.  An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained
+nothing but his hands.  Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a
+saturated solution.
+
+PLEBISCITE, n.  A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign.
+
+PLENIPOTENTIARY, adj.  Having full power.  A Minister Plenipotentiary
+is a diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he
+never exert it.
+
+PLEONASM, n.  An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.
+
+PLOW, n.  An implement that cries aloud for hands accustomed to the
+pen.
+
+PLUNDER, v.  To take the property of another without observing the
+decent and customary reticences of theft.  To effect a change of
+ownership with the candid concomitance of a brass band.  To wrest the
+wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity.
+
+POCKET, n.  The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience.  In
+woman this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her
+conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of
+others.
+
+POETRY, n.  A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the
+Magazines.
+
+POKER, n.  A game said to be played with cards for some purpose to
+this lexicographer unknown.
+
+POLICE, n.  An armed force for protection and participation.
+
+POLITENESS, n.  The most acceptable hypocrisy.
+
+POLITICS, n.  A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of
+principles.  The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
+
+POLITICIAN, n.  An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the
+superstructure of organized society is reared.  When we wriggles he
+mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.
+As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being
+alive.
+
+POLYGAMY, n.  A house of atonement, or expiatory chapel, fitted with
+several stools of repentance, as distinguished from monogamy, which
+has but one.
+
+POPULIST, n.  A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found
+in the old red soapstone underlying Kansas; characterized by an
+uncommon spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the
+power of flight, though Professors Morse and Whitney, pursuing
+independent lines of thought, have ingeniously pointed out that had he
+possessed it he would have gone elsewhere.  In the picturesque speech
+of his period, some fragments of which have come down to us, he was
+known as "The Matter with Kansas."
+
+PORTABLE, adj.  Exposed to a mutable ownership through vicissitudes of
+possession.
+
+  His light estate, if neither he did make it
+  Nor yet its former guardian forsake it,
+  Is portable improperly, I take it.
+
+Worgum Slupsky
+
+
+PORTUGUESE, n.pl.  A species of geese indigenous to Portugal.  They
+are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed
+with garlic.
+
+POSITIVE, adj.  Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
+
+POSITIVISM, n.  A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and
+affirms our ignorance of the Apparent.  Its longest exponent is Comte,
+its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.
+
+POSTERITY, n.  An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a
+popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure
+competitor.
+
+POTABLE, n.  Suitable for drinking.  Water is said to be potable;
+indeed, some declare it our natural beverage, although even they find
+it palatable only when suffering from the recurrent disorder known as
+thirst, for which it is a medicine.  Upon nothing has so great and
+diligent ingenuity been brought to bear in all ages and in all
+countries, except the most uncivilized, as upon the invention of
+substitutes for water.  To hold that this general aversion to that
+liquid has no basis in the preservative instinct of the race is to be
+unscientific -- and without science we are as the snakes and toads.
+
+POVERTY, n.  A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform.  The
+number of plans for its abolition equals that of the reformers who
+suffer from it, plus that of the philosophers who know nothing about
+it.  Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues
+and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a
+prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.
+
+PRAY, v.  To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf
+of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
+
+PRE-ADAMITE, n.  One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory
+race of antedated Creation and lived under conditions not easily
+conceived.  Melsius believed them to have inhabited "the Void" and to
+have been something intermediate between fishes and birds.  Little its
+known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and
+theologians with a controversy.
+
+PRECEDENT, n.  In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in
+the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a
+Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of
+doing as he pleases.  As there are precedents for everything, he has
+only to ignore those that make against his interest and accentuate
+those in the line of his desire.  Invention of the precedent elevates
+the trial-at-law from the low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the
+noble attitude of a dirigible arbitrament.
+
+PRECIPITATE, adj.  Anteprandial.
+
+  Precipitate in all, this sinner
+  Took action first, and then his dinner.
+
+Judibras
+
+
+PREDESTINATION, n.  The doctrine that all things occur according to
+programme.  This doctrine should not be confused with that of
+foreordination, which means that all things are programmed, but does
+not affirm their occurrence, that being only an implication from other
+doctrines by which this is entailed.  The difference is great enough
+to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
+With the distinction of the two doctrines kept well in mind, and a
+reverent belief in both, one may hope to escape perdition if spared.
+
+PREDICAMENT, n.  The wage of consistency.
+
+PREDILECTION, n.  The preparatory stage of disillusion.
+
+PRE-EXISTENCE, n.  An unnoted factor in creation.
+
+PREFERENCE, n.  A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the
+erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.
+  An ancient philosopher, expounding his conviction that life is no
+better than death, was asked by a disciple why, then, he did not die.
+"Because," he replied, "death is no better than life."
+  It is longer.
+
+PREHISTORIC, adj.  Belonging to an early period and a museum.
+Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.
+
+  He lived in a period prehistoric,
+  When all was absurd and phantasmagoric.
+  Born later, when Clio, celestial recorded,
+  Set down great events in succession and order,
+  He surely had seen nothing droll or fortuitous
+  In anything here but the lies that she threw at us.
+
+Orpheus Bowen
+
+
+PREJUDICE, n.  A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
+
+PRELATE, n.  A church officer having a superior degree of holiness and
+a fat preferment.  One of Heaven's aristocracy.  A gentleman of God.
+
+PREROGATIVE, n.  A sovereign's right to do wrong.
+
+PRESBYTERIAN, n.  One who holds the conviction that the government
+authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.
+
+PRESCRIPTION, n.  A physician's guess at what will best prolong the
+situation with least harm to the patient.
+
+PRESENT, n.  That part of eternity dividing the domain of
+disappointment from the realm of hope.
+
+PRESENTABLE, adj.  Hideously appareled after the manner of the time
+and place.
+  In Boorioboola-Gha a man is presentable on occasions of ceremony
+if he have his abdomen painted a bright blue and wear a cow's tail; in
+New York he may, if it please him, omit the paint, but after sunset he
+must wear two tails made of the wool of a sheep and dyed black.
+
+PRESIDE, v.  To guide the action of a deliberative body to a desirable
+result.  In Journalese, to perform upon a musical instrument; as, "He
+presided at the piccolo."
+
+  The Headliner, holding the copy in hand,
+      Read with a solemn face:
+  "The music was very uncommonly grand --
+          The best that was every provided,
+          For our townsman Brown presided
+      At the organ with skill and grace."
+  The Headliner discontinued to read,
+      And, spread the paper down
+  On the desk, he dashed in at the top of the screed:
+      "Great playing by President Brown."
+
+Orpheus Bowen
+
+
+PRESIDENCY, n.  The greased pig in the field game of American
+politics.
+
+PRESIDENT, n.  The leading figure in a small group of men of whom --
+and of whom only -- it is positively known that immense numbers of
+their countrymen did not want any of them for President.
+
+  If that's an honor surely 'tis a greater
+  To have been a simple and undamned spectator.
+  Behold in me a man of mark and note
+  Whom no elector e'er denied a vote! --
+  An undiscredited, unhooted gent
+  Who might, for all we know, be President
+  By acclimation.  Cheer, ye varlets, cheer --
+  I'm passing with a wide and open ear!
+
+Jonathan Fomry
+
+
+PREVARICATOR, n.  A liar in the caterpillar estate.
+
+PRICE, n.  Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of
+conscience in demanding it.
+
+PRIMATE, n.  The head of a church, especially a State church supported
+by involuntary contributions.  The Primate of England is the
+Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies
+Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead.  He is
+commonly dead.
+
+PRISON, n.  A place of punishments and rewards.  The poet assures us
+that --
+
+  "Stone walls do not a prison make,"
+
+but a combination of the stone wall, the political parasite and the
+moral instructor is no garden of sweets.
+
+PRIVATE, n.  A military gentleman with a field-marshal's baton in his
+knapsack and an impediment in his hope.
+
+PROBOSCIS, n.  The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him
+in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him.
+For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
+  Asked how he knew that an elephant was going on a journey, the
+illustrious Jo. Miller cast a reproachful look upon his tormentor, and
+answered, absently:  "When it is ajar," and threw himself from a high
+promontory into the sea.  Thus perished in his pride the most famous
+humorist of antiquity, leaving to mankind a heritage of woe!  No
+successor worthy of the title has appeared, though Mr. Edward Bok, of
+_The Ladies' Home Journal_, is much respected for the purity and
+sweetness of his personal character.
+
+PROJECTILE, n.  The final arbiter in international disputes.  Formerly
+these disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants,
+with such simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could
+supply -- the sword, the spear, and so forth.  With the growth of
+prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into
+favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous.  Its
+capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at the point of
+propulsion.
+
+PROOF, n.  Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of
+unlikelihood.  The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to
+that of only one.
+
+PROOF-READER, n.  A malefactor who atones for making your writing
+nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
+
+PROPERTY, n.  Any material thing, having no particular value, that may
+be held by A against the cupidity of B.  Whatever gratifies the
+passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others.  The
+object of man's brief rapacity and long indifference.
+
+PROPHECY, n.  The art and practice of selling one's credibility for
+future delivery.
+
+PROSPECT, n.  An outlook, usually forbidding.  An expectation, usually
+forbidden.
+
+  Blow, blow, ye spicy breezes --
+      O'er Ceylon blow your breath,
+  Where every prospect pleases,
+      Save only that of death.
+
+Bishop Sheber
+
+
+PROVIDENTIAL, adj.  Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the
+person so describing it.
+
+PRUDE, n.  A bawd hiding behind the back of her demeanor.
+
+PUBLISH, n.  In literary affairs, to become the fundamental element in
+a cone of critics.
+
+PUSH, n.  One of the two things mainly conducive to success,
+especially in politics.  The other is Pull.
+
+PYRRHONISM, n.  An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor.  It
+consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism.  Its
+modern professors have added that.
+
+
+
+Q
+
+
+
+QUEEN, n.  A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king,
+and through whom it is ruled when there is not.
+
+QUILL, n.  An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly
+wielded by an ass.  This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its
+modern equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting
+Presence.
+
+QUIVER, n.  A portable sheath in which the ancient statesman and the
+aboriginal lawyer carried their lighter arguments.
+
+  He extracted from his quiver,
+      Did the controversial Roman,
+  An argument well fitted
+  To the question as submitted,
+  Then addressed it to the liver,
+      Of the unpersuaded foeman.
+
+Oglum P. Boomp
+
+
+QUIXOTIC, adj.  Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote.  An insight into
+the beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily
+denied to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman's name
+is pronounced Ke-ho-tay.
+
+  When ignorance from out of our lives can banish
+  Philology, 'tis folly to know Spanish.
+
+Juan Smith
+
+
+QUORUM, n.  A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to
+have their own way and their own way of having it.  In the United
+States Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on
+Finance and a messenger from the White House; in the House of
+Representatives, of the Speaker and the devil.
+
+QUOTATION, n.  The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
+The words erroneously repeated.
+
+  Intent on making his quotation truer,
+  He sought the page infallible of Brewer,
+  Then made a solemn vow that we would be
+  Condemned eternally.  Ah, me, ah, me!
+
+Stumpo Gaker
+
+
+QUOTIENT, n.  A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging
+to one person is contained in the pocket of another -- usually about
+as many times as it can be got there.
+
+
+
+R
+
+
+
+RABBLE, n.  In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority
+tempered by fraudulent elections.  The rabble is like the sacred
+Simurgh, of Arabian fable -- omnipotent on condition that it do
+nothing.  (The word is Aristocratese, and has no exact equivalent in
+our tongue, but means, as nearly as may be, "soaring swine.")
+
+RACK, n.  An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading
+devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth.  As a call to
+the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now
+held in light popular esteem.
+
+RANK, n.  Relative elevation in the scale of human worth.
+
+  He held at court a rank so high
+  That other noblemen asked why.
+  "Because," 'twas answered, "others lack
+  His skill to scratch the royal back."
+
+Aramis Jukes
+
+
+RANSOM, n.  The purchase of that which neither belongs to the seller,
+nor can belong to the buyer.  The most unprofitable of investments.
+
+RAPACITY, n.  Providence without industry.  The thrift of power.
+
+RAREBIT, n.  A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point
+out that it is not a rabbit.  To whom it may be solemnly explained
+that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and
+that _riz-de-veau a la financiere_ is not the smile of a calf prepared
+after the recipe of a she banker.
+
+RASCAL, n.  A fool considered under another aspect.
+
+RASCALITY, n.  Stupidity militant.  The activity of a clouded
+intellect.
+
+RASH, adj.  Insensible to the value of our advice.
+
+  "Now lay your bet with mine, nor let
+      These gamblers take your cash."
+  "Nay, this child makes no bet."  "Great snakes!
+      How can you be so rash?"
+
+Bootle P. Gish
+
+
+RATIONAL, adj.  Devoid of all delusions save those of observation,
+experience and reflection.
+
+RATTLESNAKE, n.  Our prostrate brother, _Homo ventrambulans_.
+
+RAZOR, n.  An instrument used by the Caucasian to enhance his beauty,
+by the Mongolian to make a guy of himself, and by the Afro-American to
+affirm his worth.
+
+REACH, n.  The radius of action of the human hand.  The area within
+which it is possible (and customary) to gratify directly the
+propensity to provide.
+
+  This is a truth, as old as the hills,
+      That life and experience teach:
+  The poor man suffers that keenest of ills,
+      An impediment of his reach.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+READING, n.  The general body of what one reads.  In our country it
+consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in "dialect" and
+humor in slang.
+
+  We know by one's reading
+  His learning and breeding;
+  By what draws his laughter
+  We know his Hereafter.
+  Read nothing, laugh never --
+  The Sphinx was less clever!
+
+Jupiter Muke
+
+
+RADICALISM, n.  The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the
+affairs of to-day.
+
+RADIUM, n.  A mineral that gives off heat and stimulates the organ
+that a scientist is a fool with.
+
+RAILROAD, n.  The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get
+away from where we are to where we are no better off.  For this purpose
+the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits
+him to make the transit with great expedition.
+
+RAMSHACKLE, adj.  Pertaining to a certain order of architecture,
+otherwise known as the Normal American.  Most of the public buildings
+of the United States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our
+earlier architects preferred the Ironic.  Recent additions to the
+White House in Washington are Theo-Doric, the ecclesiastic order of
+the Dorians.  They are exceedingly fine and cost one hundred dollars a
+brick.
+
+REALISM, n.  The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads.  The
+charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a
+measuring-worm.
+
+REALITY, n.  The dream of a mad philosopher.  That which would remain
+in the cupel if one should assay a phantom.  The nucleus of a vacuum.
+
+REALLY, adv.  Apparently.
+
+REAR, n.  In American military matters, that exposed part of the army
+that is nearest to Congress.
+
+REASON, v.i.  To weight probabilities in the scales of desire.
+
+REASON, n.  Propensitate of prejudice.
+
+REASONABLE, adj.  Accessible to the infection of our own opinions.
+Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion.
+
+REBEL, n.  A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish
+it.
+
+RECOLLECT, v.  To recall with additions something not previously
+known.
+
+RECONCILIATION, n.  A suspension of hostilities.  An armed truce for
+the purpose of digging up the dead.
+
+RECONSIDER, v.  To seek a justification for a decision already made.
+
+RECOUNT, n.  In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded
+to the player against whom they are loaded.
+
+RECREATION, n.  A particular kind of dejection to relieve a general
+fatigue.
+
+RECRUIT, n.  A person distinguishable from a civilian by his uniform
+and from a soldier by his gait.
+
+  Fresh from the farm or factory or street,
+  His marching, in pursuit or in retreat,
+      Were an impressive martial spectacle
+  Except for two impediments -- his feet.
+
+Thompson Johnson
+
+
+RECTOR, n.  In the Church of England, the Third Person of the
+parochial Trinity, the Cruate and the Vicar being the other two.
+
+REDEMPTION, n.  Deliverance of sinners from the penalty of their sin,
+through their murder of the deity against whom they sinned.  The
+doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy
+religion, and whoso believeth in it shall not perish, but have
+everlasting life in which to try to understand it.
+
+  We must awake Man's spirit from his sin,
+      And take some special measure for redeeming it;
+  Though hard indeed the task to get it in
+      Among the angels any way but teaming it,
+      Or purify it otherwise than steaming it.
+  I'm awkward at Redemption -- a beginner:
+  My method is to crucify the sinner.
+
+Golgo Brone
+
+
+REDRESS, n.  Reparation without satisfaction.
+  Among the Anglo-Saxon a subject conceiving himself wronged by the
+king was permitted, on proving his injury, to beat a brazen image of
+the royal offender with a switch that was afterward applied to his own
+naked back.  The latter rite was performed by the public hangman, and
+it assured moderation in the plaintiff's choice of a switch.
+
+RED-SKIN, n.  A North American Indian, whose skin is not red -- at
+least not on the outside.
+
+REDUNDANT, adj.  Superfluous; needless; _de trop_.
+
+  The Sultan said:  "There's evidence abundant
+  To prove this unbelieving dog redundant."
+  To whom the Grand Vizier, with mien impressive,
+  Replied:  "His head, at least, appears excessive."
+
+Habeeb Suleiman
+
+
+  Mr. Debs is a redundant citizen.
+
+Theodore Roosevelt
+
+
+REFERENDUM, n.  A law for submission of proposed legislation to a
+popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion.
+
+REFLECTION, n.  An action of the mind whereby we obtain a clearer view
+of our relation to the things of yesterday and are able to avoid the
+perils that we shall not again encounter.
+
+REFORM, v.  A thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to
+reformation.
+
+REFUGE, n.  Anything assuring protection to one in peril.  Moses and
+Joshua provided six cities of refuge -- Bezer, Golan, Ramoth, Kadesh,
+Schekem and Hebron -- to which one who had taken life inadvertently
+could flee when hunted by relatives of the deceased.  This admirable
+expedient supplied him with wholesome exercise and enabled them to
+enjoy the pleasures of the chase; whereby the soul of the dead man was
+appropriately honored by observations akin to the funeral games of
+early Greece.
+
+REFUSAL, n.  Denial of something desired; as an elderly maiden's hand
+in marriage, to a rich and handsome suitor; a valuable franchise to a
+rich corporation, by an alderman; absolution to an impenitent king, by
+a priest, and so forth.  Refusals are graded in a descending scale of
+finality thus:  the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the
+refusal tentative and the refusal feminine.  The last is called by
+some casuists the refusal assentive.
+
+REGALIA, n.  Distinguishing insignia, jewels and costume of such
+ancient and honorable orders as Knights of Adam; Visionaries of
+Detectable Bosh; the Ancient Order of Modern Troglodytes; the League
+of Holy Humbug; the Golden Phalanx of Phalangers; the Genteel Society
+of Expurgated Hoodlums; the Mystic Alliances of Georgeous Regalians;
+Knights and Ladies of the Yellow Dog; the Oriental Order of Sons of
+the West; the Blatherhood of Insufferable Stuff; Warriors of the Long
+Bow; Guardians of the Great Horn Spoon; the Band of Brutes; the
+Impenitent Order of Wife-Beaters; the Sublime Legion of Flamboyant
+Conspicuants; Worshipers at the Electroplated Shrine; Shining
+Inaccessibles; Fee-Faw-Fummers of the inimitable Grip; Jannissaries of
+the Broad-Blown Peacock; Plumed Increscencies of the Magic Temple; the
+Grand Cabal of Able-Bodied Sedentarians; Associated Deities of the
+Butter Trade; the Garden of Galoots; the Affectionate Fraternity of
+Men Similarly Warted; the Flashing Astonishers; Ladies of Horror;
+Cooperative Association for Breaking into the Spotlight; Dukes of Eden;
+Disciples Militant of the Hidden Faith; Knights-Champions of the
+Domestic Dog; the Holy Gregarians; the Resolute Optimists; the Ancient
+Sodality of Inhospitable Hogs; Associated Sovereigns of Mendacity;
+Dukes-Guardian of the Mystic Cess-Pool; the Society for Prevention of
+Prevalence; Kings of Drink; Polite Federation of Gents-Consequential;
+the Mysterious Order of the Undecipherable Scroll; Uniformed Rank of
+Lousy Cats; Monarchs of Worth and Hunger; Sons of the South Star;
+Prelates of the Tub-and-Sword.
+
+RELIGION, n.  A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the
+nature of the Unknowable.
+  "What is your religion my son?" inquired the Archbishop of Rheims.
+  "Pardon, monseigneur," replied Rochebriant; "I am ashamed of it."
+  "Then why do you not become an atheist?"
+  "Impossible!  I should be ashamed of atheism."
+  "In that case, monsieur, you should join the Protestants."
+
+RELIQUARY, n.  A receptacle for such sacred objects as pieces of the
+true cross, short-ribs of the saints, the ears of Balaam's ass, the
+lung of the cock that called Peter to repentance and so forth.
+Reliquaries are commonly of metal, and provided with a lock to prevent
+the contents from coming out and performing miracles at unseasonable
+times.  A feather from the wing of the Angel of the Annunciation once
+escaped during a sermon in Saint Peter's and so tickled the noses of
+the congregation that they woke and sneezed with great vehemence three
+times each.  It is related in the "Gesta Sanctorum" that a sacristan
+in the Canterbury cathedral surprised the head of Saint Dennis in the
+library.  Reprimanded by its stern custodian, it explained that it was
+seeking a body of doctrine.  This unseemly levity so raged the
+diocesan that the offender was publicly anathematized, thrown into the
+Stour and replaced by another head of Saint Dennis, brought from Rome.
+
+RENOWN, n.  A degree of distinction between notoriety and fame -- a
+little more supportable than the one and a little more intolerable
+than the other.  Sometimes it is conferred by an unfriendly and
+inconsiderate hand.
+
+  I touched the harp in every key,
+      But found no heeding ear;
+  And then Ithuriel touched me
+      With a revealing spear.
+
+  Not all my genius, great as 'tis,
+      Could urge me out of night.
+  I felt the faint appulse of his,
+      And leapt into the light!
+
+W.J. Candleton
+
+
+REPARATION, n.  Satisfaction that is made for a wrong and deducted
+from the satisfaction felt in committing it.
+
+REPARTEE, n.  Prudent insult in retort.  Practiced by gentlemen with a
+constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to
+offend.  In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.
+
+REPENTANCE, n.  The faithful attendant and follower of Punishment.  It
+is usually manifest in a degree of reformation that is not
+inconsistent with continuity of sin.
+
+  Desirous to avoid the pains of Hell,
+  You will repent and join the Church, Parnell?
+  How needless! -- Nick will keep you off the coals
+  And add you to the woes of other souls.
+
+Jomater Abemy
+
+
+REPLICA, n.  A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made
+the original.  It is so called to distinguish it from a "copy," which
+is made by another artist.  When the two are mae with equal skill the
+replica is the more valuable, for it is supposed to be more beautiful
+than it looks.
+
+REPORTER, n.  A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it
+with a tempest of words.
+
+  "More dear than all my bosom knows, O thou
+  Whose 'lips are sealed' and will not disavow!"
+  So sang the blithe reporter-man as grew
+  Beneath his hand the leg-long "interview."
+
+Barson Maith
+
+
+REPOSE, v.i.  To cease from troubling.
+
+REPRESENTATIVE, n.  In national politics, a member of the Lower House
+in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.
+
+REPROBATION, n.  In theology, the state of a luckless mortal
+prenatally damned.  The doctrine of reprobation was taught by Calvin,
+whose joy in it was somewhat marred by the sad sincerity of his
+conviction that although some are foredoomed to perdition, others are
+predestined to salvation.
+
+REPUBLIC, n.  A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing
+governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to
+enforce an optional obedience.  In a republic, the foundation of
+public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from
+ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to.
+There are as many kinds of republics as there are graduations between
+the despotism whence they came and the anarchy whither they lead.
+
+REQUIEM, n.  A mass for the dead which the minor poets assure us the
+winds sing o'er the graves of their favorites.  Sometimes, by way of
+providing a varied entertainment, they sing a dirge.
+
+RESIDENT, adj.  Unable to leave.
+
+RESIGN, v.t.  To renounce an honor for an advantage.  To renounce an
+advantage for a greater advantage.
+
+  'Twas rumored Leonard Wood had signed
+      A true renunciation
+  Of title, rank and every kind
+      Of military station --
+      Each honorable station.
+
+  By his example fired -- inclined
+      To noble emulation,
+  The country humbly was resigned
+      To Leonard's resignation --
+      His Christian resignation.
+
+Politian Greame
+
+
+RESOLUTE, adj.  Obstinate in a course that we approve.
+
+RESPECTABILITY, n.  The offspring of a _liaison_ between a bald head
+and a bank account.
+
+RESPIRATOR, n.  An apparatus fitted over the nose and mouth of an
+inhabitant of London, whereby to filter the visible universe in its
+passage to the lungs.
+
+RESPITE, n.  A suspension of hostilities against a sentenced assassin,
+to enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have
+been done by the prosecuting attorney.  Any break in the continuity of
+a disagreeable expectation.
+
+  Altgeld upon his incandescent bed
+  Lay, an attendant demon at his head.
+
+  "O cruel cook, pray grant me some relief --
+  Some respite from the roast, however brief."
+
+  "Remember how on earth I pardoned all
+  Your friends in Illinois when held in thrall."
+
+  "Unhappy soul! for that alone you squirm
+  O'er fire unquenched, a never-dying worm.
+
+  "Yet, for I pity your uneasy state,
+  Your doom I'll mollify and pains abate.
+
+  "Naught, for a season, shall your comfort mar,
+  Not even the memory of who you are."
+
+  Throughout eternal space dread silence fell;
+  Heaven trembled as Compassion entered Hell.
+
+  "As long, sweet demon, let my respite be
+  As, governing down here, I'd respite thee."
+
+  "As long, poor soul, as any of the pack
+  You thrust from jail consumed in getting back."
+
+  A genial chill affected Altgeld's hide
+  While they were turning him on t'other side.
+
+Joel Spate Woop
+
+
+RESPLENDENT, adj.  Like a simple American citizen beduking himself in
+his lodge, or affirming his consequence in the Scheme of Things as an
+elemental unit of a parade.
+
+      The Knights of Dominion were so resplendent in their velvet-
+  and-gold that their masters would hardly have known them.
+
+"Chronicles of the Classes"
+
+
+RESPOND, v.i.  To make answer, or disclose otherwise a consciousness
+of having inspired an interest in what Herbert Spencer calls "external
+coexistences," as Satan "squat like a toad" at the ear of Eve,
+responded to the touch of the angel's spear.  To respond in damages is
+to contribute to the maintenance of the plaintiff's attorney and,
+incidentally, to the gratification of the plaintiff.
+
+RESPONSIBILITY, n.  A detachable burden easily shifted to the
+shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor.  In the days
+of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.
+
+  Alas, things ain't what we should see
+  If Eve had let that apple be;
+  And many a feller which had ought
+  To set with monarchses of thought,
+  Or play some rosy little game
+  With battle-chaps on fields of fame,
+  Is downed by his unlucky star
+  And hollers:  "Peanuts! -- here you are!"
+
+"The Sturdy Beggar"
+
+
+RESTITUTIONS, n.  The founding or endowing of universities and public
+libraries by gift or bequest.
+
+RESTITUTOR, n.  Benefactor; philanthropist.
+
+RETALIATION, n.  The natural rock upon which is reared the Temple of
+Law.
+
+RETRIBUTION, n.  A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon
+the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by
+evicting them.
+  In the lines following, addressed to an Emperor in exile by Father
+Gassalasca Jape, the reverend poet appears to hint his sense of the
+improduence of turning about to face Retribution when it is talking
+exercise:
+
+  What, what! Dom Pedro, you desire to go
+      Back to Brazil to end your days in quiet?
+  Why, what assurance have you 'twould be so?
+      'Tis not so long since you were in a riot,
+      And your dear subjects showed a will to fly at
+  Your throat and shake you like a rat.  You know
+  That empires are ungrateful; are you certain
+  Republics are less handy to get hurt in?
+
+REVEILLE, n.  A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields
+no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted.  In the
+American army it is ingeniously called "rev-e-lee," and to that
+pronunciation our countrymen have pledged their lives, their
+misfortunes and their sacred dishonor.
+
+REVELATION, n.  A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed
+all that he knew.  The revealing is done by the commentators, who know
+nothing.
+
+REVERENCE, n.  The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a
+man.
+
+REVIEW, v.t.
+
+  To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it,
+      Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)
+  At work upon a book, and so read out of it
+      The qualities that you have first read into it.
+
+REVOLUTION, n.  In politics, an abrupt change in the form of
+misgovernment.  Specifically, in American history, the substitution of
+the rule of an Administration for that of a Ministry, whereby the
+welfare and happiness of the people were advanced a full half-inch.
+Revolutions are usually accompanied by a considerable effusion of
+blood, but are accounted worth it -- this appraisement being made by
+beneficiaries whose blood had not the mischance to be shed.  The
+French revolution is of incalculable value to the Socialist of to-day;
+when he pulls the string actuating its bones its gestures are
+inexpressibly terrifying to gory tyrants suspected of fomenting law
+and order.
+
+RHADOMANCER, n.  One who uses a divining-rod in prospecting for
+precious metals in the pocket of a fool.
+
+RIBALDRY, n.  Censorious language by another concerning oneself.
+
+RIBROASTER, n.  Censorious language by oneself concerning another.
+The word is of classical refinement, and is even said to have been
+used in a fable by Georgius Coadjutor, one of the most fastidious
+writers of the fifteenth century -- commonly, indeed, regarded as the
+founder of the Fastidiotic School.
+
+RICE-WATER, n.  A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular
+novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the
+conscience.  It is said to be rich in both obtundite and lethargine,
+and is brewed in a midnight fog by a fat which of the Dismal Swamp.
+
+RICH, adj.  Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property
+of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the
+luckless.  That is the view that prevails in the underworld, where the
+Brotherhood of Man finds its most logical development and candid
+advocacy.  To denizens of the midworld the word means good and wise.
+
+RICHES, n.
+
+      A gift from Heaven signifying, "This is my beloved son, in
+  whom I am well pleased."
+
+John D. Rockefeller
+
+
+      The reward of toil and virtue.
+
+J.P. Morgan
+
+
+      The sayings of many in the hands of one.
+
+Eugene Debs
+
+
+  To these excellent definitions the inspired lexicographer feels
+that he can add nothing of value.
+
+RIDICULE, n.  Words designed to show that the person of whom they are
+uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who
+utters them.  It may be graphic, mimetic or merely rident.
+Shaftesbury is quoted as having pronounced it the test of truth -- a
+ridiculous assertion, for many a solemn fallacy has undergone
+centuries of ridicule with no abatement of its popular acceptance.
+What, for example, has been more valorously derided than the doctrine
+of Infant Respectability?
+
+RIGHT, n.  Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right
+to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have
+measles, and the like.  The first of these rights was once universally
+believed to be derived directly from the will of God; and this is
+still sometimes affirmed _in partibus infidelium_ outside the
+enlightened realms of Democracy; as the well known lines of Sir
+Abednego Bink, following:
+
+      By what right, then, do royal rulers rule?
+          Whose is the sanction of their state and pow'r?
+      He surely were as stubborn as a mule
+          Who, God unwilling, could maintain an hour
+  His uninvited session on the throne, or air
+  His pride securely in the Presidential chair.
+
+      Whatever is is so by Right Divine;
+          Whate'er occurs, God wills it so.  Good land!
+      It were a wondrous thing if His design
+          A fool could baffle or a rogue withstand!
+  If so, then God, I say (intending no offence)
+  Is guilty of contributory negligence.
+
+RIGHTEOUSNESS, n.  A sturdy virtue that was once found among the
+Pantidoodles inhabiting the lower part of the peninsula of Oque.  Some
+feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it
+into several European countries, but it appears to have been
+imperfectly expounded.  An example of this faulty exposition is found
+in the only extant sermon of the pious Bishop Rowley, a characteristic
+passage from which is here given:
+
+      "Now righteousness consisteth not merely in a holy state of
+  mind, nor yet in performance of religious rites and obedience to
+  the letter of the law.  It is not enough that one be pious and
+  just:  one must see to it that others also are in the same state;
+  and to this end compulsion is a proper means.  Forasmuch as my
+  injustice may work ill to another, so by his injustice may evil be
+  wrought upon still another, the which it is as manifestly my duty
+  to estop as to forestall mine own tort.  Wherefore if I would be
+  righteous I am bound to restrain my neighbor, by force if needful,
+  in all those injurious enterprises from which, through a better
+  disposition and by the help of Heaven, I do myself restrain."
+
+RIME, n.  Agreeing sounds in the terminals of verse, mostly bad.  The
+verses themselves, as distinguished from prose, mostly dull.  Usually
+(and wickedly) spelled "rhyme."
+
+RIMER, n.  A poet regarded with indifference or disesteem.
+
+  The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,
+  The sound surceases and the sense expires.
+  Then the domestic dog, to east and west,
+  Expounds the passions burning in his breast.
+  The rising moon o'er that enchanted land
+  Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.
+
+Mowbray Myles
+
+
+RIOT, n.  A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent
+bystanders.
+
+R.I.P.  A careless abbreviation of _requiescat in pace_, attesting to
+indolent goodwill to the dead.  According to the learned Dr. Drigge,
+however, the letters originally meant nothing more than _reductus in
+pulvis_.
+
+RITE, n.  A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept
+or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out
+of it.
+
+RITUALISM, n.  A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear
+freedom, keeping off the grass.
+
+ROAD, n.  A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is
+too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.
+
+  All roads, howsoe'er they diverge, lead to Rome,
+  Whence, thank the good Lord, at least one leads back home.
+
+Borey the Bald
+
+
+ROBBER, n.  A candid man of affairs.
+  It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling
+companion lodged at a wayside inn.  The surroundings were suggestive,
+and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn.  "Once
+there was a Farmer-General of the Revenues."  Saying nothing more, he
+was encouraged to continue.  "That," he said, "is the story."
+
+ROMANCE, n.  Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as
+They Are.  In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to
+probability, as a domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance
+it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination -- free,
+lawless, immune to bit and rein.  Your novelist is a poor creature, as
+Carlyle might say -- a mere reporter.  He may invent his characters
+and plot, but he must not imagine anything taking place that might not
+occur, albeit his entire narrative is candidly a lie.  Why he imposes
+this hard condition on himself, and "drags at each remove a
+lengthening chain" of his own forging he can explain in ten thick
+volumes without illuminating by so much as a candle's ray the black
+profound of his own ignorance of the matter.  There are great novels,
+for great writers have "laid waste their powers" to write them, but it
+remains true that far and away the most fascinating fiction that we
+have is "The Thousand and One Nights."
+
+ROPE, n.  An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they
+too are mortal.  It is put about the neck and remains in place one's
+whole life long.  It has been largely superseded by a more complex
+electrical device worn upon another part of the person; and this is
+rapidly giving place to an apparatus known as the preachment.
+
+ROSTRUM, n.  In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship.  In
+America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically
+expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.
+
+ROUNDHEAD, n.  A member of the Parliamentarian party in the English
+civil war -- so called from his habit of wearing his hair short,
+whereas his enemy, the Cavalier, wore his long.  There were other
+points of difference between them, but the fashion in hair was the
+fundamental cause of quarrel.  The Cavaliers were royalists because
+the king, an indolent fellow, found it more convenient to let his hair
+grow than to wash his neck.  This the Roundheads, who were mostly
+barbers and soap-boilers, deemed an injury to trade, and the royal
+neck was therefore the object of their particular indignation.
+Descendants of the belligerents now wear their hair all alike, but the
+fires of animosity enkindled in that ancient strife smoulder to this
+day beneath the snows of British civility.
+
+RUBBISH, n.  Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies,
+literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions
+lying due south from Boreaplas.
+
+RUIN, v.  To destroy.  Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the
+virtue of maids.
+
+RUM, n.  Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total
+abstainers.
+
+RUMOR, n.  A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.
+
+  Sharp, irresistible by mail or shield,
+      By guard unparried as by flight unstayed,
+  O serviceable Rumor, let me wield
+      Against my enemy no other blade.
+  His be the terror of a foe unseen,
+      His the inutile hand upon the hilt,
+  And mine the deadly tongue, long, slender, keen,
+      Hinting a rumor of some ancient guilt.
+  So shall I slay the wretch without a blow,
+  Spare me to celebrate his overthrow,
+  And nurse my valor for another foe.
+
+Joel Buxter
+
+
+RUSSIAN, n.  A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul.  A
+Tartar Emetic.
+
+
+
+S
+
+
+
+SABBATH, n.  A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God
+made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.  Among the
+Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this
+is the Christian version:  "Remember the seventh day to make thy
+neighbor keep it wholly."  To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient
+that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early
+Fathers of the Church held other views.  So great is the sanctity of
+the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious
+jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is
+reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water
+version of the Fourth Commandment:
+
+  Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,
+  And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.
+
+  Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the
+captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine
+ordinance.
+
+SACERDOTALIST, n.  One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a
+priest.  Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge
+that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the
+Neo-Dictionarians.
+
+SACRAMENT, n.  A solemn religious ceremony to which several degrees of
+authority and significance are attached.  Rome has seven sacraments,
+but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can
+afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity.  Some of the smaller
+sects have no sacraments at all -- for which mean economy they will
+indubitable be damned.
+
+SACRED, adj.  Dedicated to some religious purpose; having a divine
+character; inspiring solemn thoughts or emotions; as, the Dalai Lama
+of Thibet; the Moogum of M'bwango; the temple of Apes in Ceylon; the
+Cow in India; the Crocodile, the Cat and the Onion of ancient Egypt;
+the Mufti of Moosh; the hair of the dog that bit Noah, etc.
+
+  All things are either sacred or profane.
+  The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
+  The latter to the devil appertain.
+
+Dumbo Omohundro
+
+
+SANDLOTTER, n.  A vertebrate mammal holding the political views of
+Denis Kearney, a notorious demagogue of San Francisco, whose audiences
+gathered in the open spaces (sandlots) of the town.  True to the
+traditions of his species, this leader of the proletariat was finally
+bought off by his law-and-order enemies, living prosperously silent
+and dying impenitently rich.  But before his treason he imposed upon
+California a constitution that was a confection of sin in a diction of
+solecisms.  The similarity between the words "sandlotter" and
+"sansculotte" is problematically significant, but indubitably
+suggestive.
+
+SAFETY-CLUTCH, n.  A mechanical device acting automatically to prevent
+the fall of an elevator, or cage, in case of an accident to the
+hoisting apparatus.
+
+  Once I seen a human ruin
+      In an elevator-well,
+  And his members was bestrewin'
+      All the place where he had fell.
+
+  And I says, apostrophisin'
+      That uncommon woful wreck:
+  "Your position's so surprisin'
+      That I tremble for your neck!"
+
+  Then that ruin, smilin' sadly
+      And impressive, up and spoke:
+  "Well, I wouldn't tremble badly,
+      For it's been a fortnight broke."
+
+  Then, for further comprehension
+      Of his attitude, he begs
+  I will focus my attention
+      On his various arms and legs --
+
+  How they all are contumacious;
+      Where they each, respective, lie;
+  How one trotter proves ungracious,
+      T'other one an _alibi_.
+
+  These particulars is mentioned
+      For to show his dismal state,
+  Which I wasn't first intentioned
+      To specifical relate.
+
+  None is worser to be dreaded
+      That I ever have heard tell
+  Than the gent's who there was spreaded
+      In that elevator-well.
+
+  Now this tale is allegoric --
+      It is figurative all,
+  For the well is metaphoric
+      And the feller didn't fall.
+
+  I opine it isn't moral
+      For a writer-man to cheat,
+  And despise to wear a laurel
+      As was gotten by deceit.
+
+  For 'tis Politics intended
+      By the elevator, mind,
+  It will boost a person splendid
+      If his talent is the kind.
+
+  Col. Bryan had the talent
+      (For the busted man is him)
+  And it shot him up right gallant
+      Till his head begun to swim.
+
+  Then the rope it broke above him
+      And he painful come to earth
+  Where there's nobody to love him
+      For his detrimented worth.
+
+  Though he's livin' none would know him,
+      Or at leastwise not as such.
+  Moral of this woful poem:
+      Frequent oil your safety-clutch.
+
+Porfer Poog
+
+
+SAINT, n.  A dead sinner revised and edited.
+  The Duchess of Orleans relates that the irreverent old
+calumniator, Marshal Villeroi, who in his youth had known St. Francis
+de Sales, said, on hearing him called saint:  "I am delighted to hear
+that Monsieur de Sales is a saint.  He was fond of saying indelicate
+things, and used to cheat at cards.  In other respects he was a
+perfect gentleman, though a fool."
+
+SALACITY, n.  A certain literary quality frequently observed in
+popular novels, especially in those written by women and young girls,
+who give it another name and think that in introducing it they are
+occupying a neglected field of letters and reaping an overlooked
+harvest.  If they have the misfortune to live long enough they are
+tormented with a desire to burn their sheaves.
+
+SALAMANDER, n.  Originally a reptile inhabiting fire; later, an
+anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile.  Salamanders are now
+believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account
+having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it
+with a bucket of holy water.
+
+SARCOPHAGUS, n.  Among the Greeks a coffin which being made of a
+certain kind of carnivorous stone, had the peculiar property of
+devouring the body placed in it.  The sarcophagus known to modern
+obsequiographers is commonly a product of the carpenter's art.
+
+SATAN, n.  One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in
+sashcloth and axes.  Being instated as an archangel, Satan made
+himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from
+Heaven.  Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a
+moment and at last went back.  "There is one favor that I should like
+to ask," said he.
+  "Name it."
+  "Man, I understand, is about to be created.  He will need laws."
+  "What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn
+of eternity with hatred of his soul -- you ask for the right to make
+his laws?"
+  "Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them
+himself."
+  It was so ordered.
+
+SATIETY, n.  The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten
+its contents, madam.
+
+SATIRE, n.  An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the
+vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with
+imperfect tenderness.  In this country satire never had more than a
+sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we
+are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all
+humor, being tolerant and sympathetic.  Moreover, although Americans
+are "endowed by their Creator" with abundant vice and folly, it is not
+generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the
+satirist is popularly regarded as a soul-spirited knave, and his ever
+victim's outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent.
+
+  Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung
+  In the dead language of a mummy's tongue,
+  For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well --
+  Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell.
+  Had it been such as consecrates the Bible
+  Thou hadst not perished by the law of libel.
+
+Barney Stims
+
+
+SATYR, n.  One of the few characters of the Grecian mythology accorded
+recognition in the Hebrew.  (Leviticus, xvii, 7.)  The satyr was at
+first a member of the dissolute community acknowledging a loose
+allegiance with Dionysius, but underwent many transformations and
+improvements.  Not infrequently he is confounded with the faun, a
+later and decenter creation of the Romans, who was less like a man and
+more like a goat.
+
+SAUCE, n.  The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment.
+A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one
+sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine.  For every sauce invented
+and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.
+
+SAW, n.  A trite popular saying, or proverb.  (Figurative and
+colloquial.)  So called because it makes its way into a wooden head.
+Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.
+
+      A penny saved is a penny to squander.
+
+      A man is known by the company that he organizes.
+      A bad workman quarrels with the man who calls him that.
+
+      A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
+
+      Better late than before anybody has invited you.
+
+      Example is better than following it.
+
+      Half a loaf is better than a whole one if there is much else.
+
+      Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.
+
+      What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
+
+      Least said is soonest disavowed.
+
+      He laughs best who laughs least.
+
+      Speak of the Devil and he will hear about it.
+
+      Of two evils choose to be the least.
+
+      Strike while your employer has a big contract.
+
+      Where there's a will there's a won't.
+
+SCARABAEUS, n.  The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to
+our familiar "tumble-bug."  It was supposed to symbolize immortality,
+the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity.  Its habit
+of incubating its eggs in a ball of ordure may also have commended it
+to the favor of the priesthood, and may some day assure it an equal
+reverence among ourselves.  True, the American beetle is an inferior
+beetle, but the American priest is an inferior priest.
+
+SCARABEE, n.  The same as scarabaeus.
+
+              He fell by his own hand
+                  Beneath the great oak tree.
+              He'd traveled in a foreign land.
+              He tried to make her understand
+              The dance that's called the Saraband,
+                  But he called it Scarabee.
+  He had called it so through an afternoon,
+      And she, the light of his harem if so might be,
+      Had smiled and said naught.  O the body was fair to see,
+  All frosted there in the shine o' the moon --
+                      Dead for a Scarabee
+  And a recollection that came too late.
+                          O Fate!
+                  They buried him where he lay,
+                  He sleeps awaiting the Day,
+                          In state,
+  And two Possible Puns, moon-eyed and wan,
+  Gloom over the grave and then move on.
+                      Dead for a Scarabee!
+                                                     Fernando Tapple
+
+SCARIFICATION, n.  A form of penance practised by the mediaeval pious.
+The rite was performed, sometimes with a knife, sometimes with a hot
+iron, but always, says Arsenius Asceticus, acceptably if the penitent
+spared himself no pain nor harmless disfigurement.  Scarification,
+with other crude penances, has now been superseded by benefaction.
+The founding of a library or endowment of a university is said to
+yield to the penitent a sharper and more lasting pain than is
+conferred by the knife or iron, and is therefore a surer means of
+grace.  There are, however, two grave objections to it as a
+penitential method:  the good that it does and the taint of justice.
+
+SCEPTER, n.  A king's staff of office, the sign and symbol of his
+authority.  It was originally a mace with which the sovereign
+admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the
+bones of their proponents.
+
+SCIMETAR, n.  A curved sword of exceeding keenness, in the conduct of
+which certain Orientals attain a surprising proficiency, as the
+incident here related will serve to show.  The account is translated
+from the Japanese by Shusi Itama, a famous writer of the thirteenth
+century.
+
+      When the great Gichi-Kuktai was Mikado he condemned to
+  decapitation Jijiji Ri, a high officer of the Court.  Soon after
+  the hour appointed for performance of the rite what was his
+  Majesty's surprise to see calmly approaching the throne the man
+  who should have been at that time ten minutes dead!
+      "Seventeen hundred impossible dragons!" shouted the enraged
+  monarch.  "Did I not sentence you to stand in the market-place and
+  have your head struck off by the public executioner at three
+  o'clock?  And is it not now 3:10?"
+      "Son of a thousand illustrious deities," answered the
+  condemned minister, "all that you say is so true that the truth is
+  a lie in comparison.  But your heavenly Majesty's sunny and
+  vitalizing wishes have been pestilently disregarded.  With joy I
+  ran and placed my unworthy body in the market-place.  The
+  executioner appeared with his bare scimetar, ostentatiously
+  whirled it in air, and then, tapping me lightly upon the neck,
+  strode away, pelted by the populace, with whom I was ever a
+  favorite.  I am come to pray for justice upon his own dishonorable
+  and treasonous head."
+      "To what regiment of executioners does the black-boweled
+  caitiff belong?" asked the Mikado.
+      "To the gallant Ninety-eight Hundred and Thirty-seventh -- I
+  know the man.  His name is Sakko-Samshi."
+      "Let him be brought before me," said the Mikado to an
+  attendant, and a half-hour later the culprit stood in the
+  Presence.
+      "Thou bastard son of a three-legged hunchback without thumbs!"
+  roared the sovereign -- "why didst thou but lightly tap the neck
+  that it should have been thy pleasure to sever?"
+      "Lord of Cranes of Cherry Blooms," replied the executioner,
+  unmoved, "command him to blow his nose with his fingers."
+      Being commanded, Jijiji Ri laid hold of his nose and trumpeted
+  like an elephant, all expecting to see the severed head flung
+  violently from him.  Nothing occurred:  the performance prospered
+  peacefully to the close, without incident.
+      All eyes were now turned on the executioner, who had grown as
+  white as the snows on the summit of Fujiama.  His legs trembled
+  and his breath came in gasps of terror.
+      "Several kinds of spike-tailed brass lions!" he cried; "I am a
+  ruined and disgraced swordsman!  I struck the villain feebly
+  because in flourishing the scimetar I had accidentally passed it
+  through my own neck!  Father of the Moon, I resign my office."
+      So saying, he gasped his top-knot, lifted off his head, and
+  advancing to the throne laid it humbly at the Mikado's feet.
+
+SCRAP-BOOK, n.  A book that is commonly edited by a fool.  Many
+persons of some small distinction compile scrap-books containing
+whatever they happen to read about themselves or employ others to
+collect.  One of these egotists was addressed in the lines following,
+by Agamemnon Melancthon Peters:
+
+  Dear Frank, that scrap-book where you boast
+      You keep a record true
+  Of every kind of peppered roast
+          That's made of you;
+
+  Wherein you paste the printed gibes
+      That revel round your name,
+  Thinking the laughter of the scribes
+          Attests your fame;
+
+  Where all the pictures you arrange
+      That comic pencils trace --
+  Your funny figure and your strange
+          Semitic face --
+
+  Pray lend it me.  Wit I have not,
+      Nor art, but there I'll list
+  The daily drubbings you'd have got
+          Had God a fist.
+
+SCRIBBLER, n.  A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to
+one's own.
+
+SCRIPTURES, n.  The sacred books of our holy religion, as
+distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other
+faiths are based.
+
+SEAL, n.  A mark impressed upon certain kinds of documents to attest
+their authenticity and authority.  Sometimes it is stamped upon wax,
+and attached to the paper, sometimes into the paper itself.  Sealing,
+in this sense, is a survival of an ancient custom of inscribing
+important papers with cabalistic words or signs to give them a magical
+efficacy independent of the authority that they represent.  In the
+British museum are preserved many ancient papers, mostly of a
+sacerdotal character, validated by necromantic pentagrams and other
+devices, frequently initial letters of words to conjure with; and in
+many instances these are attached in the same way that seals are
+appended now.  As nearly every reasonless and apparently meaningless
+custom, rite or observance of modern times had origin in some remote
+utility, it is pleasing to note an example of ancient nonsense
+evolving in the process of ages into something really useful.  Our
+word "sincere" is derived from _sine cero_, without wax, but the
+learned are not in agreement as to whether this refers to the absence
+of the cabalistic signs, or to that of the wax with which letters were
+formerly closed from public scrutiny.  Either view of the matter will
+serve one in immediate need of an hypothesis.  The initials L.S.,
+commonly appended to signatures of legal documents, mean _locum
+sigillis_, the place of the seal, although the seal is no longer used
+-- an admirable example of conservatism distinguishing Man from the
+beasts that perish.  The words _locum sigillis_ are humbly suggested
+as a suitable motto for the Pribyloff Islands whenever they shall take
+their place as a sovereign State of the American Union.
+
+SEINE, n.  A kind of net for effecting an involuntary change of
+environment.  For fish it is made strong and coarse, but women are
+more easily taken with a singularly delicate fabric weighted with
+small, cut stones.
+
+  The devil casting a seine of lace,
+      (With precious stones 'twas weighted)
+  Drew it into the landing place
+      And its contents calculated.
+
+  All souls of women were in that sack --
+      A draft miraculous, precious!
+  But ere he could throw it across his back
+      They'd all escaped through the meshes.
+
+Baruch de Loppis
+
+
+SELF-ESTEEM, n.  An erroneous appraisement.
+
+SELF-EVIDENT, adj.  Evident to one's self and to nobody else.
+
+SELFISH, adj.  Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
+
+SENATE, n.  A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
+misdemeanors.
+
+SERIAL, n.  A literary work, usually a story that is not true,
+creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.
+Frequently appended to each installment is a "synposis of preceding
+chapters" for those who have not read them, but a direr need is a
+synposis of succeeding chapters for those who do not intend to read
+_them_.  A synposis of the entire work would be still better.
+  The late James F. Bowman was writing a serial tale for a weekly
+paper in collaboration with a genius whose name has not come down to
+us.  They wrote, not jointly but alternately, Bowman supplying the
+installment for one week, his friend for the next, and so on, world
+without end, they hoped.  Unfortunately they quarreled, and one Monday
+morning when Bowman read the paper to prepare himself for his task, he
+found his work cut out for him in a way to surprise and pain him.  His
+collaborator had embarked every character of the narrative on a ship
+and sunk them all in the deepest part of the Atlantic.
+
+SEVERALTY, n.  Separateness, as, lands in severalty, i.e., lands held
+individually, not in joint ownership.  Certain tribes of Indians are
+believed now to be sufficiently civilized to have in severalty the
+lands that they have hitherto held as tribal organizations, and could
+not sell to the Whites for waxen beads and potato whiskey.
+
+  Lo! the poor Indian whose unsuited mind
+  Saw death before, hell and the grave behind;
+  Whom thrifty settler ne'er besought to stay --
+  His small belongings their appointed prey;
+  Whom Dispossession, with alluring wile,
+  Persuaded elsewhere every little while!
+  His fire unquenched and his undying worm
+  By "land in severalty" (charming term!)
+  Are cooled and killed, respectively, at last,
+  And he to his new holding anchored fast!
+
+SHERIFF, n.  In America the chief executive office of a country, whose
+most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern
+States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.
+
+  John Elmer Pettibone Cajee
+  (I write of him with little glee)
+  Was just as bad as he could be.
+
+  'Twas frequently remarked:  "I swon!
+  The sun has never looked upon
+  So bad a man as Neighbor John."
+
+  A sinner through and through, he had
+  This added fault:  it made him mad
+  To know another man was bad.
+
+  In such a case he thought it right
+  To rise at any hour of night
+  And quench that wicked person's light.
+
+  Despite the town's entreaties, he
+  Would hale him to the nearest tree
+  And leave him swinging wide and free.
+
+  Or sometimes, if the humor came,
+  A luckless wight's reluctant frame
+  Was given to the cheerful flame.
+
+  While it was turning nice and brown,
+  All unconcerned John met the frown
+  Of that austere and righteous town.
+
+  "How sad," his neighbors said, "that he
+  So scornful of the law should be --
+  An anar c, h, i, s, t."
+
+  (That is the way that they preferred
+  To utter the abhorrent word,
+  So strong the aversion that it stirred.)
+
+  "Resolved," they said, continuing,
+  "That Badman John must cease this thing
+  Of having his unlawful fling.
+
+  "Now, by these sacred relics" -- here
+  Each man had out a souvenir
+  Got at a lynching yesteryear --
+
+  "By these we swear he shall forsake
+  His ways, nor cause our hearts to ache
+  By sins of rope and torch and stake.
+
+  "We'll tie his red right hand until
+  He'll have small freedom to fulfil
+  The mandates of his lawless will."
+
+  So, in convention then and there,
+  They named him Sheriff.  The affair
+  Was opened, it is said, with prayer.
+
+J. Milton Sloluck
+
+
+SIREN, n.  One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt
+to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave.  Figuratively, any
+lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing
+performance.
+
+SLANG, n.  The grunt of the human hog (_Pignoramus intolerabilis_)
+with an audible memory.  The speech of one who utters with his tongue
+what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in
+accomplishing the feat of a parrot.  A means (under Providence) of
+setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.
+
+SMITHAREEN, n.  A fragment, a decomponent part, a remain.  The word is
+used variously, but in the following verse on a noted female reformer
+who opposed bicycle-riding by women because it "led them to the devil"
+it is seen at its best:
+
+  The wheels go round without a sound --
+      The maidens hold high revel;
+  In sinful mood, insanely gay,
+  True spinsters spin adown the way
+      From duty to the devil!
+  They laugh, they sing, and -- ting-a-ling!
+      Their bells go all the morning;
+  Their lanterns bright bestar the night
+      Pedestrians a-warning.
+  With lifted hands Miss Charlotte stands,
+      Good-Lording and O-mying,
+  Her rheumatism forgotten quite,
+      Her fat with anger frying.
+  She blocks the path that leads to wrath,
+      Jack Satan's power defying.
+  The wheels go round without a sound
+      The lights burn red and blue and green.
+  What's this that's found upon the ground?
+      Poor Charlotte Smith's a smithareen!
+
+John William Yope
+
+
+SOPHISTRY, n.  The controversial method of an opponent, distinguished
+from one's own by superior insincerity and fooling.  This method is
+that of the later Sophists, a Grecian sect of philosophers who began
+by teaching wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in brief, whatever men
+ought to know, but lost themselves in a maze of quibbles and a fog of
+words.
+
+  His bad opponent's "facts" he sweeps away,
+  And drags his sophistry to light of day;
+  Then swears they're pushed to madness who resort
+  To falsehood of so desperate a sort.
+  Not so; like sods upon a dead man's breast,
+  He lies most lightly who the least is pressed.
+
+Polydore Smith
+
+
+SORCERY, n.  The ancient prototype and forerunner of political
+influence.  It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was
+punished by torture and death.  Augustine Nicholas relates that a poor
+peasant who had been accused of sorcery was put to the torture to
+compel a confession.  After enduring a few gentle agonies the
+suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively asked his
+tormentors if it were not possible to be a sorcerer without knowing
+it.
+
+SOUL, n.  A spiritual entity concerning which there hath been brave
+disputation.  Plato held that those souls which in a previous state of
+existence (antedating Athens) had obtained the clearest glimpses of
+eternal truth entered into the bodies of persons who became
+philosophers.  Plato himself was a philosopher.  The souls that had
+least contemplated divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and
+despots.  Dionysius I, who had threatened to decapitate the broad-
+browed philosopher, was a usurper and a despot.  Plato, doubtless, was
+not the first to construct a system of philosophy that could be quoted
+against his enemies; certainly he was not the last.
+  "Concerning the nature of the soul," saith the renowned author of
+_Diversiones Sanctorum_, "there hath been hardly more argument than
+that of its place in the body.  Mine own belief is that the soul hath
+her seat in the abdomen -- in which faith we may discern and interpret
+a truth hitherto unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men
+most devout.  He is said in the Scripture to 'make a god of his belly'
+-- why, then, should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him
+to freshen his faith?  Who so well as he can know the might and
+majesty that he shrines?  Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach
+are one Divine Entity; and such was the belief of Promasius, who
+nevertheless erred in denying it immortality.  He had observed that
+its visible and material substance failed and decayed with the rest of
+the body after death, but of its immaterial essence he knew nothing.
+This is what we call the Appetite, and it survives the wreck and reek
+of mortality, to be rewarded or punished in another world, according
+to what it hath demanded in the flesh.  The Appetite whose coarse
+clamoring was for the unwholesome viands of the general market and the
+public refectory shall be cast into eternal famine, whilst that which
+firmly through civilly insisted on ortolans, caviare, terrapin,
+anchovies, _pates de foie gras_ and all such Christian comestibles
+shall flesh its spiritual tooth in the souls of them forever and ever,
+and wreak its divine thirst upon the immortal parts of the rarest and
+richest wines ever quaffed here below.  Such is my religious faith,
+though I grieve to confess that neither His Holiness the Pope nor His
+Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I equally and profoundly
+revere) will assent to its dissemination."
+
+SPOOKER, n.  A writer whose imagination concerns itself with
+supernatural phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks.  One of
+the most illustrious spookers of our time is Mr. William D. Howells,
+who introduces a well-credentialed reader to as respectable and
+mannerly a company of spooks as one could wish to meet.  To the terror
+that invests the chairman of a district school board, the Howells
+ghost adds something of the mystery enveloping a farmer from another
+township.
+
+STORY, n.  A narrative, commonly untrue.  The truth of the stories
+here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.
+
+  One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated
+at dinner alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
+  "Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_,
+is published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its
+authorship.  Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the
+Idiot of the Century.  Do you think that fair criticism?"
+  "I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did
+not occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who
+wrote it."
+
+  Mr. W.C. Morrow, who used to live in San Jose, California, was
+addicted to writing ghost stories which made the reader feel as if a
+stream of lizards, fresh from the ice, were streaking it up his back
+and hiding in his hair.  San Jose was at that time believed to be
+haunted by the visible spirit of a noted bandit named Vasquez, who had
+been hanged there.  The town was not very well lighted, and it is
+putting it mildly to say that San Jose was reluctant to be out o'
+nights.  One particularly dark night two gentlemen were abroad in the
+loneliest spot within the city limits, talking loudly to keep up their
+courage, when they came upon Mr. J.J. Owen, a well-known journalist.
+  "Why, Owen," said one, "what brings you here on such a night as
+this?  You told me that this is one of Vasquez' favorite haunts!  And
+you are a believer.  Aren't you afraid to be out?"
+  "My dear fellow," the journalist replied with a drear autumnal
+cadence in his speech, like the moan of a leaf-laden wind, "I am
+afraid to be in.  I have one of Will Morrow's stories in my pocket and
+I don't dare to go where there is light enough to read it."
+  Rear-Admiral Schley and Representative Charles F. Joy were
+standing near the Peace Monument, in Washington, discussing the
+question, Is success a failure?  Mr. Joy suddenly broke off in the
+middle of an eloquent sentence, exclaiming:  "Hello!  I've heard that
+band before.  Santlemann's, I think."
+  "I don't hear any band," said Schley.
+  "Come to think, I don't either," said Joy; "but I see General
+Miles coming down the avenue, and that pageant always affects me in
+the same way as a brass band.  One has to scrutinize one's impressions
+pretty closely, or one will mistake their origin."
+  While the Admiral was digesting this hasty meal of philosophy
+General Miles passed in review, a spectacle of impressive dignity.
+When the tail of the seeming procession had passed and the two
+observers had recovered from the transient blindness caused by its
+effulgence --
+  "He seems to be enjoying himself," said the Admiral.
+  "There is nothing," assented Joy, thoughtfully, "that he enjoys
+one-half so well."
+
+  The illustrious statesman, Champ Clark, once lived about a mile
+from the village of Jebigue, in Missouri.  One day he rode into town
+on a favorite mule, and, hitching the beast on the sunny side of a
+street, in front of a saloon, he went inside in his character of
+teetotaler, to apprise the barkeeper that wine is a mocker.  It was a
+dreadfully hot day.  Pretty soon a neighbor came in and seeing Clark,
+said:
+  "Champ, it is not right to leave that mule out there in the sun.
+He'll roast, sure! -- he was smoking as I passed him."
+  "O, he's all right," said Clark, lightly; "he's an inveterate
+smoker."
+  The neighbor took a lemonade, but shook his head and repeated that
+it was not right.
+  He was a conspirator.  There had been a fire the night before:  a
+stable just around the corner had burned and a number of horses had
+put on their immortality, among them a young colt, which was roasted
+to a rich nut-brown.  Some of the boys had turned Mr. Clark's mule
+loose and substituted the mortal part of the colt.  Presently another
+man entered the saloon.
+  "For mercy's sake!" he said, taking it with sugar, "do remove that
+mule, barkeeper:  it smells."
+  "Yes," interposed Clark, "that animal has the best nose in
+Missouri.  But if he doesn't mind, you shouldn't."
+  In the course of human events Mr. Clark went out, and there,
+apparently, lay the incinerated and shrunken remains of his charger.
+The boys did not have any fun out of Mr. Clarke, who looked at the
+body and, with the non-committal expression to which he owes so much
+of his political preferment, went away.  But walking home late that
+night he saw his mule standing silent and solemn by the wayside in the
+misty moonlight.  Mentioning the name of Helen Blazes with uncommon
+emphasis, Mr. Clark took the back track as hard as ever he could hook
+it, and passed the night in town.
+
+  General H.H. Wotherspoon, president of the Army War College, has a
+pet rib-nosed baboon, an animal of uncommon intelligence but
+imperfectly beautiful.  Returning to his apartment one evening, the
+General was surprised and pained to find Adam (for so the creature is
+named, the general being a Darwinian) sitting up for him and wearing
+his master's best uniform coat, epaulettes and all.
+  "You confounded remote ancestor!" thundered the great strategist,
+"what do you mean by being out of bed after naps? -- and with my coat
+on!"
+  Adam rose and with a reproachful look got down on all fours in the
+manner of his kind and, scuffling across the room to a table, returned
+with a visiting-card:  General Barry had called and, judging by an
+empty champagne bottle and several cigar-stumps, had been hospitably
+entertained while waiting.  The general apologized to his faithful
+progenitor and retired.  The next day he met General Barry, who said:
+  "Spoon, old man, when leaving you last evening I forgot to ask you
+about those excellent cigars.  Where did you get them?"
+  General Wotherspoon did not deign to reply, but walked away.
+  "Pardon me, please," said Barry, moving after him; "I was joking
+of course.  Why, I knew it was not you before I had been in the room
+fifteen minutes."
+
+SUCCESS, n.  The one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.  In
+literature, and particularly in poetry, the elements of success are
+exceedingly simple, and are admirably set forth in the following lines
+by the reverend Father Gassalasca Jape, entitled, for some mysterious
+reason, "John A. Joyce."
+
+  The bard who would prosper must carry a book,
+      Do his thinking in prose and wear
+  A crimson cravat, a far-away look
+      And a head of hexameter hair.
+  Be thin in your thought and your body'll be fat;
+  If you wear your hair long you needn't your hat.
+
+SUFFRAGE, n.  Expression of opinion by means of a ballot.  The right
+of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means,
+as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another
+man's choice, and is highly prized.  Refusal to do so has the bad name
+of "incivism."  The incivilian, however, cannot be properly arraigned
+for his crime, for there is no legitimate accuser.  If the accuser is
+himself guilty he has no standing in the court of opinion; if not, he
+profits by the crime, for A's abstention from voting gives greater
+weight to the vote of B.  By female suffrage is meant the right of a
+woman to vote as some man tells her to.  It is based on female
+responsibility, which is somewhat limited.  The woman most eager to
+jump out of her petticoat to assert her rights is first to jump back
+into it when threatened with a switching for misusing them.
+
+SYCOPHANT, n.  One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he
+may not be commanded to turn and be kicked.  He is sometimes an
+editor.
+
+  As the lean leech, its victim found, is pleased
+  To fix itself upon a part diseased
+  Till, its black hide distended with bad blood,
+  It drops to die of surfeit in the mud,
+  So the base sycophant with joy descries
+  His neighbor's weak spot and his mouth applies,
+  Gorges and prospers like the leech, although,
+  Unlike that reptile, he will not let go.
+  Gelasma, if it paid you to devote
+  Your talent to the service of a goat,
+  Showing by forceful logic that its beard
+  Is more than Aaron's fit to be revered;
+  If to the task of honoring its smell
+  Profit had prompted you, and love as well,
+  The world would benefit at last by you
+  And wealthy malefactors weep anew --
+  Your favor for a moment's space denied
+  And to the nobler object turned aside.
+  Is't not enough that thrifty millionaires
+  Who loot in freight and spoliate in fares,
+  Or, cursed with consciences that bid them fly
+  To safer villainies of darker dye,
+  Forswearing robbery and fain, instead,
+  To steal (they call it "cornering") our bread
+  May see you groveling their boots to lick
+  And begging for the favor of a kick?
+  Still must you follow to the bitter end
+  Your sycophantic disposition's trend,
+  And in your eagerness to please the rich
+  Hunt hungry sinners to their final ditch?
+  In Morgan's praise you smite the sounding wire,
+  And sing hosannas to great Havemeyher!
+  What's Satan done that him you should eschew?
+  He too is reeking rich -- deducting _you_.
+
+SYLLOGISM, n.  A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor
+assumption and an inconsequent.  (See LOGIC.)
+
+SYLPH, n.  An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when
+the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory
+smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.  Sylphs were
+allied to gnomes, nymphs and salamanders, which dwelt, respectively,
+in earth, water and fire, all now insalubrious.  Sylphs, like fowls of
+the air, were male and female, to no purpose, apparently, for if they
+had progeny they must have nested in accessible places, none of the
+chicks having ever been seen.
+
+SYMBOL, n.  Something that is supposed to typify or stand for
+something else.  Many symbols are mere "survivals" -- things which
+having no longer any utility continue to exist because we have
+inherited the tendency to make them; as funereal urns carved on
+memorial monuments.  They were once real urns holding the ashes of the
+dead.  We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that
+conceals our helplessness.
+
+SYMBOLIC, adj.  Pertaining to symbols and the use and interpretation
+of symbols.
+
+  They say 'tis conscience feels compunction;
+  I hold that that's the stomach's function,
+  For of the sinner I have noted
+  That when he's sinned he's somewhat bloated,
+  Or ill some other ghastly fashion
+  Within that bowel of compassion.
+  True, I believe the only sinner
+  Is he that eats a shabby dinner.
+  You know how Adam with good reason,
+  For eating apples out of season,
+  Was "cursed."  But that is all symbolic:
+  The truth is, Adam had the colic.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+
+
+T
+
+
+
+T, the twentieth letter of the English alphabet, was by the Greeks
+absurdly called _tau_.  In the alphabet whence ours comes it had the
+form of the rude corkscrew of the period, and when it stood alone
+(which was more than the Phoenicians could always do) signified
+_Tallegal_, translated by the learned Dr. Brownrigg, "tanglefoot."
+
+TABLE D'HOTE, n.  A caterer's thrifty concession to the universal
+passion for irresponsibility.
+
+  Old Paunchinello, freshly wed,
+      Took Madam P. to table,
+  And there deliriously fed
+      As fast as he was able.
+
+  "I dote upon good grub," he cried,
+      Intent upon its throatage.
+  "Ah, yes," said the neglected bride,
+      "You're in your _table d'hotage_."
+
+Associated Poets
+
+
+TAIL, n.  The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its
+natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of
+its own.  Excepting in its foetal state, Man is without a tail, a
+privation of which he attests an hereditary and uneasy consciousness
+by the coat-skirt of the male and the train of the female, and by a
+marked tendency to ornament that part of his attire where the tail
+should be, and indubitably once was.  This tendency is most observable
+in the female of the species, in whom the ancestral sense is strong
+and persistent.  The tailed men described by Lord Monboddo are now
+generally regarded as a product of an imagination unusually
+susceptible to influences generated in the golden age of our pithecan
+past.
+
+TAKE, v.t.  To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.
+
+TALK, v.t.  To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an
+impulse without purpose.
+
+TARIFF, n.  A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the
+domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.
+
+  The Enemy of Human Souls
+  Sat grieving at the cost of coals;
+  For Hell had been annexed of late,
+  And was a sovereign Southern State.
+
+  "It were no more than right," said he,
+  "That I should get my fuel free.
+  The duty, neither just nor wise,
+  Compels me to economize --
+  Whereby my broilers, every one,
+  Are execrably underdone.
+  What would they have? -- although I yearn
+  To do them nicely to a turn,
+  I can't afford an honest heat.
+  This tariff makes even devils cheat!
+  I'm ruined, and my humble trade
+  All rascals may at will invade:
+  Beneath my nose the public press
+  Outdoes me in sulphureousness;
+  The bar ingeniously applies
+  To my undoing my own lies;
+  My medicines the doctors use
+  (Albeit vainly) to refuse
+  To me my fair and rightful prey
+  And keep their own in shape to pay;
+  The preachers by example teach
+  What, scorning to perform, I teach;
+  And statesmen, aping me, all make
+  More promises than they can break.
+  Against such competition I
+  Lift up a disregarded cry.
+  Since all ignore my just complaint,
+  By Hokey-Pokey!  I'll turn saint!"
+  Now, the Republicans, who all
+  Are saints, began at once to bawl
+  Against _his_ competition; so
+  There was a devil of a go!
+  They locked horns with him, tete-a-tete
+  In acrimonious debate,
+  Till Democrats, forlorn and lone,
+  Had hopes of coming by their own.
+  That evil to avert, in haste
+  The two belligerents embraced;
+  But since 'twere wicked to relax
+  A tittle of the Sacred Tax,
+  'Twas finally agreed to grant
+  The bold Insurgent-protestant
+  A bounty on each soul that fell
+  Into his ineffectual Hell.
+
+Edam Smith
+
+
+TECHNICALITY, n.  In an English court a man named Home was tried for
+slander in having accused his neighbor of murder.  His exact words
+were:  "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook
+upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and
+the other side upon the other shoulder."  The defendant was acquitted
+by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words
+did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook,
+that being only an inference.
+
+TEDIUM, n.  Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored.  Many
+fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an
+authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious
+source -- the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum
+Laudamus_.  In this apparently natural derivation there is something
+that saddens.
+
+TEETOTALER, n.  One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally,
+sometimes tolerably totally.
+
+TELEPHONE, n.  An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
+advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
+
+TELESCOPE, n.  A device having a relation to the eye similar to that
+of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us
+with a multitude of needless details.  Luckily it is unprovided with a
+bell summoning us to the sacrifice.
+
+TENACITY, n.  A certain quality of the human hand in its relation to
+the coin of the realm.  It attains its highest development in the hand
+of authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in
+politics.  The following illustrative lines were written of a
+Californian gentleman in high political preferment, who has passed to
+his accounting:
+
+  Of such tenacity his grip
+  That nothing from his hand can slip.
+  Well-buttered eels you may o'erwhelm
+  In tubs of liquid slippery-elm
+  In vain -- from his detaining pinch
+  They cannot struggle half an inch!
+  'Tis lucky that he so is planned
+  That breath he draws not with his hand,
+  For if he did, so great his greed
+  He'd draw his last with eager speed.
+  Nay, that were well, you say.  Not so
+  He'd draw but never let it go!
+
+THEOSOPHY, n.  An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion
+and all the mystery of science.  The modern Theosophist holds, with
+the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this
+earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough
+for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime
+does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to
+wish to become.  To be absolutely wise and good -- that is perfection;
+and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that
+everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection.
+Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem
+neither wiser nor better than they were last year.  The greatest and
+fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had
+no cat.
+
+TIGHTS, n.  An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the
+general acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity.
+Public attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss
+Lillian Russell's refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as
+to her motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of
+ingenuity and sustained reflection.  It was Miss Hall's belief that
+nature had not endowed Miss Russell with beautiful legs.  This theory
+was impossible of acceptance by the male understanding, but the
+conception of a faulty female leg was of so prodigious originality as
+to rank among the most brilliant feats of philosophical speculation!
+It is strange that in all the controversy regarding Miss Russell's
+aversion to tights no one seems to have thought to ascribe it to what
+was known among the ancients as "modesty."  The nature of that
+sentiment is now imperfectly understood, and possibly incapable of
+exposition with the vocabulary that remains to us.  The study of lost
+arts has, however, been recently revived and some of the arts
+themselves recovered.  This is an epoch of _renaissances_, and there
+is ground for hope that the primitive "blush" may be dragged from its
+hiding-place amongst the tombs of antiquity and hissed on to the
+stage.
+
+TOMB, n.  The House of Indifference.  Tombs are now by common consent
+invested with a certain sanctity, but when they have been long
+tenanted it is considered no sin to break them open and rifle them,
+the famous Egyptologist, Dr. Huggyns, explaining that a tomb may be
+innocently "glened" as soon as its occupant is done "smellynge," the
+soul being then all exhaled.  This reasonable view is now generally
+accepted by archaeologists, whereby the noble science of Curiosity has
+been greatly dignified.
+
+TOPE, v.  To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig.
+In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping
+nations are in the forefront of civilization and power.  When pitted
+against the hard-drinking Christians the abstemious Mahometans go down
+like grass before the scythe.  In India one hundred thousand beef-
+eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two
+hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan
+race.  With what an easy grace the whisky-loving American pushed the
+temperate Spaniard out of his possessions!  From the time when the
+Berserkers ravaged all the coasts of western Europe and lay drunk in
+every conquered port it has been the same way:  everywhere the nations
+that drink too much are observed to fight rather well and not too
+righteously.  Wherefore the estimable old ladies who abolished the
+canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially
+augmented the nation's military power.
+
+TORTOISE, n.  A creature thoughtfully created to supply occasion for
+the following lines by the illustrious Ambat Delaso:
+
+
+TO MY PET TORTOISE
+
+
+  My friend, you are not graceful -- not at all;
+  Your gait's between a stagger and a sprawl.
+
+  Nor are you beautiful:  your head's a snake's
+  To look at, and I do not doubt it aches.
+
+  As to your feet, they'd make an angel weep.
+  'Tis true you take them in whene'er you sleep.
+
+  No, you're not pretty, but you have, I own,
+  A certain firmness -- mostly you're [sic] backbone.
+
+  Firmness and strength (you have a giant's thews)
+  Are virtues that the great know how to use --
+
+  I wish that they did not; yet, on the whole,
+  You lack -- excuse my mentioning it -- Soul.
+
+  So, to be candid, unreserved and true,
+  I'd rather you were I than I were you.
+
+  Perhaps, however, in a time to be,
+  When Man's extinct, a better world may see
+
+  Your progeny in power and control,
+  Due to the genesis and growth of Soul.
+
+  So I salute you as a reptile grand
+  Predestined to regenerate the land.
+
+  Father of Possibilities, O deign
+  To accept the homage of a dying reign!
+
+  In the far region of the unforeknown
+  I dream a tortoise upon every throne.
+
+  I see an Emperor his head withdraw
+  Into his carapace for fear of Law;
+
+  A King who carries something else than fat,
+  Howe'er acceptably he carries that;
+
+  A President not strenuously bent
+  On punishment of audible dissent --
+
+  Who never shot (it were a vain attack)
+  An armed or unarmed tortoise in the back;
+
+  Subject and citizens that feel no need
+  To make the March of Mind a wild stampede;
+
+  All progress slow, contemplative, sedate,
+  And "Take your time" the word, in Church and State.
+
+  O Tortoise, 'tis a happy, happy dream,
+  My glorious testudinous regime!
+
+  I wish in Eden you'd brought this about
+  By slouching in and chasing Adam out.
+
+TREE, n.  A tall vegetable intended by nature to serve as a penal
+apparatus, though through a miscarriage of justice most trees bear
+only a negligible fruit, or none at all.  When naturally fruited, the
+tree is a beneficient agency of civilization and an important factor
+in public morals.  In the stern West and the sensitive South its fruit
+(white and black respectively) though not eaten, is agreeable to the
+public taste and, though not exported, profitable to the general
+welfare.  That the legitimate relation of the tree to justice was no
+discovery of Judge Lynch (who, indeed, conceded it no primacy over the
+lamp-post and the bridge-girder) is made plain by the following
+passage from Morryster, who antedated him by two centuries:
+
+      While in yt londe I was carried to see ye Ghogo tree, whereof
+  I had hearde moch talk; but sayynge yt I saw naught remarkabyll in
+  it, ye hed manne of ye villayge where it grewe made answer as
+  followeth:
+      "Ye tree is not nowe in fruite, but in his seasonne you shall
+  see dependynge fr. his braunches all soch as have affroynted ye
+  King his Majesty."
+      And I was furder tolde yt ye worde "Ghogo" sygnifyeth in yr
+  tong ye same as "rapscal" in our owne.
+
+_Trauvells in ye Easte_
+
+
+TRIAL, n.  A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the
+blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.  In order to
+effect this purpose it is necessary to supply a contrast in the person
+of one who is called the defendant, the prisoner, or the accused.  If
+the contrast is made sufficiently clear this person is made to undergo
+such an affliction as will give the virtuous gentlemen a comfortable
+sense of their immunity, added to that of their worth.  In our day the
+accused is usually a human being, or a socialist, but in mediaeval
+times, animals, fishes, reptiles and insects were brought to trial.  A
+beast that had taken human life, or practiced sorcery, was duly
+arrested, tried and, if condemned, put to death by the public
+executioner.  Insects ravaging grain fields, orchards or vineyards
+were cited to appeal by counsel before a civil tribunal, and after
+testimony, argument and condemnation, if they continued _in
+contumaciam_ the matter was taken to a high ecclesiastical court,
+where they were solemnly excommunicated and anathematized.  In a
+street of Toledo, some pigs that had wickedly run between the
+viceroy's legs, upsetting him, were arrested on a warrant, tried and
+punished.  In Naples and ass was condemned to be burned at the stake,
+but the sentence appears not to have been executed.  D'Addosio relates
+from the court records many trials of pigs, bulls, horses, cocks,
+dogs, goats, etc., greatly, it is believed, to the betterment of their
+conduct and morals.  In 1451 a suit was brought against the leeches
+infesting some ponds about Berne, and the Bishop of Lausanne,
+instructed by the faculty of Heidelberg University, directed that some
+of "the aquatic worms" be brought before the local magistracy.  This
+was done and the leeches, both present and absent, were ordered to
+leave the places that they had infested within three days on pain of
+incurring "the malediction of God."  In the voluminous records of this
+_cause celebre_ nothing is found to show whether the offenders braved
+the punishment, or departed forthwith out of that inhospitable
+jurisdiction.
+
+TRICHINOSIS, n.  The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.
+  Moses Mendlessohn having fallen ill sent for a Christian
+physician, who at once diagnosed the philosopher's disorder as
+trichinosis, but tactfully gave it another name.  "You need and
+immediate change of diet," he said; "you must eat six ounces of pork
+every other day."
+  "Pork?" shrieked the patient -- "pork?  Nothing shall induce me to
+touch it!"
+  "Do you mean that?" the doctor gravely asked.
+  "I swear it!"
+  "Good! -- then I will undertake to cure you."
+
+TRINITY, n.  In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches,
+three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one.  Subordinate
+deities of the polytheistic faith, such as devils and angels, are not
+dowered with the power of combination, and must urge individually
+their claims to adoration and propitiation.  The Trinity is one of the
+most sublime mysteries of our holy religion.  In rejecting it because
+it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of
+theological fundamentals.  In religion we believe only what we do not
+understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that
+contradicts an incomprehensible one.  In that case we believe the
+former as a part of the latter.
+
+TROGLODYTE, n.  Specifically, a cave-dweller of the paleolithic
+period, after the Tree and before the Flat.  A famous community of
+troglodytes dwelt with David in the Cave of Adullam.  The colony
+consisted of "every one that was in distress, and every one that was
+in debt, and every one that was discontented" -- in brief, all the
+Socialists of Judah.
+
+TRUCE, n.  Friendship.
+
+TRUTH, n.  An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.
+Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the
+most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of
+existing with increasing activity to the end of time.
+
+TRUTHFUL, adj.  Dumb and illiterate.
+
+TRUST, n.  In American politics, a large corporation composed in
+greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in
+the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors
+and public enemies.
+
+TURKEY, n.  A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious
+anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and
+gratitude.  Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.
+
+TWICE, adv.  Once too often.
+
+TYPE, n.  Pestilent bits of metal suspected of destroying
+civilization and enlightenment, despite their obvious agency in this
+incomparable dictionary.
+
+TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n.  An African insect (_Glossina morsitans_)
+whose bite is commonly regarded as nature's most efficacious remedy
+for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American
+novelist (_Mendax interminabilis_).
+
+
+
+U
+
+
+
+UBIQUITY, n.  The gift or power of being in all places at one time,
+but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an
+attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.  This important
+distinction between ubiquity and omnipresence was not clear to the
+mediaeval Church and there was much bloodshed about it.  Certain
+Lutherans, who affirmed the presence everywhere of Christ's body were
+known as Ubiquitarians.  For this error they were doubtless damned,
+for Christ's body is present only in the eucharist, though that
+sacrament may be performed in more than one place simultaneously.  In
+recent times ubiquity has not always been understood -- not even by
+Sir Boyle Roche, for example, who held that a man cannot be in two
+places at once unless he is a bird.
+
+UGLINESS, n.  A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue
+without humility.
+
+ULTIMATUM, n.  In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to
+concessions.
+  Having received an ultimatum from Austria, the Turkish Ministry
+met to consider it.
+  "O servant of the Prophet," said the Sheik of the Imperial Chibouk
+to the Mamoosh of the Invincible Army, "how many unconquerable
+soldiers have we in arms?"
+  "Upholder of the Faith," that dignitary replied after examining
+his memoranda, "they are in numbers as the leaves of the forest!"
+  "And how many impenetrable battleships strike terror to the hearts
+of all Christian swine?" he asked the Imaum of the Ever Victorious
+Navy.
+  "Uncle of the Full Moon," was the reply, "deign to know that they
+are as the waves of the ocean, the sands of the desert and the stars
+of Heaven!"
+  For eight hours the broad brow of the Sheik of the Imperial
+Chibouk was corrugated with evidences of deep thought:  he was
+calculating the chances of war.  Then, "Sons of angels," he said, "the
+die is cast!  I shall suggest to the Ulema of the Imperial Ear that he
+advise inaction.  In the name of Allah, the council is adjourned."
+
+UN-AMERICAN, adj.  Wicked, intolerable, heathenish.
+
+UNCTION, n.  An oiling, or greasing.  The rite of extreme unction
+consists in touching with oil consecrated by a bishop several parts of
+the body of one engaged in dying.  Marbury relates that after the rite
+had been administered to a certain wicked English nobleman it was
+discovered that the oil had not been properly consecrated and no other
+could be obtained.  When informed of this the sick man said in anger:
+"Then I'll be damned if I die!"
+  "My son," said the priest, "this is what we fear."
+
+UNDERSTANDING, n.  A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to
+know a house from a horse by the roof on the house.  Its nature and
+laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and
+Kant, who lived in a horse.
+
+  His understanding was so keen
+  That all things which he'd felt, heard, seen,
+  He could interpret without fail
+  If he was in or out of jail.
+  He wrote at Inspiration's call
+  Deep disquisitions on them all,
+  Then, pent at last in an asylum,
+  Performed the service to compile 'em.
+  So great a writer, all men swore,
+  They never had not read before.
+
+Jorrock Wormley
+
+
+UNITARIAN, n.  One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.
+
+UNIVERSALIST, n.  One who forgoes the advantage of a Hell for persons
+of another faith.
+
+URBANITY, n.  The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to
+dwellers in all cities but New York.  Its commonest expression is
+heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not consistent with
+disregard of the rights of others.
+
+  The owner of a powder mill
+  Was musing on a distant hill --
+      Something his mind foreboded --
+  When from the cloudless sky there fell
+  A deviled human kidney!  Well,
+      The man's mill had exploded.
+  His hat he lifted from his head;
+  "I beg your pardon, sir," he said;
+      "I didn't know 'twas loaded."
+
+Swatkin
+
+
+USAGE, n.  The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and
+Third being Custom and Conventionality.  Imbued with a decent
+reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to
+produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
+
+UXORIOUSNESS, n.  A perverted affection that has strayed to one's own
+wife.
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+
+VALOR, n.  A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler's
+hope.
+  "Why have you halted?" roared the commander of a division and
+Chickamauga, who had ordered a charge; "move forward, sir, at once."
+  "General," said the commander of the delinquent brigade, "I am
+persuaded that any further display of valor by my troops will bring
+them into collision with the enemy."
+
+VANITY, n.  The tribute of a fool to the worth of the nearest ass.
+
+  They say that hens do cackle loudest when
+      There's nothing vital in the eggs they've laid;
+      And there are hens, professing to have made
+  A study of mankind, who say that men
+  Whose business 'tis to drive the tongue or pen
+      Make the most clamorous fanfaronade
+      O'er their most worthless work; and I'm afraid
+  They're not entirely different from the hen.
+  Lo! the drum-major in his coat of gold,
+      His blazing breeches and high-towering cap --
+  Imperiously pompous, grandly bold,
+      Grim, resolute, an awe-inspiring chap!
+  Who'd think this gorgeous creature's only virtue
+  Is that in battle he will never hurt you?
+
+Hannibal Hunsiker
+
+
+VIRTUES, n.pl.  Certain abstentions.
+
+VITUPERATION, n.  Saite, as understood by dunces and all such as
+suffer from an impediment in their wit.
+
+VOTE, n.  The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a
+fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
+
+
+
+W
+
+
+
+W (double U) has, of all the letters in our alphabet, the only
+cumbrous name, the names of the others being monosyllabic.  This
+advantage of the Roman alphabet over the Grecian is the more valued
+after audibly spelling out some simple Greek word, like
+_epixoriambikos_.  Still, it is now thought by the learned that other
+agencies than the difference of the two alphabets may have been
+concerned in the decline of "the glory that was Greece" and the rise
+of "the grandeur that was Rome."  There can be no doubt, however, that
+by simplifying the name of W (calling it "wow," for example) our
+civilization could be, if not promoted, at least better endured.
+
+WALL STREET, n.  A symbol for sin for every devil to rebuke.  That
+Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every
+unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven.  Even the great and
+good Andrew Carnegie has made his profession of faith in the matter.
+
+  Carnegie the dauntless has uttered his call
+  To battle:  "The brokers are parasites all!"
+  Carnegie, Carnegie, you'll never prevail;
+  Keep the wind of your slogan to belly your sail,
+  Go back to your isle of perpetual brume,
+  Silence your pibroch, doff tartan and plume:
+  Ben Lomond is calling his son from the fray --
+  Fly, fly from the region of Wall Street away!
+  While still you're possessed of a single baubee
+  (I wish it were pledged to endowment of me)
+  'Twere wise to retreat from the wars of finance
+  Lest its value decline ere your credit advance.
+  For a man 'twixt a king of finance and the sea,
+  Carnegie, Carnegie, your tongue is too free!
+
+Anonymus Bink
+
+
+WAR, n.  A by-product of the arts of peace.  The most menacing
+political condition is a period of international amity.  The student
+of history who has not been taught to expect the unexpected may justly
+boast himself inaccessible to the light.  "In time of peace prepare
+for war" has a deeper meaning than is commonly discerned; it means,
+not merely that all things earthly have an end -- that change is the
+one immutable and eternal law -- but that the soil of peace is thickly
+sown with the seeds of war and singularly suited to their germination
+and growth.  It was when Kubla Khan had decreed his "stately pleasure
+dome" -- when, that is to say, there were peace and fat feasting in
+Xanadu -- that he
+
+                      heard from afar
+  Ancestral voices prophesying war.
+
+  One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of
+men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable.  Let us
+have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of
+that elemental distrust that is the security of nations.  War loves to
+come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide
+the night.
+
+WASHINGTONIAN, n.  A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of
+governing himself for the advantage of good government.  In justice to
+him it should be said that he did not want to.
+
+  They took away his vote and gave instead
+  The right, when he had earned, to _eat_ his bread.
+  In vain -- he clamors for his "boss," pour soul,
+  To come again and part him from his roll.
+
+Offenbach Stutz
+
+
+WEAKNESSES, n.pl.  Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she
+holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the
+service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.
+
+WEATHER, n.  The climate of the hour.  A permanent topic of
+conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have
+inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal
+ancestors whom it keenly concerned.  The setting up official weather
+bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments
+are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle.
+
+  Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
+  And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be --
+  Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
+  With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
+  While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
+  From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
+  He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
+  On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote --
+  For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
+  "Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."
+
+Halcyon Jones
+
+
+WEDDING, n.  A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one,
+one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become
+supportable.
+
+WEREWOLF, n.  A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man.  All
+werewolves are of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to
+gratify a beastial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are as
+humane and is consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.
+  Some Bavarian peasants having caught a wolf one evening, tied it
+to a post by the tail and went to bed.  The next morning nothing was
+there!  Greatly perplexed, they consulted the local priest, who told
+them that their captive was undoubtedly a werewolf and had resumed its
+human for during the night.  "The next time that you take a wolf," the
+good man said, "see that you chain it by the leg, and in the morning
+you will find a Lutheran."
+
+WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n.  In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected
+affliction that strikes hard.
+
+  Should you ask me whence this laughter,
+  Whence this audible big-smiling,
+  With its labial extension,
+  With its maxillar distortion
+  And its diaphragmic rhythmus
+  Like the billowing of an ocean,
+  Like the shaking of a carpet,
+  I should answer, I should tell you:
+  From the great deeps of the spirit,
+  From the unplummeted abysmus
+  Of the soul this laughter welleth
+  As the fountain, the gug-guggle,
+  Like the river from the canon [sic],
+  To entoken and give warning
+  That my present mood is sunny.
+  Should you ask me further question --
+  Why the great deeps of the spirit,
+  Why the unplummeted abysmus
+  Of the soule extrudes this laughter,
+  This all audible big-smiling,
+  I should answer, I should tell you
+  With a white heart, tumpitumpy,
+  With a true tongue, honest Injun:
+  William Bryan, he has Caught It,
+  Caught the Whangdepootenawah!
+
+  Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank,
+  Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,
+  Standing silent in the kneedeep
+  With his wing-tips crossed behind him
+  And his neck close-reefed before him,
+  With his bill, his william, buried
+  In the down upon his bosom,
+  With his head retracted inly,
+  While his shoulders overlook it?
+  Does the sandhill crane, the shankank,
+  Shiver grayly in the north wind,
+  Wishing he had died when little,
+  As the sparrow, the chipchip, does?
+  No 'tis not the Shankank standing,
+  Standing in the gray and dismal
+  Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep.
+  No, 'tis peerless William Bryan
+  Realizing that he's Caught It,
+  Caught the Whangdepootenawah!
+
+WHEAT, n.  A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some
+difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread.  The French are
+said to eat more bread _per capita_ of population than any other
+people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff
+palatable.
+
+WHITE, adj. and n.  Black.
+
+WIDOW, n.  A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to
+take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one
+of the most marked features of his character.
+
+WINE, n.  Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union
+as "liquor," sometimes as "rum."  Wine, madam, is God's next best gift
+to man.
+
+WIT, n.  The salt with which the American humorist spoils his
+intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
+
+WITCH, n.  (1)  Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league
+with the devil.  (2)  A beautiful and attractive young woman, in
+wickedness a league beyond the devil.
+
+WITTICISM, n.  A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldom
+noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a "joke."
+
+WOMAN, n.
+
+      An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a
+  rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.  It is credited by
+  many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility
+  acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the
+  postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion,
+  deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld,
+  it roareth now.  The species is the most widely distributed of all
+  beasts of prey, infesting all habitable parts of the globe, from
+  Greeland's spicy mountains to India's moral strand.  The popular
+  name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind.
+  The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the
+  American variety (_felis pugnans_), is omnivorous and can be
+  taught not to talk.
+
+Balthasar Pober
+
+
+WORMS'-MEAT, n.  The finished product of which we are the raw
+material.  The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the
+Granitarium.  Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that
+houses it, but "this too must pass away."  Probably the silliest work
+in which a human being can engage is construction of a tomb for
+himself.  The solemn purpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by
+contrast the foreknown futility.
+
+  Ambitious fool! so mad to be a show!
+  How profitless the labor you bestow
+      Upon a dwelling whose magnificence
+  The tenant neither can admire nor know.
+
+  Build deep, build high, build massive as you can,
+  The wanton grass-roots will defeat the plan
+      By shouldering asunder all the stones
+  In what to you would be a moment's span.
+
+  Time to the dead so all unreckoned flies
+  That when your marble is all dust, arise,
+      If wakened, stretch your limbs and yawn --
+  You'll think you scarcely can have closed your eyes.
+
+  What though of all man's works your tomb alone
+  Should stand till Time himself be overthrown?
+      Would it advantage you to dwell therein
+  Forever as a stain upon a stone?
+
+Joel Huck
+
+
+WORSHIP, n.  Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and
+fine finish of Deus Creatus.  A popular form of abjection, having an
+element of pride.
+
+WRATH, n.  Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to
+exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, "the wrath of God,"
+"the day of wrath," etc.  Amongst the ancients the wrath of kings was
+deemed sacred, for it could usually command the agency of some god for
+its fit manifestation, as could also that of a priest.  The Greeks
+before Troy were so harried by Apollo that they jumped out of the
+frying-pan of the wrath of Cryses into the fire of the wrath of
+Achilles, though Agamemnon, the sole offender, was neither fried nor
+roasted.  A similar noted immunity was that of David when he incurred
+the wrath of Yahveh by numbering his people, seventy thousand of whom
+paid the penalty with their lives.  God is now Love, and a director of
+the census performs his work without apprehension of disaster.
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+
+X in our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility
+to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will
+doubtless last as long as the language.  X is the sacred symbol of ten
+dollars, and in such words as Xmas, Xn, etc., stands for Christ, not,
+as is popular supposed, because it represents a cross, but because the
+corresponding letter in the Greek alphabet is the initial of his name
+-- _Xristos_.  If it represented a cross it would stand for St.
+Andrew, who "testified" upon one of that shape.  In the algebra of
+psychology x stands for Woman's mind.  Words beginning with X are
+Grecian and will not be defined in this standard English dictionary.
+
+
+
+Y
+
+
+
+YANKEE, n.  In Europe, an American.  In the Northern States of our
+Union, a New Englander.  In the Southern States the word is unknown.
+(See DAMNYANK.)
+
+YEAR, n.  A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
+
+YESTERDAY, n.  The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire
+past of age.
+  But yesterday I should have thought me blest
+      To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak
+      Of middle life and look adown the bleak
+  And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,
+  Where solemn shadows all the land invest
+      And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak
+      Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak
+  The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest.
+  Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame
+      To stay the shadow on the dial's face
+  At manhood's noonmark!  Now, in God His name
+      I chide aloud the little interspace
+  Disparting me from Certitude, and fain
+  Would know the dream and vision ne'er again.
+
+Baruch Arnegriff
+
+
+  It is said that in his last illness the poet Arnegriff was
+attended at different times by seven doctors.
+
+YOKE, n.  An implement, madam, to whose Latin name, _jugum_, we owe
+one of the most illuminating words in our language -- a word that
+defines the matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy.
+A thousand apologies for withholding it.
+
+YOUTH, n.  The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum,
+Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of
+endowing a living Homer.
+
+      Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth
+  again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with
+  whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and
+  cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice never
+  is heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and,
+  howling, is cast into Baltimost!
+
+Polydore Smith
+
+
+
+
+Z
+
+
+
+ZANY, n.  A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with
+ludicrous incompetence the _buffone_, or clown, and was therefore the
+ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters
+of the play.  The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as
+we to-day have the unhappiness to know him.  In the zany we see an
+example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission.  Another
+excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the
+rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the
+devil.
+
+ZANZIBARI, n.  An inhabitant of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, off the
+eastern coast of Africa.  The Zanzibaris, a warlike people, are best
+known in this country through a threatening diplomatic incident that
+occurred a few years ago.  The American consul at the capital occupied
+a dwelling that faced the sea, with a sandy beach between.  Greatly to
+the scandal of this official's family, and against repeated
+remonstrances of the official himself, the people of the city
+persisted in using the beach for bathing.  One day a woman came down
+to the edge of the water and was stooping to remove her attire (a pair
+of sandals) when the consul, incensed beyond restraint, fired a charge
+of bird-shot into the most conspicuous part of her person.
+Unfortunately for the existing _entente cordiale_ between two great
+nations, she was the Sultana.
+
+ZEAL, n.  A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and
+inexperienced.  A passion that goeth before a sprawl.
+
+  When Zeal sought Gratitude for his reward
+  He went away exclaiming:  "O my Lord!"
+  "What do you want?" the Lord asked, bending down.
+  "An ointment for my cracked and bleeding crown."
+
+Jum Coople
+
+
+ZENITH, n.  The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man
+standing or a growing cabbage.  A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot
+is not considered as having a zenith, though from this view of the
+matter there was once a considerably dissent among the learned, some
+holding that the posture of the body was immaterial.  These were
+called Horizontalists, their opponents, Verticalists.  The
+Horizontalist heresy was finally extinguished by Xanobus, the
+philosopher-king of Abara, a zealous Verticalist.  Entering an
+assembly of philosophers who were debating the matter, he cast a
+severed human head at the feet of his opponents and asked them to
+determine its zenith, explaining that its body was hanging by the
+heels outside.  Observing that it was the head of their leader, the
+Horizontalists hastened to profess themselves converted to whatever
+opinion the Crown might be pleased to hold, and Horizontalism took its
+place among _fides defuncti_.
+
+ZEUS, n.  The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter
+and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog.  Some explorers
+who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to
+have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought
+that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his
+monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives
+are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he
+worships under many sacred names.
+
+ZIGZAG, v.t.  To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one
+carrying the white man's burden.  (From _zed_, _z_, and _jag_, an
+Icelandic word of unknown meaning.)
+
+  He zedjagged so uncomen wyde
+  Thet non coude pas on eyder syde;
+  So, to com saufly thruh, I been
+  Constreynet for to doodge betwene.
+
+Munwele
+
+
+ZOOLOGY, n.  The science and history of the animal kingdom, including
+its king, the House Fly (_Musca maledicta_).  The father of Zoology
+was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother
+has not come down to us.  Two of the science's most illustrious
+expounders were Buffon and Oliver Goldsmith, from both of whom we
+learn (_L'Histoire generale des animaux_ and _A History of Animated
+Nature_) that the domestic cow sheds its horn every two years.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Devil's Dictionary by Bierce
+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Devil’s Dictionary
+
+Author: Ambrose Bierce
+
+Release Date: July, 1997 [eBook #972]
+[Most recently updated: June 27, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Aloysius and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY ***
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY
+
+by Ambrose Bierce
+
+
+
+
+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 [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself.
+Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and
+the hope of Hell.
+
+ABORIGINIES, n.  Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a
+newly discovered country.  They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
+
+ABRACADABRA.
+
+  By _Abracadabra_ we signify
+      An infinite number of things.
+  'Tis the answer to What? and How? and Why?
+  And Whence? and Whither?--a word whereby
+      The Truth (with the comfort it brings)
+  Is open to all who grope in night,
+  Crying for Wisdom's holy light.
+
+  Whether the word is a verb or a noun
+      Is knowledge beyond my reach.
+  I only know that 'tis handed down.
+          From sage to sage,
+          From age to age--
+      An immortal part of speech!
+
+  Of an ancient man the tale is told
+  That he lived to be ten centuries old,
+      In a cave on a mountain side.
+      (True, he finally died.)
+  The fame of his wisdom filled the land,
+  For his head was bald, and you'll understand
+      His beard was long and white
+      And his eyes uncommonly bright.
+
+  Philosophers gathered from far and near
+  To sit at his feet and hear and hear,
+          Though he never was heard
+          To utter a word
+      But "_Abracadabra, abracadab_,
+          _Abracada, abracad_,
+      _Abraca, abrac, abra, ab!_"
+          'Twas all he had,
+  'Twas all they wanted to hear, and each
+  Made copious notes of the mystical speech,
+          Which they published next--
+          A trickle of text
+  In a meadow of commentary.
+      Mighty big books were these,
+      In number, as leaves of trees;
+  In learning, remarkable--very!
+
+          He's dead,
+          As I said,
+  And the books of the sages have perished,
+  But his wisdom is sacredly cherished.
+  In _Abracadabra_ it solemnly rings,
+  Like an ancient bell that forever swings.
+          O, I love to hear
+          That word make clear
+  Humanity's General Sense of Things.
+
+Jamrach Holobom
+
+
+ABRIDGE, v.t.  To shorten.
+
+      When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for
+  people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of
+  mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
+  them to the separation.
+
+Oliver Cromwell
+
+
+ABRUPT, adj.  Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon-
+shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most
+affected by it.  Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another
+author's ideas that they were "concatenated without abruption."
+
+ABSCOND, v.i.  To "move in a mysterious way," commonly with the
+property of another.
+
+  Spring beckons!  All things to the call respond;
+  The trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
+
+Phela Orm
+
+
+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 contended.
+          Now man is tormented
+  Until to buy babes he has squandered
+  His money.  And so I have pondered
+          This thing, and thought may be
+          'T were better that Baby
+  The First had been eagled or condored.
+
+Ro Amil
+
+
+BACCHUS, n.  A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse
+for getting drunk.
+
+  Is public worship, then, a sin,
+      That for devotions paid to Bacchus
+  The lictors dare to run us in,
+      And resolutely thump and whack us?
+
+Jorace
+
+
+BACK, n.  That part of your friend which it is your privilege to
+contemplate in your adversity.
+
+BACKBITE, v.t.  To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find
+you.
+
+BAIT, n.  A preparation that renders the hook more palatable.  The
+best kind is beauty.
+
+BAPTISM, n.  A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself
+in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever.  It is
+performed with water in two ways--by immersion, or plunging, and by
+aspersion, or sprinkling.
+
+  But whether the plan of immersion
+  Is better than simple aspersion
+      Let those immersed
+      And those aspersed
+  Decide by the Authorized Version,
+  And by matching their agues tertian.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+BAROMETER, n.  An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of
+weather we are having.
+
+BARRACK, n.  A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of
+which it is their business to deprive others.
+
+BASILISK, n.  The cockatrice.  A sort of serpent hatched from the egg
+of a cock.  The basilisk had a bad eye, and its glance was fatal.
+Many infidels deny this creature's existence, but Semprello Aurator
+saw and handled one that had been blinded by lightning as a punishment
+for having fatally gazed on a lady of rank whom Jupiter loved.  Juno
+afterward restored the reptile's sight and hid it in a cave.  Nothing
+is so well attested by the ancients as the existence of the basilisk,
+but the cocks have stopped laying.
+
+BASTINADO, n.  The act of walking on wood without exertion.
+
+BATH, n.  A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship,
+with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.
+
+  The man who taketh a steam bath
+  He loseth all the skin he hath,
+  And, for he's boiled a brilliant red,
+  Thinketh to cleanliness he's wed,
+  Forgetting that his lungs he's soiling
+  With dirty vapors of the boiling.
+
+Richard Gwow
+
+
+BATTLE, n.  A method of untying with the teeth of a political knot
+that would not yield to the tongue.
+
+BEARD, n.  The hair that is commonly cut off by those who justly
+execrate the absurd Chinese custom of shaving the head.
+
+BEAUTY, n.  The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a
+husband.
+
+BEFRIEND, v.t.  To make an ingrate.
+
+BEG, v.  To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the
+belief that it will not be given.
+
+  Who is that, father?
+                        A mendicant, child,
+  Haggard, morose, and unaffable--wild!
+  See how he glares through the bars of his cell!
+  With Citizen Mendicant all is not well.
+
+  Why did they put him there, father?
+
+                                       Because
+  Obeying his belly he struck at the laws.
+
+  His belly?
+
+              Oh, well, he was starving, my boy--
+  A state in which, doubtless, there's little of joy.
+  No bite had he eaten for days, and his cry
+  Was "Bread!" ever "Bread!"
+
+                              What's the matter with pie?
+
+  With little to wear, he had nothing to sell;
+  To beg was unlawful--improper as well.
+
+  Why didn't he work?
+
+                       He would even have done that,
+  But men said:  "Get out!" and the State remarked:  "Scat!"
+  I mention these incidents merely to show
+  That the vengeance he took was uncommonly low.
+  Revenge, at the best, is the act of a Siou,
+  But for trifles--
+
+                      Pray what did bad Mendicant do?
+
+  Stole two loaves of bread to replenish his lack
+  And tuck out the belly that clung to his back.
+
+  Is that _all_ father dear?
+
+                              There's little to tell:
+  They sent him to jail, and they'll send him to--well,
+  The company's better than here we can boast,
+  And there's--
+
+                  Bread for the needy, dear father?
+
+                                                     Um--toast.
+
+Atka Mip
+
+
+BEGGAR, n.  One who has relied on the assistance of his friends.
+
+BEHAVIOR, n.  Conduct, as determined, not by principle, but by
+breeding.  The word seems to be somewhat loosely used in Dr. Jamrach
+Holobom's translation of the following lines from the _Dies Irae_:
+
+      Recordare, Jesu pie,
+      Quod sum causa tuae viae.
+      Ne me perdas illa die.
+
+  Pray remember, sacred Savior,
+  Whose the thoughtless hand that gave your
+  Death-blow.  Pardon such behavior.
+
+BELLADONNA, n.  In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly
+poison.  A striking example of the essential identity of the two
+tongues.
+
+BENEDICTINES, n.  An order of monks otherwise known as black friars.
+
+  She thought it a crow, but it turn out to be
+      A monk of St. Benedict croaking a text.
+  "Here's one of an order of cooks," said she--
+      "Black friars in this world, fried black in the next."
+
+"The Devil on Earth" (London, 1712)
+
+
+BENEFACTOR, n.  One who makes heavy purchases of ingratitude, without,
+however, materially affecting the price, which is still within the
+means of all.
+
+BERENICE'S HAIR, n.  A constellation (_Coma Berenices_) named in honor
+of one who sacrificed her hair to save her husband.
+
+  Her locks an ancient lady gave
+  Her loving husband's life to save;
+  And men--they honored so the dame--
+  Upon some stars bestowed her name.
+
+  But to our modern married fair,
+  Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
+  No stellar recognition's given.
+  There are not stars enough in heaven.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+BIGAMY, n.  A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will
+adjudge a punishment called trigamy.
+
+BIGOT, n.  One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion
+that you do not entertain.
+
+BILLINGSGATE, n.  The invective of an opponent.
+
+BIRTH, n.  The first and direst of all disasters.  As to the nature of
+it there appears to be no uniformity.  Castor and Pollux were born
+from the egg.  Pallas came out of a skull.  Galatea was once a block
+of stone.  Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he
+grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water.  It
+is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a
+stroke of lightning.  Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount
+Aetna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar.
+
+BLACKGUARD, n.  A man whose qualities, prepared for display like a box
+of berries in a market--the fine ones on top--have been opened on
+the wrong side.  An inverted gentleman.
+
+BLANK-VERSE, n.  Unrhymed iambic pentameters--the most difficult
+kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much
+affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.
+
+BODY-SNATCHER, n.  A robber of grave-worms.  One who supplies the
+young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied
+the undertaker.  The hyena.
+
+  "One night," a doctor said, "last fall,
+  I and my comrades, four in all,
+      When visiting a graveyard stood
+  Within the shadow of a wall.
+
+  "While waiting for the moon to sink
+  We saw a wild hyena slink
+      About a new-made grave, and then
+  Begin to excavate its brink!
+
+  "Shocked by the horrid act, we made
+  A sally from our ambuscade,
+      And, falling on the unholy beast,
+  Dispatched him with a pick and spade."
+
+Bettel K. Jhones
+
+
+BONDSMAN, n.  A fool who, having property of his own, undertakes to
+become responsible for that entrusted to another to a third.
+
+Philippe of Orleans wishing to appoint one of his favorites, a
+dissolute nobleman, to a high office, asked him what security he would
+be able to give.  "I need no bondsmen," he replied, "for I can give
+you my word of honor."  "And pray what may be the value of that?"
+inquired the amused Regent.  "Monsieur, it is worth its weight in gold."
+
+BORE, n.  A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
+
+BOTANY, n.  The science of vegetables--those that are not good to
+eat, as well as those that are.  It deals largely with their flowers,
+which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and
+ill-smelling.
+
+BOTTLE-NOSED, adj.  Having a nose created in the image of its maker.
+
+BOUNDARY, n.  In political geography, an imaginary line between two
+nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary
+rights of the other.
+
+BOUNTY, n.  The liberality of one who has much, in permitting one who
+has nothing to get all that he can.
+
+      A single swallow, it is said, devours ten millions of insects
+  every year.  The supplying of these insects I take to be a signal
+  instance of the Creator's bounty in providing for the lives of His
+  creatures.
+
+Henry Ward Beecher
+
+
+BRAHMA, n.  He who created the Hindoos, who are preserved by Vishnu
+and destroyed by Siva--a rather neater division of labor than is
+found among the deities of some other nations.  The Abracadabranese,
+for example, are created by Sin, maintained by Theft and destroyed by
+Folly.  The priests of Brahma, like those of Abracadabranese, are holy
+and learned men who are never naughty.
+
+  O Brahma, thou rare old Divinity,
+  First Person of the Hindoo Trinity,
+  You sit there so calm and securely,
+  With feet folded up so demurely--
+  You're the First Person Singular, surely.
+
+Polydore Smith
+
+
+BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think what we think.  That which
+distinguishes the man who is content to _be_ something from the man
+who wishes to _do_ something.  A man of great wealth, or one who has
+been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of
+brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on.  In our
+civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so
+highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of
+office.
+
+BRANDY, n.  A cordial composed of one part thunder-and-lightning, one
+part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the
+grave and four parts clarified Satan.  Dose, a headful all the time.
+Brandy is said by Dr. Johnson to be the drink of heroes.  Only a hero
+will venture to drink it.
+
+BRIDE, n.  A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
+
+BRUTE, n.  See HUSBAND.
+
+
+
+
+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 pouted on his lips to revive him.  "Pauillac, 1873," he
+murmured and died.
+
+CONSERVATIVE, n.  A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as
+distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with
+others.
+
+CONSOLATION, n.  The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate
+than yourself.
+
+CONSUL, n.  In American politics, a person who having failed to secure
+an office from the people is given one by the Administration on
+condition that he leave the country.
+
+CONSULT, v.i.  To seek another's disapproval of a course already
+decided on.
+
+CONTEMPT, n.  The feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too
+formidable safely to be opposed.
+
+CONTROVERSY, n.  A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the
+injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.
+
+  In controversy with the facile tongue--
+  That bloodless warfare of the old and young--
+  So seek your adversary to engage
+  That on himself he shall exhaust his rage,
+  And, like a snake that's fastened to the ground,
+  With his own fangs inflict the fatal wound.
+  You ask me how this miracle is done?
+  Adopt his own opinions, one by one,
+  And taunt him to refute them; in his wrath
+  He'll sweep them pitilessly from his path.
+  Advance then gently all you wish to prove,
+  Each proposition prefaced with, "As you've
+  So well remarked," or, "As you wisely say,
+  And I cannot dispute," or, "By the way,
+  This view of it which, better far expressed,
+  Runs through your argument."  Then leave the rest
+  To him, secure that he'll perform his trust
+  And prove your views intelligent and just.
+
+Conmore Apel Brune
+
+
+CONVENT, n.  A place of retirement for woman who wish for leisure to
+meditate upon the vice of idleness.
+
+CONVERSATION, n.  A fair for the display of the minor mental
+commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of
+his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
+
+CORONATION, n.  The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward
+and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a
+dynamite bomb.
+
+CORPORAL, n.  A man who occupies the lowest rung of the military
+ladder.
+
+  Fiercely the battle raged and, sad to tell,
+  Our corporal heroically fell!
+  Fame from her height looked down upon the brawl
+  And said:  "He hadn't very far to fall."
+
+Giacomo Smith
+
+
+CORPORATION, n.  An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit
+without individual responsibility.
+
+CORSAIR, n.  A politician of the seas.
+
+COURT FOOL, n.  The plaintiff.
+
+COWARD, n.  One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
+
+CRAYFISH, n.  A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but
+less indigestible.
+
+      In this small fish I take it that human wisdom is admirably
+  figured and symbolized; for whereas the crayfish doth move only
+  backward, and can have only retrospection, seeing naught but the
+  perils already passed, so the wisdom of man doth not enable him to
+  avoid the follies that beset his course, but only to apprehend
+  their nature afterward.
+
+Sir James Merivale
+
+
+CREDITOR, n.  One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial
+Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.
+
+CREMONA, n.  A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.
+
+CRITIC, n.  A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody
+tries to please him.
+
+  There is a land of pure delight,
+      Beyond the Jordan's flood,
+  Where saints, apparelled all in white,
+      Fling back the critic's mud.
+
+  And as he legs it through the skies,
+      His pelt a sable hue,
+  He sorrows sore to recognize
+      The missiles that he threw.
+
+Orrin Goof
+
+
+CROSS, n.  An ancient religious symbol erroneously supposed to owe its
+significance to the most solemn event in the history of Christianity,
+but really antedating it by thousands of years.  By many it has been
+believed to be identical with the _crux ansata_ of the ancient phallic
+worship, but it has been traced even beyond all that we know of that,
+to the rites of primitive peoples.  We have to-day the White Cross as
+a symbol of chastity, and the Red Cross as a badge of benevolent
+neutrality in war.  Having in mind the former, the reverend Father
+Gassalasca Jape smites the lyre to the effect following:
+
+  "Be good, be good!" the sisterhood
+      Cry out in holy chorus,
+  And, to dissuade from sin, parade
+      Their various charms before us.
+
+  But why, O why, has ne'er an eye
+      Seen her of winsome manner
+  And youthful grace and pretty face
+      Flaunting the White Cross banner?
+
+  Now where's the need of speech and screed
+      To better our behaving?
+  A simpler plan for saving man
+      (But, first, is he worth saving?)
+
+  Is, dears, when he declines to flee
+      From bad thoughts that beset him,
+  Ignores the Law as 't were a straw,
+      And wants to sin--don't let him.
+
+CUI BONO?  [Latin]  What good would that do _me_?
+
+CUNNING, n.  The faculty that distinguishes a weak animal or person
+from a strong one.  It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction
+and great material adversity.  An Italian proverb says:  "The furrier
+gets the skins of more foxes than asses."
+
+CUPID, n.  The so-called god of love.  This bastard creation of a
+barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of
+its deities.  Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is
+the most reasonless and offensive.  The notion of symbolizing sexual
+love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the
+wounds of an arrow--of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art
+grossly to materialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work--
+this is eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on
+the doorstep of prosperity.
+
+CURIOSITY, n.  An objectionable quality of the female mind.  The
+desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one
+of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
+
+CURSE, v.t.  Energetically to belabor with a verbal slap-stick.  This
+is an operation which in literature, particularly in the drama, is
+commonly fatal to the victim.  Nevertheless, the liability to a
+cursing is a risk that cuts but a small figure in fixing the rates of
+life insurance.
+
+CYNIC, n.  A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are,
+not as they ought to be.  Hence the custom among the Scythians of
+plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
+
+
+
+
+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 you
+master stay our benefactor's soul in Purgatory?"  "Ay," said the
+officer, coldly, "an ye will not pray him thence for naught he must
+e'en roast."  "But look you, my son," persisted the good man, "this
+act hath rank as robbery of God!"  "Nay, nay, good father, my master
+the king doth but deliver him from the manifold temptations of too
+great wealth."
+
+FREEBOOTER, n.  A conqueror in a small way of business, whose
+annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
+
+FREEDOM, n.  Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half
+dozen of restraint's infinite multitude of methods.  A political
+condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual
+monopoly.  Liberty.  The distinction between freedom and liberty is
+not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a
+living specimen of either.
+
+  Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,
+      Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
+  On every wind, indeed, that blows
+          I hear her yell.
+
+  She screams whenever monarchs meet,
+      And parliaments as well,
+  To bind the chains about her feet
+          And toll her knell.
+
+  And when the sovereign people cast
+      The votes they cannot spell,
+  Upon the pestilential blast
+          Her clamors swell.
+
+  For all to whom the power's given
+      To sway or to compel,
+  Among themselves apportion Heaven
+          And give her Hell.
+
+Blary O'Gary
+
+
+FREEMASONS, n.  An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and
+fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II,
+among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the
+dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces
+all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming
+up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of
+Chaos and Formless Void.  The order was founded at different times by
+Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious,
+Thothmes, and Buddha.  Its emblems and symbols have been found in the
+Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the
+Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the
+Egyptian Pyramids--always by a Freemason.
+
+FRIENDLESS, adj.  Having no favors to bestow.  Destitute of fortune.
+Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.
+
+FRIENDSHIP, n.  A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but
+only one in foul.
+
+  The sea was calm and the sky was blue;
+  Merrily, merrily sailed we two.
+      (High barometer maketh glad.)
+  On the tipsy ship, with a dreadful shout,
+  The tempest descended and we fell out.
+      (O the walking is nasty bad!)
+
+Armit Huff Bettle
+
+
+FROG, n.  A reptile with edible legs.  The first mention of frogs in
+profane literature is in Homer's narrative of the war between them and
+the mice.  Skeptical persons have doubted Homer's authorship of the
+work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr. Schliemann has
+set the question forever at rest by uncovering the bones of the slain
+frogs.  One of the forms of moral suasion by which Pharaoh was
+besought to favor the Israelities was a plague of frogs, but Pharaoh,
+who liked them _fricasees_, remarked, with truly oriental stoicism,
+that he could stand it as long as the frogs and the Jews could; so the
+programme was changed.  The frog is a diligent songster, having a good
+voice but no ear.  The libretto of his favorite opera, as written by
+Aristophanes, is brief, simple and effective--"brekekex-koax"; the
+music is apparently by that eminent composer, Richard Wagner.  Horses
+have a frog in each hoof--a thoughtful provision of nature, enabling
+them to shine in a hurdle race.
+
+FRYING-PAN, n.  One part of the penal apparatus employed in that
+punitive institution, a woman's kitchen.  The frying-pan was invented
+by Calvin, and by him used in cooking span-long infants that had died
+without baptism; and observing one day the horrible torment of a tramp
+who had incautiously pulled a fried babe from the waste-dump and
+devoured it, it occurred to the great divine to rob death of its
+terrors by introducing the frying-pan into every household in Geneva.
+Thence it spread to all corners of the world, and has been of
+invaluable assistance in the propagation of his sombre faith.  The
+following lines (said to be from the pen of his Grace Bishop Potter)
+seem to imply that the usefulness of this utensil is not limited to
+this world; but as the consequences of its employment in this life
+reach over into the life to come, so also itself may be found on the
+other side, rewarding its devotees:
+
+  Old Nick was summoned to the skies.
+      Said Peter:  "Your intentions
+  Are good, but you lack enterprise
+      Concerning new inventions.
+
+  "Now, broiling is an ancient plan
+      Of torment, but I hear it
+  Reported that the frying-pan
+      Sears best the wicked spirit.
+
+  "Go get one--fill it up with fat--
+      Fry sinners brown and good in't."
+  "I know a trick worth two o' that,"
+      Said Nick--"I'll cook their food in't."
+
+FUNERAL, n.  A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by
+enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure
+that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.
+
+  The savage dies--they sacrifice a horse
+  To bear to happy hunting-grounds the corse.
+  Our friends expire--we make the money fly
+  In hope their souls will chase it to the sky.
+
+Jex Wopley
+
+
+FUTURE, n.  That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our
+friends are true and our happiness is assured.
+
+
+
+
+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 [sic] that's going."
+
+  "Too true," I said; "alas, too true--
+      No sound his sense can quicken!"
+  "Well, mister, wot is that to you?--
+      The deadster ain't a-kickin'."
+
+  I knelt and prayed:  "O Father, smile
+      On him, and mercy show him!"
+  That countryman looked on the while,
+      And said:  "Ye didn't know him."
+
+Pobeter Dunko
+
+
+GRAVITATION, n.  The tendency of all bodies to approach one another
+with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain--
+the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength
+of their tendency to approach one another.  This is a lovely and
+edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B,
+makes B the proof of A.
+
+GREAT, adj.
+
+  "I'm great," the Lion said--"I reign
+  The monarch of the wood and plain!"
+
+  The Elephant replied:  "I'm great--
+  No quadruped can match my weight!"
+
+  "I'm great--no animal has half
+  So long a neck!" said the Giraffe.
+
+  "I'm great," the Kangaroo said--"see
+  My femoral muscularity!"
+
+  The 'Possum said:  "I'm great--behold,
+  My tail is lithe and bald and cold!"
+
+  An Oyster fried was understood
+  To say:  "I'm great because I'm good!"
+
+  Each reckons greatness to consist
+  In that in which he heads the list,
+
+  And Vierick thinks he tops his class
+  Because he is the greatest ass.
+
+Arion Spurl Doke
+
+
+GUILLOTINE, n.  A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders
+with good reason.
+
+In his great work on _Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution_, the
+learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture
+--the shrug--among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles
+and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracting the head inside
+the shell.  It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an
+authority, but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth and
+enforced in my work entitled _Hereditary Emotions_--lib. II, c. XI)
+the shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important a
+theory, for previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown.  I
+have not a doubt that it is directly referable to the terror inspired
+by the guillotine during the period of that instrument's activity.
+
+GUNPOWDER, n.  An agency employed by civilized nations for the
+settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left
+unadjusted.  By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to
+the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence.  Milton says it
+was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion
+seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels.  Moreover,
+it has the hearty concurrence of the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of
+Agriculture.
+
+Secretary Wilson became interested in gunpowder through an event
+that occurred on the Government experimental farm in the District of
+Columbia.  One day, several years ago, a rogue imperfectly reverent of
+the Secretary's profound attainments and personal character presented
+him with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the seed of the
+_Flashawful flabbergastor_, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial
+value, admirably adapted to this climate.  The good Secretary was
+instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with
+soil.  This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line
+of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look
+backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a
+lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point.  Contact with the
+earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary
+saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke and
+fierce evolution.  He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless,
+then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himself
+thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators
+along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak
+prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages,
+and audibly refusing to be comforted.  "Great Scott! what is that?"
+cried a surveyor's chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fading
+line of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon.  "That,"
+said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again
+centering his attention upon his instrument, "is the Meridian of
+Washington."
+
+
+
+
+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 stores are exposed
+to the fury of the customs.
+
+HARMONISTS, n.  A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from
+Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for
+the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.
+
+HASH, x.  There is no definition for this word--nobody knows what
+hash is.
+
+HATCHET, n.  A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.
+
+  "O bury the hatchet, irascible Red,
+  For peace is a blessing," the White Man said.
+      The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred,
+  With imposing rites, in the White Man's head.
+
+John Lukkus
+
+
+HATRED, n.  A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
+superiority.
+
+HEAD-MONEY, n.  A capitation tax, or poll-tax.
+
+  In ancient times there lived a king
+  Whose tax-collectors could not wring
+  From all his subjects gold enough
+  To make the royal way less rough.
+  For pleasure's highway, like the dames
+  Whose premises adjoin it, claims
+  Perpetual repairing.  So
+  The tax-collectors in a row
+  Appeared before the throne to pray
+  Their master to devise some way
+  To swell the revenue.  "So great,"
+  Said they, "are the demands of state
+  A tithe of all that we collect
+  Will scarcely meet them.  Pray reflect:
+  How, if one-tenth we must resign,
+  Can we exist on t'other nine?"
+  The monarch asked them in reply:
+  "Has it occurred to you to try
+  The advantage of economy?"
+  "It has," the spokesman said:  "we sold
+  All of our gray garrotes of gold;
+  With plated-ware we now compress
+  The necks of those whom we assess.
+  Plain iron forceps we employ
+  To mitigate the miser's joy
+  Who hoards, with greed that never tires,
+  That which your Majesty requires."
+  Deep lines of thought were seen to plow
+  Their way across the royal brow.
+  "Your state is desperate, no question;
+  Pray favor me with a suggestion."
+  "O King of Men," the spokesman said,
+  "If you'll impose upon each head
+  A tax, the augmented revenue
+  We'll cheerfully divide with you."
+  As flashes of the sun illume
+  The parted storm-cloud's sullen gloom,
+  The king smiled grimly.  "I decree
+  That it be so--and, not to be
+  In generosity outdone,
+  Declare you, each and every one,
+  Exempted from the operation
+  Of this new law of capitation.
+  But lest the people censure me
+  Because they're bound and you are free,
+  'Twere well some clever scheme were laid
+  By you this poll-tax to evade.
+  I'll leave you now while you confer
+  With my most trusted minister."
+  The monarch from the throne-room walked
+  And straightway in among them stalked
+  A silent man, with brow concealed,
+  Bare-armed--his gleaming axe revealed!
+
+G.J.
+
+
+HEARSE, n.  Death's baby-carriage.
+
+HEART, n.  An automatic, muscular blood-pump.  Figuratively, this
+useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments--a
+very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once
+universal belief.  It is now known that the sentiments and emotions
+reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of
+the gastric fluid.  The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a
+feeling--tender or not, according to the age of the animal from
+which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a
+caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a
+pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a
+hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh
+of sensibility--these things have been patiently ascertained by M.
+Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity.  (See, also,
+my monograph, _The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and
+Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion_--4to, 687 pp.)  In a
+scientific work entitled, I believe, _Delectatio Demonorum_ (John
+Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a
+striking illustration; and for further light consult Professor Dam's
+famous treatise on _Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration_.
+
+HEAT, n.
+
+  Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode
+      Of motion, but I know now how he's proving
+  His point; but this I know--hot words bestowed
+      With skill will set the human fist a-moving,
+  And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
+  _Crede expertum_--I have seen them, child.
+
+Gorton Swope
+
+
+HEATHEN, n.  A benighted creature who has the folly to worship
+something that he can see and feel.  According to Professor Howison,
+of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.
+
+  "The Hebrews are heathens!" says Howison.  He's
+      A Christian philosopher.  I'm
+  A scurril agnostical chap, if you please,
+      Addicted too much to the crime
+      Of religious discussion in my rhyme.
+
+  Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree
+      On a _modus vivendi_--not they!--
+  Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,
+      And I haven't been reared in a way
+      To joy in the thick of the fray.
+
+  For this of my creed is the soul and the gist,
+      And the truth of it I aver:
+  Who differs from me in his faith is an 'ist,
+      And 'ite, an 'ie, or an 'er--
+      And I'm down upon him or her!
+
+  Let Howison urge with perfunctory chin
+      Toleration--that's all very well,
+  But a roast is "nuts" to his nostril thin,
+      And he's running--I know by the smell--
+      A secret and personal Hell!
+
+Bissell Gip
+
+
+HEAVEN, n.  A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with
+talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention
+while you expound your own.
+
+HEBREW, n.  A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an
+altogether superior creation.
+
+HELPMATE, n.  A wife, or bitter half.
+
+  "Now, why is yer wife called a helpmate, Pat?"
+      Says the priest.  "Since the time 'o yer wooin'
+  She's niver [sic] assisted in what ye were at--
+      For it's naught ye are ever doin'."
+
+  "That's true of yer Riverence [sic]," Patrick replies,
+      And no sign of contrition envices;
+  "But, bedad, it's a fact which the word implies,
+      For she helps to mate the expinses [sic]!"
+
+Marley Wottel
+
+
+HEMP, n.  A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of
+neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open
+air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.
+
+HERMIT, n.  A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.
+
+HERS, pron.  His.
+
+HIBERNATE, v.i.  To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion.
+There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of
+various animals.  Many believe that the bear hibernates during the
+whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking its paws.  It is
+admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so lean
+that it had to try twice before it can cast a shadow.  Three or four
+centuries ago, in England, no fact was better attested than that
+swallows passed the winter months in the mud at the bottom of their
+brooks, clinging together in globular masses.  They have apparently
+been compelled to give up the custom on account of the foulness of
+the brooks.  Sotus Ecobius discovered in Central Asia a whole nation
+of people who hibernate.  By some investigators, the fasting of Lent
+is supposed to have been originally a modified form of hibernation, to
+which the Church gave a religious significance; but this view was
+strenuously opposed by that eminent authority, Bishop Kip, who did not
+wish any honors denied to the memory of the Founder of his family.
+
+HIPPOGRIFF, n.  An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half
+griffin.  The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and
+half eagle.  The hippogriff was actually, therefore, a one-quarter
+eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold.  The study of
+zoology is full of surprises.
+
+HISTORIAN, n.  A broad-gauge gossip.
+
+HISTORY, n.  An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant,
+which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly
+fools.
+
+  Of Roman history, great Niebuhr's shown
+  'Tis nine-tenths lying.  Faith, I wish 'twere known,
+  Ere we accept great Niebuhr as a guide,
+  Wherein he blundered and how much he lied.
+
+Salder Bupp
+
+
+HOG, n.  A bird remarkable for the catholicity of its appetite and
+serving to illustrate that of ours.  Among the Mahometans and Jews,
+the hog is not in favor as an article of diet, but is respected for
+the delicacy and the melody of its voice.  It is chiefly as a songster
+that the fowl is esteemed; the cage of him in full chorus has been
+known to draw tears from two persons at once.  The scientific name of
+this dicky-bird is _Porcus Rockefelleri_.  Mr. Rockefeller did not
+discover the hog, but it is considered his by right of resemblance.
+
+HOMOEOPATHIST, n.  The humorist of the medical profession.
+
+HOMOEOPATHY, n.  A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and
+Christian Science.  To the last both the others are distinctly
+inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they
+can not.
+
+HOMICIDE, n.  The slaying of one human being by another.  There are
+four kinds of homocide:  felonious, excusable, justifiable, and
+praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain
+whether he fell by one kind or another--the classification is for
+advantage of the lawyers.
+
+HOMILETICS, n.  The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual
+needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.
+
+  So skilled the parson was in homiletics
+  That all his normal purges and emetics
+  To medicine the spirit were compounded
+  With a most just discrimination founded
+  Upon a rigorous examination
+  Of tongue and pulse and heart and respiration.
+  Then, having diagnosed each one's condition,
+  His scriptural specifics this physician
+  Administered--his pills so efficacious
+  And pukes of disposition so vivacious
+  That souls afflicted with ten kinds of Adam
+  Were convalescent ere they knew they had 'em.
+  But Slander's tongue--itself all coated--uttered
+  Her bilious mind and scandalously muttered
+  That in the case of patients having money
+  The pills were sugar and the pukes were honey.
+
+_Biography of Bishop Potter_
+
+
+HONORABLE, adj.  Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach.  In
+legislative bodies it is customary to mention all members as
+honorable; as, "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
+
+HOPE, n.  Desire and expectation rolled into one.
+
+  Delicious Hope! when naught to man is left--
+  Of fortune destitute, of friends bereft;
+  When even his dog deserts him, and his goat
+  With tranquil disaffection chews his coat
+  While yet it hangs upon his back; then thou,
+  The star far-flaming on thine angel brow,
+  Descendest, radiant, from the skies to hint
+  The promise of a clerkship in the Mint.
+
+Fogarty Weffing
+
+
+HOSPITALITY, n.  The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain
+persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
+
+HOSTILITY, n.  A peculiarly sharp and specially applied sense of the
+earth's overpopulation.  Hostility is classified as active and
+passive; as (respectively) the feeling of a woman for her female
+friends, and that which she entertains for all the rest of her sex.
+
+HOURI, n.  A comely female inhabiting the Mohammedan Paradise to make
+things cheery for the good Mussulman, whose belief in her existence
+marks a noble discontent with his earthly spouse, whom he denies a
+soul.  By that good lady the Houris are said to be held in deficient
+esteem.
+
+HOUSE, n.  A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat,
+mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus and microbe.
+_House of Correction_, a place of reward for political and personal
+service, and for the detention of offenders and appropriations.
+_House of God_, a building with a steeple and a mortgage on it.
+_House-dog_, a pestilent beast kept on domestic premises to insult
+persons passing by and appal the hardy visitor.  _House-maid_, a
+youngerly person of the opposing sex employed to be variously
+disagreeable and ingeniously unclean in the station in which it has
+pleased God to place her.
+
+HOUSELESS, adj.  Having paid all taxes on household goods.
+
+HOVEL, n.  The fruit of a flower called the Palace.
+
+      Twaddle had a hovel,
+          Twiddle had a palace;
+      Twaddle said:  "I'll grovel
+          Or he'll think I bear him malice"--
+  A sentiment as novel
+      As a castor on a chalice.
+
+      Down upon the middle
+          Of his legs fell Twaddle
+      And astonished Mr. Twiddle,
+          Who began to lift his noddle.
+      Feed upon the fiddle-
+          Faddle flummery, unswaddle
+  A new-born self-sufficiency and think himself a [mockery.]
+
+G.J.
+
+
+HUMANITY, n.  The human race, collectively, exclusive of the
+anthropoid poets.
+
+HUMORIST, n.  A plague that would have softened down the hoar
+austerity of Pharaoh's heart and persuaded him to dismiss Israel with
+his best wishes, cat-quick.
+
+  Lo! the poor humorist, whose tortured mind
+  See jokes in crowds, though still to gloom inclined--
+  Whose simple appetite, untaught to stray,
+  His brains, renewed by night, consumes by day.
+  He thinks, admitted to an equal sty,
+  A graceful hog would bear his company.
+
+Alexander Poke
+
+
+HURRICANE, n.  An atmospheric demonstration once very common but now
+generally abandoned for the tornado and cyclone.  The hurricane is
+still in popular use in the West Indies and is preferred by certain
+old-fashioned sea-captains.  It is also used in the construction of
+the upper decks of steamboats, but generally speaking, the hurricane's
+usefulness has outlasted it.
+
+HURRY, n.  The dispatch of bunglers.
+
+HUSBAND, n.  One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the
+plate.
+
+HYBRID, n.  A pooled issue.
+
+HYDRA, n.  A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many
+heads.
+
+HYENA, n.  A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its
+habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead.  But the
+medical student does that.
+
+HYPOCHONDRIASIS, n.  Depression of one's own spirits.
+
+  Some heaps of trash upon a vacant lot
+  Where long the village rubbish had been shot
+  Displayed a sign among the stuff and stumps--
+  "Hypochondriasis."  It meant The Dumps.
+
+Bogul S. Purvy
+
+
+HYPOCRITE, n.  One who, professing virtues that he does not respect
+secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+I is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language,
+the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection.  In
+grammar it is a pronoun of the first person and singular number.  Its
+plural is said to be _We_, but how there can be more than one myself
+is doubtless clearer to the grammarians than it is to the author of this
+incomparable dictionary.  Conception of two myselfs is difficult, but
+fine.  The frank yet graceful use of "I" distinguishes a good writer
+from a bad; the latter carries it with the manner of a thief trying to
+cloak his loot.
+
+ICHOR, n.  A fluid that serves the gods and goddesses in place of
+blood.
+
+  Fair Venus, speared by Diomed,
+  Restrained the raging chief and said:
+  "Behold, rash mortal, whom you've bled--
+  Your soul's stained white with ichorshed!"
+
+Mary Doke
+
+
+ICONOCLAST, n.  A breaker of idols, the worshipers whereof are
+imperfectly gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest
+that he unbuildeth but doth not reedify, that he pulleth down but
+pileth not up.  For the poor things would have other idols in place of
+those he thwacketh upon the mazzard and dispelleth.  But the
+iconoclast saith:  "Ye shall have none at all, for ye need them not;
+and if the rebuilder fooleth round hereabout, behold I will depress
+the head of him and sit thereon till he squawk it."
+
+IDIOT, n.  A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in
+human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.  The Idiot's
+activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action,
+but "pervades and regulates the whole."  He has the last word in
+everything; his decision is unappealable.  He sets the fashions and
+opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes
+conduct with a dead-line.
+
+IDLENESS, n.  A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of
+new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.
+
+IGNORAMUS, n.  A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge
+familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know
+nothing about.
+
+  Dumble was an ignoramus,
+  Mumble was for learning famous.
+  Mumble said one day to Dumble:
+  "Ignorance should be more humble.
+  Not a spark have you of knowledge
+  That was got in any college."
+  Dumble said to Mumble:  "Truly
+  You're self-satisfied unduly.
+  Of things in college I'm denied
+  A knowledge--you of all beside."
+
+Borelli
+
+
+ILLUMINATI, n.  A sect of Spanish heretics of the latter part of the
+sixteenth century; so called because they were light weights--
+_cunctationes illuminati_.
+
+ILLUSTRIOUS, adj.  Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and
+detraction.
+
+IMAGINATION, n.  A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint
+ownership.
+
+IMBECILITY, n.  A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting
+censorious critics of this dictionary.
+
+IMMIGRANT, n.  An unenlightened person who thinks one country better
+than another.
+
+IMMODEST, adj.  Having a strong sense of one's own merit, coupled with
+a feeble conception of worth in others.
+
+  There was once a man in Ispahan
+      Ever and ever so long ago,
+  And he had a head, the phrenologists said,
+      That fitted him for a show.
+
+  For his modesty's bump was so large a lump
+      (Nature, they said, had taken a freak)
+  That its summit stood far above the wood
+      Of his hair, like a mountain peak.
+
+  So modest a man in all Ispahan,
+      Over and over again they swore--
+  So humble and meek, you would vainly seek;
+      None ever was found before.
+
+  Meantime the hump of that awful bump
+      Into the heavens contrived to get
+  To so great a height that they called the wight
+      The man with the minaret.
+
+  There wasn't a man in all Ispahan
+      Prouder, or louder in praise of his chump:
+  With a tireless tongue and a brazen lung
+      He bragged of that beautiful bump
+
+  Till the Shah in a rage sent a trusty page
+      Bearing a sack and a bow-string too,
+  And that gentle child explained as he smiled:
+      "A little present for you."
+
+  The saddest man in all Ispahan,
+      Sniffed at the gift, yet accepted the same.
+  "If I'd lived," said he, "my humility
+      Had given me deathless fame!"
+
+Sukker Uffro
+
+
+IMMORAL, adj.  Inexpedient.  Whatever in the long run and with regard
+to the greater number of instances men find to be generally
+inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.  If man's
+notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of
+expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other
+way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from, and
+nowise dependent on, their consequences--then all philosophy is a
+lie and reason a disorder of the mind.
+
+IMMORTALITY, n.
+
+  A toy which people cry for,
+  And on their knees apply for,
+  Dispute, contend and lie for,
+      And if allowed
+      Would be right proud
+  Eternally to die for.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+IMPALE, v.t.  In popular usage to pierce with any weapon which remains
+fixed in the wound.  This, however, is inaccurate; to impale is,
+properly, to put to death by thrusting an upright sharp stake into the
+body, the victim being left in a sitting position.  This was a common
+mode of punishment among many of the nations of antiquity, and is
+still in high favor in China and other parts of Asia.  Down to the
+beginning of the fifteenth century it was widely employed in
+"churching" heretics and schismatics.  Wolecraft calls it the "stoole
+of repentynge," and among the common people it was jocularly known as
+"riding the one legged horse."  Ludwig Salzmann informs us that in
+Thibet impalement is considered the most appropriate punishment for
+crimes against religion; and although in China it is sometimes awarded
+for secular offences, it is most frequently adjudged in cases of
+sacrilege.  To the person in actual experience of impalement it must
+be a matter of minor importance by what kind of civil or religious
+dissent he was made acquainted with its discomforts; but doubtless he
+would feel a certain satisfaction if able to contemplate himself in
+the character of a weather-cock on the spire of the True Church.
+
+IMPARTIAL, adj.  Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage
+from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
+conflicting opinions.
+
+IMPENITENCE, n.  A state of mind intermediate in point of time between
+sin and punishment.
+
+IMPIETY, n.  Your irreverence toward my deity.
+
+IMPOSITION, n.  The act of blessing or consecrating by the laying on
+of hands--a ceremony common to many ecclesiastical systems, but
+performed with the frankest sincerity by the sect known as Thieves.
+
+  "Lo! by the laying on of hands,"
+      Say parson, priest and dervise,
+  "We consecrate your cash and lands
+      To ecclesiastical service.
+  No doubt you'll swear till all is blue
+  At such an imposition.  Do."
+
+Pollo Doncas
+
+
+IMPOSTOR n.  A rival aspirant to public honors.
+
+IMPROBABILITY, n.
+
+  His tale he told with a solemn face
+  And a tender, melancholy grace.
+      Improbable 'twas, no doubt,
+      When you came to think it out,
+      But the fascinated crowd
+      Their deep surprise avowed
+  And all with a single voice averred
+  'Twas the most amazing thing they'd heard--
+  All save one who spake never a word,
+      But sat as mum
+      As if deaf and dumb,
+  Serene, indifferent and unstirred.
+      Then all the others turned to him
+      And scrutinized him limb from limb--
+      Scanned him alive;
+      But he seemed to thrive
+      And tranquiler grow each minute,
+      As if there were nothing in it.
+  "What! what!" cried one, "are you not amazed
+  At what our friend has told?"  He raised
+  Soberly then his eyes and gazed
+      In a natural way
+      And proceeded to say,
+  As he crossed his feet on the mantel-shelf:
+  "O no--not at all; I'm a liar myself."
+
+IMPROVIDENCE, n.  Provision for the needs of to-day from the revenues
+of to-morrow.
+
+IMPUNITY, n.  Wealth.
+
+INADMISSIBLE, adj.  Not competent to be considered.  Said of certain
+kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be
+entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of
+proceedings before themselves alone.  Hearsay evidence is inadmissible
+because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for
+examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political,
+commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay
+evidence.  There is no religion in the world that has any other basis
+than hearsay evidence.  Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the
+Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long
+dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known
+to have been sworn in any sense.  Under the rules of evidence as they
+now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its
+support any evidence admissible in a court of law.  It cannot be
+proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was
+such as person as Julius Caesar, such an empire as Assyria.
+
+But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily
+be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were
+a scourge to mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which
+certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a
+flaw; it is still unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based on it
+were sound in logic and in law.  Nothing in any existing court was
+ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery
+for which so many suffered death.  If there were no witches, human
+testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
+
+INAUSPICIOUSLY, adv.  In an unpromising manner, the auspices being
+unfavorable.  Among the Romans it was customary before undertaking any
+important action or enterprise to obtain from the augurs, or state
+prophets, some hint of its probable outcome; and one of their favorite
+and most trustworthy modes of divination consisted in observing the
+flight of birds--the omens thence derived being called _auspices_.
+Newspaper reporters and certain miscreant lexicographers have decided
+that the word--always in the plural--shall mean "patronage" or
+"management"; as, "The festivities were under the auspices of the
+Ancient and Honorable Order of Body-Snatchers"; or, "The hilarities
+were auspicated by the Knights of Hunger."
+
+  A Roman slave appeared one day
+  Before the Augur.  "Tell me, pray,
+  If--" here the Augur, smiling, made
+  A checking gesture and displayed
+  His open palm, which plainly itched,
+  For visibly its surface twitched.
+  A _denarius_ (the Latin nickel)
+  Successfully allayed the tickle,
+  And then the slave proceeded:  "Please
+  Inform me whether Fate decrees
+  Success or failure in what I
+  To-night (if it be dark) shall try.
+  Its nature?  Never mind--I think
+  'Tis writ on this"--and with a wink
+  Which darkened half the earth, he drew
+  Another denarius to view,
+  Its shining face attentive scanned,
+  Then slipped it into the good man's hand,
+  Who with great gravity said:  "Wait
+  While I retire to question Fate."
+  That holy person then withdrew
+  His scared clay and, passing through
+  The temple's rearward gate, cried "Shoo!"
+  Waving his robe of office.  Straight
+  Each sacred peacock and its mate
+  (Maintained for Juno's favor) fled
+  With clamor from the trees o'erhead,
+  Where they were perching for the night.
+  The temple's roof received their flight,
+  For thither they would always go,
+  When danger threatened them below.
+  Back to the slave the Augur went:
+  "My son, forecasting the event
+  By flight of birds, I must confess
+  The auspices deny success."
+  That slave retired, a sadder man,
+  Abandoning his secret plan--
+  Which was (as well the craft seer
+  Had from the first divined) to clear
+  The wall and fraudulently seize
+  On Juno's poultry in the trees.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+INCOME, n.  The natural and rational gauge and measure of
+respectability, the commonly accepted standards being artificial,
+arbitrary and fallacious; for, as "Sir Sycophas Chrysolater" in the
+play has justly remarked, "the true use and function of property (in
+whatsoever it consisteth--coins, or land, or houses, or merchant-stuff,
+or anything which may be named as holden of right to one's own
+subservience) as also of honors, titles, preferments and place, and
+all favor and acquaintance of persons of quality or ableness, are but
+to get money.  Hence it followeth that all things are truly to be
+rated as of worth in measure of their serviceableness to that end; and
+their possessors should take rank in agreement thereto, neither the
+lord of an unproducing manor, howsoever broad and ancient, nor he who
+bears an unremunerate dignity, nor yet the pauper favorite of a king,
+being esteemed of level excellency with him whose riches are of daily
+accretion; and hardly should they whose wealth is barren claim and
+rightly take more honor than the poor and unworthy."
+
+INCOMPATIBILITY, n.  In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly
+the taste for domination.  Incompatibility may, however, consist of a
+meek-eyed matron living just around the corner.  It has even been
+known to wear a moustache.
+
+INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj.  Unable to exist if something else exists.  Two
+things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for
+one of them, but not enough for both--as Walt Whitman's poetry and
+God's mercy to man.  Incompossibility, it will be seen, is only
+incompatibility let loose.  Instead of such low language as "Go heel
+yourself--I mean to kill you on sight," the words, "Sir, we are
+incompossible," would convey an equally significant intimation and in
+stately courtesy are altogether superior.
+
+INCUBUS, n.  One of a race of highly improper demons who, though
+probably not wholly extinct, may be said to have seen their best
+nights.  For a complete account of _incubi_ and _succubi_, including
+_incubae_ and _succubae_, see the _Liber Demonorum_ of Protassus
+(Paris, 1328), which contains much curious information that would be
+out of place in a dictionary intended as a text-book for the public
+schools.
+
+Victor Hugo relates that in the Channel Islands Satan himself--
+tempted more than elsewhere by the beauty of the women, doubtless--
+sometimes plays at _incubus_, greatly to the inconvenience and alarm
+of the good dames who wish to be loyal to their marriage vows,
+generally speaking.  A certain lady applied to the parish priest to
+learn how they might, in the dark, distinguish the hardy intruder from
+their husbands.  The holy man said they must feel his brow for horns;
+but Hugo is ungallant enough to hint a doubt of the efficacy of the
+test.
+
+INCUMBENT, n.  A person of the liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
+
+INDECISION, n.  The chief element of success; "for whereas," saith Sir
+Thomas Brewbold, "there is but one way to do nothing and divers way to
+do something, whereof, to a surety, only one is the right way, it
+followeth that he who from indecision standeth still hath not so many
+chances of going astray as he who pusheth forwards"--a most clear
+and satisfactory exposition of the matter.
+
+"Your prompt decision to attack," said General Grant on a certain
+occasion to General Gordon Granger, "was admirable; you had but five
+minutes to make up your mind in."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the victorious subordinate, "it is a great
+thing to know exactly what to do in an emergency.  When in doubt
+whether to attack or retreat I never hesitate a moment--I toss up a
+copper."
+
+"Do you mean to say that's what you did this time?"
+
+"Yes, General; but for Heaven's sake don't reprimand me:  I
+disobeyed the coin."
+
+INDIFFERENT, adj.  Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.
+
+  "You tiresome man!" cried Indolentio's wife,
+  "You've grown indifferent to all in life."
+  "Indifferent?" he drawled with a slow smile;
+  "I would be, dear, but it is not worth while."
+
+Apuleius M. Gokul
+
+
+INDIGESTION, n.  A disease which the patient and his friends
+frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the
+salvation of mankind.  As the simple Red Man of the western wild put
+it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force:  "Plenty well, no
+pray; big bellyache, heap God."
+
+INDISCRETION, n.  The guilt of woman.
+
+INEXPEDIENT, adj.  Not calculated to advance one's interests.
+
+INFANCY, n.  The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth,
+"Heaven lies about us."  The world begins lying about us pretty soon
+afterward.
+
+INFERIAE, n.  [Latin]  Among the Greeks and Romans, sacrifices for
+propitiation of the _Dii Manes_, or souls of the dead heroes; for the
+pious ancients could not invent enough gods to satisfy their spiritual
+needs, and had to have a number of makeshift deities, or, as a sailor
+might say, jury-gods, which they made out of the most unpromising
+materials.  It was while sacrificing a bullock to the spirit of
+Agamemnon that Laiaides, a priest of Aulis, was favored with an
+audience of that illustrious warrior's shade, who prophetically
+recounted to him the birth of Christ and the triumph of Christianity,
+giving him also a rapid but tolerably complete review of events down
+to the reign of Saint Louis.  The narrative ended abruptly at that
+point, owing to the inconsiderate crowing of a cock, which compelled
+the ghosted King of Men to scamper back to Hades.  There is a fine
+mediaeval flavor to this story, and as it has not been traced back
+further than Pere Brateille, a pious but obscure writer at the court
+of Saint Louis, we shall probably not err on the side of presumption
+in considering it apocryphal, though Monsignor Capel's judgment of the
+matter might be different; and to that I bow--wow.
+
+INFIDEL, n.  In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian
+religion; in Constantinople, one who does.  (See GIAOUR.)  A kind of
+scoundrel imperfectly reverent of, and niggardly contributory to,
+divines, ecclesiastics, popes, parsons, canons, monks, mollahs,
+voodoos, presbyters, hierophants, prelates, obeah-men, abbes, nuns,
+missionaries, exhorters, deacons, friars, hadjis, high-priests,
+muezzins, brahmins, medicine-men, confessors, eminences, elders,
+primates, prebendaries, pilgrims, prophets, imaums, beneficiaries,
+clerks, vicars-choral, archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors,
+preachers, padres, abbotesses, caloyers, palmers, curates, patriarchs,
+bonezs, santons, beadsmen, canonesses, residentiaries, diocesans,
+deans, subdeans, rural deans, abdals, charm-sellers, archdeacons,
+hierarchs, class-leaders, incumbents, capitulars, sheiks, talapoins,
+postulants, scribes, gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers, sextons,
+reverences, revivalists, cenobites, perpetual curates, chaplains,
+mudjoes, readers, novices, vicars, pastors, rabbis, ulemas, lamas,
+sacristans, vergers, dervises, lectors, church wardens, cardinals,
+prioresses, suffragans, acolytes, rectors, cures, sophis, mutifs and
+pumpums.
+
+INFLUENCE, n.  In politics, a visionary _quo_ given in exchange for a
+substantial _quid_.
+
+INFRALAPSARIAN, n.  One who ventures to believe that Adam need not have
+sinned unless he had a mind to--in opposition to the Supralapsarians,
+who hold that that luckless person's fall was decreed from the
+beginning.  Infralapsarians are sometimes called Sublapsarians without
+material effect upon the importance and lucidity of their views about
+Adam.
+
+  Two theologues once, as they wended their way
+  To chapel, engaged in colloquial fray--
+  An earnest logomachy, bitter as gall,
+  Concerning poor Adam and what made him fall.
+  "'Twas Predestination," cried one--"for the Lord
+  Decreed he should fall of his own accord."
+  "Not so--'twas Free will," the other maintained,
+  "Which led him to choose what the Lord had ordained."
+  So fierce and so fiery grew the debate
+  That nothing but bloodshed their dudgeon could sate;
+  So off flew their cassocks and caps to the ground
+  And, moved by the spirit, their hands went round.
+  Ere either had proved his theology right
+  By winning, or even beginning, the fight,
+  A gray old professor of Latin came by,
+  A staff in his hand and a scowl in his eye,
+  And learning the cause of their quarrel (for still
+  As they clumsily sparred they disputed with skill
+  Of foreordinational freedom of will)
+  Cried:  "Sirrahs! this reasonless warfare compose:
+  Atwixt ye's no difference worthy of blows.
+  The sects ye belong to--I'm ready to swear
+  Ye wrongly interpret the names that they bear.
+  _You_--Infralapsarian son of a clown!--
+  Should only contend that Adam slipped down;
+  While _you_--you Supralapsarian pup!--
+  Should nothing aver but that Adam slipped up.
+  It's all the same whether up or down
+  You slip on a peel of banana brown.
+  Even Adam analyzed not his blunder,
+  But thought he had slipped on a peal of thunder!
+
+G.J.
+
+
+INGRATE, n.  One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise
+an object of charity.
+
+  "All men are ingrates," sneered the cynic.  "Nay,"
+      The good philanthropist replied;
+  "I did great service to a man one day
+  Who never since has cursed me to repay,
+              Nor vilified."
+
+  "Ho!" cried the cynic, "lead me to him straight--
+      With veneration I am overcome,
+  And fain would have his blessing."  "Sad your fate--
+  He cannot bless you, for I grieve to state
+              This man is dumb."
+
+Ariel Selp
+
+
+INJURY, n.  An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight.
+
+INJUSTICE, n.  A burden which of all those that we load upon others
+and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the
+back.
+
+INK, n.  A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic and
+water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
+intellectual crime.  The properties of ink are peculiar and
+contradictory:  it may be used to make reputations and unmake them; to
+blacken them and to make them white; but it is most generally and
+acceptably employed as a mortar to bind together the stones of an
+edifice of fame, and as a whitewash to conceal afterward the rascal
+quality of the material.  There are men called journalists who have
+established ink baths which some persons pay money to get into, others
+to get out of.  Not infrequently it occurs that a person who has paid
+to get in pays twice as much to get out.
+
+INNATE, adj.  Natural, inherent--as innate ideas, that is to say,
+ideas that we are born with, having had them previously imparted to
+us.  The doctrine of innate ideas is one of the most admirable faiths
+of philosophy, being itself an innate idea and therefore inaccessible
+to disproof, though Locke foolishly supposed himself to have given it
+"a black eye."  Among innate ideas may be mentioned the belief in
+one's ability to conduct a newspaper, in the greatness of one's
+country, in the superiority of one's civilization, in the importance
+of one's personal affairs and in the interesting nature of one's
+diseases.
+
+IN'ARDS, n.  The stomach, heart, soul and other bowels.  Many eminent
+investigators do not class the soul as an in'ard, but that acute
+observer and renowned authority, Dr. Gunsaulus, is persuaded that the
+mysterious organ known as the spleen is nothing less than our
+immortal part.  To the contrary, Professor Garrett P. Servis holds
+that man's soul is that prolongation of his spinal marrow which forms
+the pith of his no tail; and for demonstration of his faith points
+confidently to the fact that tailed animals have no souls.
+Concerning these two theories, it is best to suspend judgment by
+believing both.
+
+INSCRIPTION, n.  Something written on another thing.  Inscriptions are
+of many kinds, but mostly memorial, intended to commemorate the fame
+of some illustrious person and hand down to distant ages the record of
+his services and virtues.  To this class of inscriptions belongs the
+name of John Smith, penciled on the Washington monument.  Following
+are examples of memorial inscriptions on tombstones:  (See EPITAPH.)
+
+  "In the sky my soul is found,
+  And my body in the ground.
+  By and by my body'll rise
+  To my spirit in the skies,
+  Soaring up to Heaven's gate.
+          1878."
+
+  "Sacred to the memory of Jeremiah Tree.  Cut down May 9th, 1862,
+aged 27 yrs. 4 mos. and 12 ds.  Indigenous."
+
+      "Affliction sore long time she boar,
+          Phisicians was in vain,
+      Till Deth released the dear deceased
+          And left her a remain.
+  Gone to join Ananias in the regions of bliss."
+
+  "The clay that rests beneath this stone
+  As Silas Wood was widely known.
+  Now, lying here, I ask what good
+  It was to let me be S. Wood.
+  O Man, let not ambition trouble you,
+  Is the advice of Silas W."
+
+  "Richard Haymon, of Heaven.  Fell to Earth Jan. 20, 1807, and had
+the dust brushed off him Oct. 3, 1874."
+
+INSECTIVORA, n.
+
+  "See," cries the chorus of admiring preachers,
+  "How Providence provides for all His creatures!"
+  "His care," the gnat said, "even the insects follows:
+  For us He has provided wrens and swallows."
+
+Sempen Railey
+
+
+INSURANCE, n.  An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player
+is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating
+the man who keeps the table.
+
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  My dear sir, that is a fine house--pray let me
+      insure it.
+  HOUSE OWNER:  With pleasure.  Please make the annual premium so
+      low that by the time when, according to the tables of your
+      actuary, it will probably be destroyed by fire I will have
+      paid you considerably less than the face of the policy.
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  O dear, no--we could not afford to do that.
+      We must fix the premium so that you will have paid more.
+  HOUSE OWNER:  How, then, can _I_ afford _that_?
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  Why, your house may burn down at any time.
+      There was Smith's house, for example, which--
+  HOUSE OWNER:  Spare me--there were Brown's house, on the
+      contrary, and Jones's house, and Robinson's house, which--
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  Spare _me_!
+  HOUSE OWNER:  Let us understand each other.  You want me to pay
+      you money on the supposition that something will occur
+      previously to the time set by yourself for its occurrence.  In
+      other words, you expect me to bet that my house will not last
+      so long as you say that it will probably last.
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  But if your house burns without insurance it
+      will be a total loss.
+  HOUSE OWNER:  Beg your pardon--by your own actuary's tables I
+      shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I
+      would otherwise have paid to you--amounting to more than the
+      face of the policy they would have bought.  But suppose it to
+      burn, uninsured, before the time upon which your figures are
+      based.  If I could not afford that, how could you if it were
+      insured?
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  O, we should make ourselves whole from our
+      luckier ventures with other clients.  Virtually, they pay your
+      loss.
+  HOUSE OWNER:  And virtually, then, don't I help to pay their
+      losses?  Are not their houses as likely as mine to burn before
+      they have paid you as much as you must pay them?  The case
+      stands this way:  you expect to take more money from your
+      clients than you pay to them, do you not?
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  Certainly; if we did not--
+  HOUSE OWNER:  I would not trust you with my money.  Very well
+      then.  If it is _certain_, with reference to the whole body of
+      your clients, that they lose money on you it is _probable_,
+      with reference to any one of them, that _he_ will.  It is
+      these individual probabilities that make the aggregate
+      certainty.
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  I will not deny it--but look at the figures in
+      this pamph--
+  HOUSE OWNER:  Heaven forbid!
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  You spoke of saving the premiums which you would
+      otherwise pay to me.  Will you not be more likely to squander
+      them?  We offer you an incentive to thrift.
+  HOUSE OWNER:  The willingness of A to take care of B's money is
+      not peculiar to insurance, but as a charitable institution you
+      command esteem.  Deign to accept its expression from a
+      Deserving Object.
+
+INSURRECTION, n.  An unsuccessful revolution.  Disaffection's failure
+to substitute misrule for bad government.
+
+INTENTION, n.  The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of
+influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence,
+immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
+
+INTERPRETER, n.  One who enables two persons of different languages to
+understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
+the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
+
+INTERREGNUM, n.  The period during which a monarchical country is
+governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne.  The experiment
+of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most
+unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to make it warm
+again.
+
+INTIMACY, n.  A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for
+their mutual destruction.
+
+  Two Seidlitz powders, one in blue
+  And one in white, together drew
+  And having each a pleasant sense
+  Of t'other powder's excellence,
+  Forsook their jackets for the snug
+  Enjoyment of a common mug.
+  So close their intimacy grew
+  One paper would have held the two.
+  To confidences straight they fell,
+  Less anxious each to hear than tell;
+  Then each remorsefully confessed
+  To all the virtues he possessed,
+  Acknowledging he had them in
+  So high degree it was a sin.
+  The more they said, the more they felt
+  Their spirits with emotion melt,
+  Till tears of sentiment expressed
+  Their feelings.  Then they effervesced!
+  So Nature executes her feats
+  Of wrath on friends and sympathetes
+  The good old rule who won't apply,
+  That you are you and I am I.
+
+INTRODUCTION, n. A social ceremony invented by the devil for the
+gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies. The
+introduction attains its most malevolent development in this country,
+being, indeed, closely related to our political system. Every
+American being the equal of every other American, it follows that
+everybody has the right to know everybody else, which implies the
+right to introduce without request or permission. The Declaration of
+Independence should have read thus:
+
+      "We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all men are
+  created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
+  inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right to
+  make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an
+  incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly the
+  liberty to introduce persons to one another without first
+  ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies; and
+  the pursuit of another's happiness with a running pack of
+  strangers."
+
+INVENTOR, n.  A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels,
+levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
+
+IRRELIGION, n.  The principal one of the great faiths of the world.
+
+ITCH, n.  The patriotism of a Scotchman.
+
+
+
+
+J
+
+
+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 people on converging lines, toward a
+common origin in remote antiquity.  Among these are the fables of
+"Teddy the Giant Killer," "The Sleeping John Sharp Williams," "Little
+Red Riding Hood and the Sugar Trust," "Beauty and the Brisbane," "The
+Seven Aldermen of Ephesus," "Rip Van Fairbanks," and so forth.  The
+fable which Goethe so affectingly relates under the title of "The
+Erl-King" was known two thousand years ago in Greece as "The Demos and
+the Infant Industry."  One of the most general and ancient of these
+myths is that Arabian tale of "Ali Baba and the Forty Rockefellers."
+
+LOSS, n.  Privation of that which we had, or had not.  Thus, in the
+latter sense, it is said of a defeated candidate that he "lost his
+election"; and of that eminent man, the poet Gilder, that he has "lost
+his mind."  It is in the former and more legitimate sense, that the
+word is used in the famous epitaph:
+
+  Here Huntington's ashes long have lain
+  Whose loss is our eternal gain,
+  For while he exercised all his powers
+  Whatever he gained, the loss was ours.
+
+LOVE, n.  A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of
+the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.
+This disease, like _caries_ and many other ailments, is prevalent only
+among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous
+nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from
+its ravages.  It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the
+physician than to the patient.
+
+LOW-BRED, adj.  "Raised" instead of brought up.
+
+LUMINARY, n.  One who throws light upon a subject; as an editor by not
+writing about it.
+
+LUNARIAN, n.  An inhabitant of the moon, as distinguished from
+Lunatic, one whom the moon inhabits.  The Lunarians have been
+described by Lucian, Locke and other observers, but without much
+agreement.  For example, Bragellos avers their anatomical identity
+with Man, but Professor Newcomb says they are more like the hill
+tribes of Vermont.
+
+LYRE, n.  An ancient instrument of torture.  The word is now used in a
+figurative sense to denote the poetic faculty, as in the following
+fiery lines of our great poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox:
+
+  I sit astride Parnassus with my lyre,
+  And pick with care the disobedient wire.
+  That stupid shepherd lolling on his crook
+  With deaf attention scarcely deigns to look.
+  I bide my time, and it shall come at length,
+  When, with a Titan's energy and strength,
+  I'll grab a fistful of the strings, and O,
+  The word shall suffer when I let them go!
+
+Farquharson Harris
+
+
+
+
+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 might poor way to spell
+muskeeter.
+
+MOUTH, n.  In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of
+the heart.
+
+MUGWUMP, n.  In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted
+to the vice of independence.  A term of contempt.
+
+MULATTO, n.  A child of two races, ashamed of both.
+
+MULTITUDE, n.  A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue.  In
+a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.  "In a multitude
+of counsellors there is wisdom," saith the proverb.  If many men of
+equal individual wisdom are wiser than any one of them, it must be
+that they acquire the excess of wisdom by the mere act of getting
+together.  Whence comes it?  Obviously from nowhere--as well say
+that a range of mountains is higher than the single mountains
+composing it.  A multitude is as wise as its wisest member if it obey
+him; if not, it is no wiser than its most foolish.
+
+MUMMY, n.  An ancient Egyptian, formerly in universal use among modern
+civilized nations as medicine, and now engaged in supplying art with
+an excellent pigment.  He is handy, too, in museums in gratifying the
+vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower
+animals.
+
+  By means of the Mummy, mankind, it is said,
+  Attests to the gods its respect for the dead.
+  We plunder his tomb, be he sinner or saint,
+  Distil him for physic and grind him for paint,
+  Exhibit for money his poor, shrunken frame,
+  And with levity flock to the scene of the shame.
+  O, tell me, ye gods, for the use of my rhyme:
+  For respecting the dead what's the limit of time?
+
+Scopas Brune
+
+
+MUSTANG, n.  An indocile horse of the western plains.  In English
+society, the American wife of an English nobleman.
+
+MYRMIDON, n.  A follower of Achilles--particularly when he didn't
+lead.
+
+MYTHOLOGY, n.  The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
+origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
+from the true accounts which it invents later.
+
+
+
+
+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 juded by the light that the
+doer had when he performed it.
+
+OUTDO, v.t.  To make an enemy.
+
+OUT-OF-DOORS, n.  That part of one's environment upon which no
+government has been able to collect taxes.  Chiefly useful to inspire
+poets.
+
+  I climbed to the top of a mountain one day
+      To see the sun setting in glory,
+  And I thought, as I looked at his vanishing ray,
+      Of a perfectly splendid story.
+
+  'Twas about an old man and the ass he bestrode
+      Till the strength of the beast was o'ertested;
+  Then the man would carry him miles on the road
+      Till Neddy was pretty well rested.
+
+  The moon rising solemnly over the crest
+      Of the hills to the east of my station
+  Displayed her broad disk to the darkening west
+      Like a visible new creation.
+
+  And I thought of a joke (and I laughed till I cried)
+      Of an idle young woman who tarried
+  About a church-door for a look at the bride,
+      Although 'twas herself that was married.
+
+  To poets all Nature is pregnant with grand
+      Ideas--with thought and emotion.
+  I pity the dunces who don't understand
+      The speech of earth, heaven and ocean.
+
+Stromboli Smith
+
+
+OVATION, n.  In ancient Rome, a definite, formal pageant in honor of
+one who had been disserviceable to the enemies of the nation.  A
+lesser "triumph."  In modern English the word is improperly used to
+signify any loose and spontaneous expression of popular homage to the
+hero of the hour and place.
+
+  "I had an ovation!" the actor man said,
+      But I thought it uncommonly queer,
+  That people and critics by him had been led
+          By the ear.
+
+  The Latin lexicon makes his absurd
+      Assertion as plain as a peg;
+  In "ovum" we find the true root of the word.
+          It means egg.
+
+Dudley Spink
+
+
+OVEREAT, v.  To dine.
+
+  Hail, Gastronome, Apostle of Excess,
+  Well skilled to overeat without distress!
+  Thy great invention, the unfatal feast,
+  Shows Man's superiority to Beast.
+
+John Boop
+
+
+OVERWORK, n.  A dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries
+who want to go fishing.
+
+OWE, v.  To have (and to hold) a debt.  The word formerly signified
+not indebtedness, but possession; it meant "own," and in the minds of
+debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and
+liabilities.
+
+OYSTER, n.  A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the
+hardihood to eat without removing its entrails!  The shells are
+sometimes given to the poor.
+
+
+
+
+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."
+
+PALMISTRY, n.  The 947th method (according to Mimbleshaw's
+classification) of obtaining money by false pretences.  It consists in
+"reading character" in the wrinkles made by closing the hand.  The
+pretence is not altogether false; character can really be read very
+accurately in this way, for the wrinkles in every hand submitted
+plainly spell the word "dupe."  The imposture consists in not reading
+it aloud.
+
+PANDEMONIUM, n.  Literally, the Place of All the Demons.  Most of them
+have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a
+lecture hall by the Audible Reformer.  When disturbed by his voice the
+ancient echoes clamor appropriate responses most gratifying to his
+pride of distinction.
+
+PANTALOONS, n.  A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male.  The
+garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of
+flexion.  Supposed to have been invented by a humorist.  Called
+"trousers" by the enlightened and "pants" by the unworthy.
+
+PANTHEISM, n.  The doctrine that everything is God, in
+contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
+
+PANTOMIME, n.  A play in which the story is told without violence to
+the language.  The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.
+
+PARDON, v.  To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime.  To
+add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
+
+PASSPORT, n.  A document treacherously inflicted upon a citizen going
+abroad, exposing him as an alien and pointing him out for special
+reprobation and outrage.
+
+PAST, n.  That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we
+have a slight and regrettable acquaintance.  A moving line called the
+Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future.  These
+two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually
+effacing the other, are entirely unlike.  The one is dark with sorrow
+and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy.  The
+Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song.  In the
+one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential
+prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing,
+beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease.  Yet the Past is
+the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow.  They
+are one--the knowledge and the dream.
+
+PASTIME, n.  A device for promoting dejection.  Gentle exercise for
+intellectual debility.
+
+PATIENCE, n.  A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
+
+PATRIOT, n.  One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to
+those of the whole.  The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
+
+PATRIOTISM, n.  Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one
+ambitious to illuminate his name.
+
+In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the
+last resort of a scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened
+but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
+
+PEACE, n.  In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
+periods of fighting.
+
+  O, what's the loud uproar assailing
+      Mine ears without cease?
+  'Tis the voice of the hopeful, all-hailing
+      The horrors of peace.
+
+  Ah, Peace Universal; they woo it--
+      Would marry it, too.
+  If only they knew how to do it
+      'Twere easy to do.
+
+  They're working by night and by day
+      On their problem, like moles.
+  Have mercy, O Heaven, I pray,
+      On their meddlesome souls!
+
+Ro Amil
+
+
+PEDESTRIAN, n.  The variable (an audible) part of the roadway for an
+automobile.
+
+PEDIGREE, n.  The known part of the route from an arboreal ancestor
+with a swim bladder to an urban descendant with a cigarette.
+
+PENITENT, adj.  Undergoing or awaiting punishment.
+
+PERFECTION, n.  An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the
+actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.
+
+The editor of an English magazine having received a letter
+pointing out the erroneous nature of his views and style, and signed
+"Perfection," promptly wrote at the foot of the letter:  "I don't
+agree with you," and mailed it to Matthew Arnold.
+
+PERIPATETIC, adj.  Walking about.  Relating to the philosophy of
+Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in
+order to avoid his pupil's objections.  A needless precaution--they
+knew no more of the matter than he.
+
+PERORATION, n.  The explosion of an oratorical rocket.  It dazzles,
+but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous
+peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in
+preparing it.
+
+PERSEVERANCE, n.  A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an
+inglorious success.
+
+  "Persevere, persevere!" cry the homilists all,
+  Themselves, day and night, persevering to bawl.
+  "Remember the fable of tortoise and hare--
+  The one at the goal while the other is--where?"
+  Why, back there in Dreamland, renewing his lease
+  Of life, all his muscles preserving the peace,
+  The goal and the rival forgotten alike,
+  And the long fatigue of the needless hike.
+  His spirit a-squat in the grass and the dew
+  Of the dogless Land beyond the Stew,
+  He sleeps, like a saint in a holy place,
+  A winner of all that is good in a race.
+
+Sukker Uffro
+
+
+PESSIMISM, n.  A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the
+observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his
+scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.
+
+PHILANTHROPIST, n.  A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has
+trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
+
+PHILISTINE, n.  One whose mind is the creature of its environment,
+following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment.  He is
+sometimes learned, frequently prosperous, commonly clean and always
+solemn.
+
+PHILOSOPHY, n.  A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
+
+PHOENIX, n.  The classical prototype of the modern "small hot bird."
+
+PHONOGRAPH, n.  An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.
+
+PHOTOGRAPH, n.  A picture painted by the sun without instruction in
+art.  It is a little better than the work of an Apache, but not quite
+so good as that of a Cheyenne.
+
+PHRENOLOGY, n.  The science of picking the pocket through the scalp.
+It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe
+with.
+
+PHYSICIAN, n.  One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs
+when well.
+
+PHYSIOGNOMY, n.  The art of determining the character of another by
+the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which
+is the standard of excellence.
+
+  "There is no art," says Shakespeare, foolish man,
+      "To read the mind's construction in the face."
+  The physiognomists his portrait scan,
+      And say:  "How little wisdom here we trace!
+  He knew his face disclosed his mind and heart,
+  So, in his own defence, denied our art."
+
+Lavatar Shunk
+
+
+PIANO, n.  A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor.  It
+is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the
+audience.
+
+PICKANINNY, n.  The young of the _Procyanthropos_, or _Americanus
+dominans_.  It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.
+
+PICTURE, n.  A representation in two dimensions of something wearisome
+in three.
+
+  "Behold great Daubert's picture here on view--
+  Taken from Life."  If that description's true,
+  Grant, heavenly Powers, that I be taken, too.
+
+Jali Hane
+
+
+PIE, n.  An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.
+
+  Cold pie was highly esteemed by the remains.
+
+Rev. Dr. Mucker
+
+(in a funeral sermon over a British nobleman)
+
+  Cold pie is a detestable
+  American comestible.
+  That's why I'm done--or undone--
+  So far from that dear London.
+
+(from the headstone of a British nobleman in Kalamazoo)
+
+
+PIETY, n.  Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed
+resemblance to man.
+
+  The pig is taught by sermons and epistles
+  To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.
+
+Judibras
+
+
+PIG, n.  An animal (_Porcus omnivorus_) closely allied to the human
+race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is
+inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.
+
+PIGMY, n.  One of a tribe of very small men found by ancient travelers
+in many parts of the world, but by modern in Central Africa only.  The
+Pigmies are so called to distinguish them from the bulkier Caucasians
+--who are Hogmies.
+
+PILGRIM, n.  A traveler that is taken seriously.  A Pilgrim Father was
+one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms
+through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could
+personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
+
+PILLORY, n.  A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction
+--prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere
+virtues and blameless lives.
+
+PIRACY, n.  Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
+
+PITIFUL, adj.  The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary
+encounter with oneself.
+
+PITY, n.  A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
+
+PLAGIARISM, n.  A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable
+priority and an honorable subsequence.
+
+PLAGIARIZE, v.  To take the thought or style of another writer whom
+one has never, never read.
+
+PLAGUE, n.  In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for
+admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the
+Immune.  The plague as we of to-day have the happiness to know it is
+merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless
+objectionableness.
+
+PLAN, v.t.  To bother about the best method of accomplishing an
+accidental result.
+
+PLATITUDE, n.  The fundamental element and special glory of popular
+literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke.  The wisdom of
+a million fools in the diction of a dullard.  A fossil sentiment in
+artificial rock.  A moral without the fable.  All that is mortal of a
+departed truth.  A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality.  The Pope's-nose
+of a featherless peacock.  A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the
+sea of thought.  The cackle surviving the egg.  A desiccated epigram.
+
+PLATONIC, adj.  Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates.  Platonic
+Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a
+frost.
+
+PLAUDITS, n.  Coins with which the populace pays those who tickle and
+devour it.
+
+PLEASE, v.  To lay the foundation for a superstructure of imposition.
+
+PLEASURE, n.  The least hateful form of dejection.
+
+PLEBEIAN, n.  An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained
+nothing but his hands.  Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a
+saturated solution.
+
+PLEBISCITE, n.  A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign.
+
+PLENIPOTENTIARY, adj.  Having full power.  A Minister Plenipotentiary
+is a diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he
+never exert it.
+
+PLEONASM, n.  An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.
+
+PLOW, n.  An implement that cries aloud for hands accustomed to the
+pen.
+
+PLUNDER, v.  To take the property of another without observing the
+decent and customary reticences of theft.  To effect a change of
+ownership with the candid concomitance of a brass band.  To wrest the
+wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanished opportunity.
+
+POCKET, n.  The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience.  In
+woman this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her
+conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of
+others.
+
+POETRY, n.  A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the
+Magazines.
+
+POKER, n.  A game said to be played with cards for some purpose to
+this lexicographer unknown.
+
+POLICE, n.  An armed force for protection and participation.
+
+POLITENESS, n.  The most acceptable hypocrisy.
+
+POLITICS, n.  A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of
+principles.  The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
+
+POLITICIAN, n.  An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the
+superstructure of organized society is reared.  When he wriggles he
+mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.
+As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being
+alive.
+
+POLYGAMY, n.  A house of atonement, or expiatory chapel, fitted with
+several stools of repentance, as distinguished from monogamy, which
+has but one.
+
+POPULIST, n.  A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found
+in the old red soapstone underlying Kansas; characterized by an
+uncommon spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the
+power of flight, though Professors Morse and Whitney, pursuing
+independent lines of thought, have ingeniously pointed out that had he
+possessed it he would have gone elsewhere.  In the picturesque speech
+of his period, some fragments of which have come down to us, he was
+known as "The Matter with Kansas."
+
+PORTABLE, adj.  Exposed to a mutable ownership through vicissitudes of
+possession.
+
+  His light estate, if neither he did make it
+  Nor yet its former guardian forsake it,
+  Is portable improperty, I take it.
+
+Worgum Slupsky
+
+
+PORTUGUESE, n.pl.  A species of geese indigenous to Portugal.  They
+are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed
+with garlic.
+
+POSITIVE, adj.  Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
+
+POSITIVISM, n.  A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and
+affirms our ignorance of the Apparent.  Its longest exponent is Comte,
+its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.
+
+POSTERITY, n.  An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a
+popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure
+competitor.
+
+POTABLE, n.  Suitable for drinking.  Water is said to be potable;
+indeed, some declare it our natural beverage, although even they find
+it palatable only when suffering from the recurrent disorder known as
+thirst, for which it is a medicine.  Upon nothing has so great and
+diligent ingenuity been brought to bear in all ages and in all
+countries, except the most uncivilized, as upon the invention of
+substitutes for water.  To hold that this general aversion to that
+liquid has no basis in the preservative instinct of the race is to be
+unscientific--and without science we are as the snakes and toads.
+
+POVERTY, n.  A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform.  The
+number of plans for its abolition equals that of the reformers who
+suffer from it, plus that of the philosophers who know nothing about
+it.  Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues
+and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a
+prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.
+
+PRAY, v.  To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf
+of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
+
+PRE-ADAMITE, n.  One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory
+race of antedated Creation and lived under conditions not easily
+conceived.  Melsius believed them to have inhabited "the Void" and to
+have been something intermediate between fishes and birds.  Little its
+known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and
+theologians with a controversy.
+
+PRECEDENT, n.  In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in
+the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a
+Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of
+doing as he pleases.  As there are precedents for everything, he has
+only to ignore those that make against his interest and accentuate
+those in the line of his desire.  Invention of the precedent elevates
+the trial-at-law from the low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the
+noble attitude of a dirigible arbitrament.
+
+PRECIPITATE, adj.  Anteprandial.
+
+  Precipitate in all, this sinner
+  Took action first, and then his dinner.
+
+Judibras
+
+
+PREDESTINATION, n.  The doctrine that all things occur according to
+programme.  This doctrine should not be confused with that of
+foreordination, which means that all things are programmed, but does
+not affirm their occurrence, that being only an implication from other
+doctrines by which this is entailed.  The difference is great enough
+to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
+With the distinction of the two doctrines kept well in mind, and a
+reverent belief in both, one may hope to escape perdition if spared.
+
+PREDICAMENT, n.  The wage of consistency.
+
+PREDILECTION, n.  The preparatory stage of disillusion.
+
+PRE-EXISTENCE, n.  An unnoted factor in creation.
+
+PREFERENCE, n.  A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the
+erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.
+
+An ancient philosopher, expounding his conviction that life is no
+better than death, was asked by a disciple why, then, he did not die.
+"Because," he replied, "death is no better than life."
+
+It is longer.
+
+PREHISTORIC, adj.  Belonging to an early period and a museum.
+Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.
+
+  He lived in a period prehistoric,
+  When all was absurd and phantasmagoric.
+  Born later, when Clio, celestial recorder,
+  Set down great events in succession and order,
+  He surely had seen nothing droll or fortuitous
+  In anything here but the lies that she threw at us.
+
+Orpheus Bowen
+
+
+PREJUDICE, n.  A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
+
+PRELATE, n.  A church officer having a superior degree of holiness and
+a fat preferment.  One of Heaven's aristocracy.  A gentleman of God.
+
+PREROGATIVE, n.  A sovereign's right to do wrong.
+
+PRESBYTERIAN, n.  One who holds the conviction that the government
+authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.
+
+PRESCRIPTION, n.  A physician's guess at what will best prolong the
+situation with least harm to the patient.
+
+PRESENT, n.  That part of eternity dividing the domain of
+disappointment from the realm of hope.
+
+PRESENTABLE, adj.  Hideously appareled after the manner of the time
+and place.
+
+In Boorioboola-Gha a man is presentable on occasions of ceremony
+if he have his abdomen painted a bright blue and wear a cow's tail; in
+New York he may, if it please him, omit the paint, but after sunset he
+must wear two tails made of the wool of a sheep and dyed black.
+
+PRESIDE, v.  To guide the action of a deliberative body to a desirable
+result.  In Journalese, to perform upon a musical instrument; as, "He
+presided at the piccolo."
+
+  The Headliner, holding the copy in hand,
+      Read with a solemn face:
+  "The music was very uncommonly grand--
+          The best that was every provided,
+          For our townsman Brown presided
+      At the organ with skill and grace."
+  The Headliner discontinued to read,
+      And, spread the paper down
+  On the desk, he dashed in at the top of the screed:
+      "Great playing by President Brown."
+
+Orpheus Bowen
+
+
+PRESIDENCY, n.  The greased pig in the field game of American
+politics.
+
+PRESIDENT, n.  The leading figure in a small group of men of whom--
+and of whom only--it is positively known that immense numbers of
+their countrymen did not want any of them for President.
+
+  If that's an honor surely 'tis a greater
+  To have been a simple and undamned spectator.
+  Behold in me a man of mark and note
+  Whom no elector e'er denied a vote!--
+  An undiscredited, unhooted gent
+  Who might, for all we know, be President
+  By acclamation.  Cheer, ye varlets, cheer--
+  I'm passing with a wide and open ear!
+
+Jonathan Fomry
+
+
+PREVARICATOR, n.  A liar in the caterpillar state.
+
+PRICE, n.  Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of
+conscience in demanding it.
+
+PRIMATE, n.  The head of a church, especially a State church supported
+by involuntary contributions.  The Primate of England is the
+Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies
+Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead.  He is
+commonly dead.
+
+PRISON, n.  A place of punishments and rewards.  The poet assures us
+that--
+
+  "Stone walls do not a prison make,"
+
+but a combination of the stone wall, the political parasite and the
+moral instructor is no garden of sweets.
+
+PRIVATE, n.  A military gentleman with a field-marshal's baton in his
+knapsack and an impediment in his hope.
+
+PROBOSCIS, n.  The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him
+in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him.
+For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
+
+Asked how he knew that an elephant was going on a journey, the
+illustrious Jo. Miller cast a reproachful look upon his tormentor, and
+answered, absently:  "When it is ajar," and threw himself from a high
+promontory into the sea.  Thus perished in his pride the most famous
+humorist of antiquity, leaving to mankind a heritage of woe!  No
+successor worthy of the title has appeared, though Mr. Edward Bok, of
+_The Ladies' Home Journal_, is much respected for the purity and
+sweetness of his personal character.
+
+PROJECTILE, n.  The final arbiter in international disputes.  Formerly
+these disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants,
+with such simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could
+supply--the sword, the spear, and so forth.  With the growth of
+prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into
+favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous.  Its
+capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at the point of
+propulsion.
+
+PROOF, n.  Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of
+unlikelihood.  The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to
+that of only one.
+
+PROOF-READER, n.  A malefactor who atones for making your writing
+nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
+
+PROPERTY, n.  Any material thing, having no particular value, that may
+be held by A against the cupidity of B.  Whatever gratifies the
+passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others.  The
+object of man's brief rapacity and long indifference.
+
+PROPHECY, n.  The art and practice of selling one's credibility for
+future delivery.
+
+PROSPECT, n.  An outlook, usually forbidding.  An expectation, usually
+forbidden.
+
+  Blow, blow, ye spicy breezes--
+      O'er Ceylon blow your breath,
+  Where every prospect pleases,
+      Save only that of death.
+
+Bishop Sheber
+
+
+PROVIDENTIAL, adj.  Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the
+person so describing it.
+
+PRUDE, n.  A bawd hiding behind the back of her demeanor.
+
+PUBLISH, n.  In literary affairs, to become the fundamental element in
+a cone of critics.
+
+PUSH, n.  One of the two things mainly conducive to success,
+especially in politics.  The other is Pull.
+
+PYRRHONISM, n.  An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor.  It
+consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism.  Its
+modern professors have added that.
+
+
+
+
+Q
+
+
+QUEEN, n.  A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king,
+and through whom it is ruled when there is not.
+
+QUILL, n.  An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly
+wielded by an ass.  This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its
+modern equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting
+Presence.
+
+QUIVER, n.  A portable sheath in which the ancient statesman and the
+aboriginal lawyer carried their lighter arguments.
+
+  He extracted from his quiver,
+      Did the controversial Roman,
+  An argument well fitted
+  To the question as submitted,
+  Then addressed it to the liver,
+      Of the unpersuaded foeman.
+
+Oglum P. Boomp
+
+
+QUIXOTIC, adj.  Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote.  An insight into
+the beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily
+denied to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman's name
+is pronounced Ke-ho-tay.
+
+  When ignorance from out of our lives can banish
+  Philology, 'tis folly to know Spanish.
+
+Juan Smith
+
+
+QUORUM, n.  A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to
+have their own way and their own way of having it.  In the United
+States Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on
+Finance and a messenger from the White House; in the House of
+Representatives, of the Speaker and the devil.
+
+QUOTATION, n.  The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
+The words erroneously repeated.
+
+  Intent on making his quotation truer,
+  He sought the page infallible of Brewer,
+  Then made a solemn vow that he would be
+  Condemned eternally.  Ah, me, ah, me!
+
+Stumpo Gaker
+
+
+QUOTIENT, n.  A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging
+to one person is contained in the pocket of another--usually about
+as many times as it can be got there.
+
+
+
+
+R
+
+
+RABBLE, n.  In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority
+tempered by fraudulent elections.  The rabble is like the sacred
+Simurgh, of Arabian fable--omnipotent on condition that it do
+nothing.  (The word is Aristocratese, and has no exact equivalent in
+our tongue, but means, as nearly as may be, "soaring swine.")
+
+RACK, n.  An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading
+devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth.  As a call to
+the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now
+held in light popular esteem.
+
+RANK, n.  Relative elevation in the scale of human worth.
+
+  He held at court a rank so high
+  That other noblemen asked why.
+  "Because," 'twas answered, "others lack
+  His skill to scratch the royal back."
+
+Aramis Jukes
+
+
+RANSOM, n.  The purchase of that which neither belongs to the seller,
+nor can belong to the buyer.  The most unprofitable of investments.
+
+RAPACITY, n.  Providence without industry.  The thrift of power.
+
+RAREBIT, n.  A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point
+out that it is not a rabbit.  To whom it may be solemnly explained
+that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and
+that _riz-de-veau a la financiere_ is not the smile of a calf prepared
+after the recipe of a she banker.
+
+RASCAL, n.  A fool considered under another aspect.
+
+RASCALITY, n.  Stupidity militant.  The activity of a clouded
+intellect.
+
+RASH, adj.  Insensible to the value of our advice.
+
+  "Now lay your bet with mine, nor let
+      These gamblers take your cash."
+  "Nay, this child makes no bet."  "Great snakes!
+      How can you be so rash?"
+
+Bootle P. Gish
+
+
+RATIONAL, adj.  Devoid of all delusions save those of observation,
+experience and reflection.
+
+RATTLESNAKE, n.  Our prostrate brother, _Homo ventrambulans_.
+
+RAZOR, n.  An instrument used by the Caucasian to enhance his beauty,
+by the Mongolian to make a guy of himself, and by the Afro-American to
+affirm his worth.
+
+REACH, n.  The radius of action of the human hand.  The area within
+which it is possible (and customary) to gratify directly the
+propensity to provide.
+
+  This is a truth, as old as the hills,
+      That life and experience teach:
+  The poor man suffers that keenest of ills,
+      An impediment in his reach.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+READING, n.  The general body of what one reads.  In our country it
+consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in "dialect" and
+humor in slang.
+
+  We know by one's reading
+  His learning and breeding;
+  By what draws his laughter
+  We know his Hereafter.
+  Read nothing, laugh never--
+  The Sphinx was less clever!
+
+Jupiter Muke
+
+
+RADICALISM, n.  The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the
+affairs of to-day.
+
+RADIUM, n.  A mineral that gives off heat and stimulates the organ
+that a scientist is a fool with.
+
+RAILROAD, n.  The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get
+away from where we are to where we are no better off.  For this purpose
+the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits
+him to make the transit with great expedition.
+
+RAMSHACKLE, adj.  Pertaining to a certain order of architecture,
+otherwise known as the Normal American.  Most of the public buildings
+of the United States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our
+earlier architects preferred the Ironic.  Recent additions to the
+White House in Washington are Theo-Doric, the ecclesiastic order of
+the Dorians.  They are exceedingly fine and cost one hundred dollars a
+brick.
+
+REALISM, n.  The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads.  The
+charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a
+measuring-worm.
+
+REALITY, n.  The dream of a mad philosopher.  That which would remain
+in the cupel if one should assay a phantom.  The nucleus of a vacuum.
+
+REALLY, adv.  Apparently.
+
+REAR, n.  In American military matters, that exposed part of the army
+that is nearest to Congress.
+
+REASON, v.i.  To weigh probabilities in the scales of desire.
+
+REASON, n.  Propensitate of prejudice.
+
+REASONABLE, adj.  Accessible to the infection of our own opinions.
+Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion.
+
+REBEL, n.  A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish
+it.
+
+RECOLLECT, v.  To recall with additions something not previously
+known.
+
+RECONCILIATION, n.  A suspension of hostilities.  An armed truce for
+the purpose of digging up the dead.
+
+RECONSIDER, v.  To seek a justification for a decision already made.
+
+RECOUNT, n.  In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded
+to the player against whom they are loaded.
+
+RECREATION, n.  A particular kind of dejection to relieve a general
+fatigue.
+
+RECRUIT, n.  A person distinguishable from a civilian by his uniform
+and from a soldier by his gait.
+
+  Fresh from the farm or factory or street,
+  His marching, in pursuit or in retreat,
+      Were an impressive martial spectacle
+  Except for two impediments--his feet.
+
+Thompson Johnson
+
+
+RECTOR, n.  In the Church of England, the Third Person of the
+parochial Trinity, the Curate and the Vicar being the other two.
+
+REDEMPTION, n.  Deliverance of sinners from the penalty of their sin,
+through their murder of the deity against whom they sinned.  The
+doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy
+religion, and whoso believeth in it shall not perish, but have
+everlasting life in which to try to understand it.
+
+  We must awake Man's spirit from his sin,
+      And take some special measure for redeeming it;
+  Though hard indeed the task to get it in
+      Among the angels any way but teaming it,
+      Or purify it otherwise than steaming it.
+  I'm awkward at Redemption--a beginner:
+  My method is to crucify the sinner.
+
+Golgo Brone
+
+
+REDRESS, n.  Reparation without satisfaction.
+
+Among the Anglo-Saxon a subject conceiving himself wronged by the
+king was permitted, on proving his injury, to beat a brazen image of
+the royal offender with a switch that was afterward applied to his own
+naked back.  The latter rite was performed by the public hangman, and
+it assured moderation in the plaintiff's choice of a switch.
+
+RED-SKIN, n.  A North American Indian, whose skin is not red--at
+least not on the outside.
+
+REDUNDANT, adj.  Superfluous; needless; _de trop_.
+
+  The Sultan said:  "There's evidence abundant
+  To prove this unbelieving dog redundant."
+  To whom the Grand Vizier, with mien impressive,
+  Replied:  "His head, at least, appears excessive."
+
+Habeeb Suleiman
+
+
+  Mr. Debs is a redundant citizen.
+
+Theodore Roosevelt
+
+
+REFERENDUM, n.  A law for submission of proposed legislation to a
+popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion.
+
+REFLECTION, n.  An action of the mind whereby we obtain a clearer view
+of our relation to the things of yesterday and are able to avoid the
+perils that we shall not again encounter.
+
+REFORM, v.  A thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to
+reformation.
+
+REFUGE, n.  Anything assuring protection to one in peril.  Moses and
+Joshua provided six cities of refuge--Bezer, Golan, Ramoth, Kadesh,
+Schekem and Hebron--to which one who had taken life inadvertently
+could flee when hunted by relatives of the deceased.  This admirable
+expedient supplied him with wholesome exercise and enabled them to
+enjoy the pleasures of the chase; whereby the soul of the dead man was
+appropriately honored by observances akin to the funeral games of
+early Greece.
+
+REFUSAL, n.  Denial of something desired; as an elderly maiden's hand
+in marriage, to a rich and handsome suitor; a valuable franchise to a
+rich corporation, by an alderman; absolution to an impenitent king, by
+a priest, and so forth.  Refusals are graded in a descending scale of
+finality thus:  the refusal absolute, the refusal conditional, the
+refusal tentative and the refusal feminine.  The last is called by
+some casuists the refusal assentive.
+
+REGALIA, n.  Distinguishing insignia, jewels and costume of such
+ancient and honorable orders as Knights of Adam; Visionaries of
+Detectable Bosh; the Ancient Order of Modern Troglodytes; the League
+of Holy Humbug; the Golden Phalanx of Phalangers; the Genteel Society
+of Expurgated Hoodlums; the Mystic Alliances of Gorgeous Regalians;
+Knights and Ladies of the Yellow Dog; the Oriental Order of Sons of
+the West; the Blatherhood of Insufferable Stuff; Warriors of the Long
+Bow; Guardians of the Great Horn Spoon; the Band of Brutes; the
+Impenitent Order of Wife-Beaters; the Sublime Legion of Flamboyant
+Conspicuants; Worshipers at the Electroplated Shrine; Shining
+Inaccessibles; Fee-Faw-Fummers of the Inimitable Grip; Jannissaries of
+the Broad-Blown Peacock; Plumed Increscencies of the Magic Temple; the
+Grand Cabal of Able-Bodied Sedentarians; Associated Deities of the
+Butter Trade; the Garden of Galoots; the Affectionate Fraternity of
+Men Similarly Warted; the Flashing Astonishers; Ladies of Horror;
+Cooperative Association for Breaking into the Spotlight; Dukes of Eden;
+Disciples Militant of the Hidden Faith; Knights-Champions of the
+Domestic Dog; the Holy Gregarians; the Resolute Optimists; the Ancient
+Sodality of Inhospitable Hogs; Associated Sovereigns of Mendacity;
+Dukes-Guardian of the Mystic Cess-Pool; the Society for Prevention of
+Prevalence; Kings of Drink; Polite Federation of Gents-Consequential;
+the Mysterious Order of the Undecipherable Scroll; Uniformed Rank of
+Lousy Cats; Monarchs of Worth and Hunger; Sons of the South Star;
+Prelates of the Tub-and-Sword.
+
+RELIGION, n.  A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the
+nature of the Unknowable.
+
+  "What is your religion my son?" inquired the Archbishop of Rheims.
+  "Pardon, monseigneur," replied Rochebriant; "I am ashamed of it."
+  "Then why do you not become an atheist?"
+  "Impossible!  I should be ashamed of atheism."
+  "In that case, monsieur, you should join the Protestants."
+
+RELIQUARY, n.  A receptacle for such sacred objects as pieces of the
+true cross, short-ribs of the saints, the ears of Balaam's ass, the
+lung of the cock that called Peter to repentance and so forth.
+Reliquaries are commonly of metal, and provided with a lock to prevent
+the contents from coming out and performing miracles at unseasonable
+times.  A feather from the wing of the Angel of the Annunciation once
+escaped during a sermon in Saint Peter's and so tickled the noses of
+the congregation that they woke and sneezed with great vehemence three
+times each.  It is related in the "Gesta Sanctorum" that a sacristan
+in the Canterbury cathedral surprised the head of Saint Dennis in the
+library.  Reprimanded by its stern custodian, it explained that it was
+seeking a body of doctrine.  This unseemly levity so raged the
+diocesan that the offender was publicly anathematized, thrown into the
+Stour and replaced by another head of Saint Dennis, brought from Rome.
+
+RENOWN, n.  A degree of distinction between notoriety and fame--a
+little more supportable than the one and a little more intolerable
+than the other.  Sometimes it is conferred by an unfriendly and
+inconsiderate hand.
+
+  I touched the harp in every key,
+      But found no heeding ear;
+  And then Ithuriel touched me
+      With a revealing spear.
+
+  Not all my genius, great as 'tis,
+      Could urge me out of night.
+  I felt the faint appulse of his,
+      And leapt into the light!
+
+W.J. Candleton
+
+
+REPARATION, n.  Satisfaction that is made for a wrong and deducted
+from the satisfaction felt in committing it.
+
+REPARTEE, n.  Prudent insult in retort.  Practiced by gentlemen with a
+constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to
+offend.  In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.
+
+REPENTANCE, n.  The faithful attendant and follower of Punishment.  It
+is usually manifest in a degree of reformation that is not
+inconsistent with continuity of sin.
+
+  Desirous to avoid the pains of Hell,
+  You will repent and join the Church, Parnell?
+  How needless!--Nick will keep you off the coals
+  And add you to the woes of other souls.
+
+Jomater Abemy
+
+
+REPLICA, n.  A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made
+the original.  It is so called to distinguish it from a "copy," which
+is made by another artist.  When the two are made with equal skill the
+replica is the more valuable, for it is supposed to be more beautiful
+than it looks.
+
+REPORTER, n.  A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it
+with a tempest of words.
+
+  "More dear than all my bosom knows, O thou
+  Whose 'lips are sealed' and will not disavow!"
+  So sang the blithe reporter-man as grew
+  Beneath his hand the leg-long "interview."
+
+Barson Maith
+
+
+REPOSE, v.i.  To cease from troubling.
+
+REPRESENTATIVE, n.  In national politics, a member of the Lower House
+in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.
+
+REPROBATION, n.  In theology, the state of a luckless mortal
+prenatally damned.  The doctrine of reprobation was taught by Calvin,
+whose joy in it was somewhat marred by the sad sincerity of his
+conviction that although some are foredoomed to perdition, others are
+predestined to salvation.
+
+REPUBLIC, n.  A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing
+governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to
+enforce an optional obedience.  In a republic, the foundation of
+public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from
+ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to.
+There are as many kinds of republics as there are graduations between
+the despotism whence they came and the anarchy whither they lead.
+
+REQUIEM, n.  A mass for the dead which the minor poets assure us the
+winds sing o'er the graves of their favorites.  Sometimes, by way of
+providing a varied entertainment, they sing a dirge.
+
+RESIDENT, adj.  Unable to leave.
+
+RESIGN, v.t.  To renounce an honor for an advantage.  To renounce an
+advantage for a greater advantage.
+
+  'Twas rumored Leonard Wood had signed
+      A true renunciation
+  Of title, rank and every kind
+      Of military station--
+      Each honorable station.
+
+  By his example fired--inclined
+      To noble emulation,
+  The country humbly was resigned
+      To Leonard's resignation--
+      His Christian resignation.
+
+Politian Greame
+
+
+RESOLUTE, adj.  Obstinate in a course that we approve.
+
+RESPECTABILITY, n.  The offspring of a _liaison_ between a bald head
+and a bank account.
+
+RESPIRATOR, n.  An apparatus fitted over the nose and mouth of an
+inhabitant of London, whereby to filter the visible universe in its
+passage to the lungs.
+
+RESPITE, n.  A suspension of hostilities against a sentenced assassin,
+to enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have
+been done by the prosecuting attorney.  Any break in the continuity of
+a disagreeable expectation.
+
+  Altgeld upon his incandescent bed
+  Lay, an attendant demon at his head.
+
+  "O cruel cook, pray grant me some relief--
+  Some respite from the roast, however brief."
+
+  "Remember how on earth I pardoned all
+  Your friends in Illinois when held in thrall."
+
+  "Unhappy soul! for that alone you squirm
+  O'er fire unquenched, a never-dying worm.
+
+  "Yet, for I pity your uneasy state,
+  Your doom I'll mollify and pains abate.
+
+  "Naught, for a season, shall your comfort mar,
+  Not even the memory of who you are."
+
+  Throughout eternal space dread silence fell;
+  Heaven trembled as Compassion entered Hell.
+
+  "As long, sweet demon, let my respite be
+  As, governing down here, I'd respite thee."
+
+  "As long, poor soul, as any of the pack
+  You thrust from jail consumed in getting back."
+
+  A genial chill affected Altgeld's hide
+  While they were turning him on t'other side.
+
+Joel Spate Woop
+
+
+RESPLENDENT, adj.  Like a simple American citizen beduking himself in
+his lodge, or affirming his consequence in the Scheme of Things as an
+elemental unit of a parade.
+
+      The Knights of Dominion were so resplendent in their velvet-
+  and-gold that their masters would hardly have known them.
+
+"Chronicles of the Classes"
+
+
+RESPOND, v.i.  To make answer, or disclose otherwise a consciousness
+of having inspired an interest in what Herbert Spencer calls "external
+coexistences," as Satan "squat like a toad" at the ear of Eve,
+responded to the touch of the angel's spear.  To respond in damages is
+to contribute to the maintenance of the plaintiff's attorney and,
+incidentally, to the gratification of the plaintiff.
+
+RESPONSIBILITY, n.  A detachable burden easily shifted to the
+shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor.  In the days
+of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.
+
+  Alas, things ain't what we should see
+  If Eve had let that apple be;
+  And many a feller which had ought
+  To set with monarchses of thought,
+  Or play some rosy little game
+  With battle-chaps on fields of fame,
+  Is downed by his unlucky star
+  And hollers:  "Peanuts!--here you are!"
+
+"The Sturdy Beggar"
+
+
+RESTITUTION, n.  The founding or endowing of universities and public
+libraries by gift or bequest.
+
+RESTITUTOR, n.  Benefactor; philanthropist.
+
+RETALIATION, n.  The natural rock upon which is reared the Temple of
+Law.
+
+RETRIBUTION, n.  A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon
+the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by
+evicting them.
+
+In the lines following, addressed to an Emperor in exile by Father
+Gassalasca Jape, the reverend poet appears to hint his sense of the
+imprudence of turning about to face Retribution when it is taking
+exercise:
+
+  What, what! Dom Pedro, you desire to go
+      Back to Brazil to end your days in quiet?
+  Why, what assurance have you 'twould be so?
+      'Tis not so long since you were in a riot,
+      And your dear subjects showed a will to fly at
+  Your throat and shake you like a rat.  You know
+  That empires are ungrateful; are you certain
+  Republics are less handy to get hurt in?
+
+REVEILLE, n.  A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields
+no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted.  In the
+American army it is ingeniously called "rev-e-lee," and to that
+pronunciation our countrymen have pledged their lives, their
+misfortunes and their sacred dishonor.
+
+REVELATION, n.  A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed
+all that he knew.  The revealing is done by the commentators, who know
+nothing.
+
+REVERENCE, n.  The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a
+man.
+
+REVIEW, v.t.
+
+  To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it,
+      Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)
+  At work upon a book, and so read out of it
+      The qualities that you have first read into it.
+
+REVOLUTION, n.  In politics, an abrupt change in the form of
+misgovernment.  Specifically, in American history, the substitution of
+the rule of an Administration for that of a Ministry, whereby the
+welfare and happiness of the people were advanced a full half-inch.
+Revolutions are usually accompanied by a considerable effusion of
+blood, but are accounted worth it--this appraisement being made by
+beneficiaries whose blood had not the mischance to be shed.  The
+French revolution is of incalculable value to the Socialist of to-day;
+when he pulls the string actuating its bones its gestures are
+inexpressibly terrifying to gory tyrants suspected of fomenting law
+and order.
+
+RHADOMANCER, n.  One who uses a divining-rod in prospecting for
+precious metals in the pocket of a fool.
+
+RIBALDRY, n.  Censorious language by another concerning oneself.
+
+RIBROASTER, n.  Censorious language by oneself concerning another.
+The word is of classical refinement, and is even said to have been
+used in a fable by Georgius Coadjutor, one of the most fastidious
+writers of the fifteenth century--commonly, indeed, regarded as the
+founder of the Fastidiotic School.
+
+RICE-WATER, n.  A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular
+novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the
+conscience.  It is said to be rich in both obtundite and lethargine,
+and is brewed in a midnight fog by a fat witch of the Dismal Swamp.
+
+RICH, adj.  Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property
+of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the
+luckless.  That is the view that prevails in the underworld, where the
+Brotherhood of Man finds its most logical development and candid
+advocacy.  To denizens of the midworld the word means good and wise.
+
+RICHES, n.
+
+      A gift from Heaven signifying, "This is my beloved son, in
+  whom I am well pleased."
+
+John D. Rockefeller
+
+
+      The reward of toil and virtue.
+
+J.P. Morgan
+
+
+      The savings of many in the hands of one.
+
+Eugene Debs
+
+To these excellent definitions the inspired lexicographer feels
+that he can add nothing of value.
+
+RIDICULE, n.  Words designed to show that the person of whom they are
+uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who
+utters them.  It may be graphic, mimetic or merely rident.
+Shaftesbury is quoted as having pronounced it the test of truth--a
+ridiculous assertion, for many a solemn fallacy has undergone
+centuries of ridicule with no abatement of its popular acceptance.
+What, for example, has been more valorously derided than the doctrine
+of Infant Respectability?
+
+RIGHT, n.  Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right
+to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have
+measles, and the like.  The first of these rights was once universally
+believed to be derived directly from the will of God; and this is
+still sometimes affirmed _in partibus infidelium_ outside the
+enlightened realms of Democracy; as the well known lines of Sir
+Abednego Bink, following:
+
+      By what right, then, do royal rulers rule?
+          Whose is the sanction of their state and pow'r?
+      He surely were as stubborn as a mule
+          Who, God unwilling, could maintain an hour
+  His uninvited session on the throne, or air
+  His pride securely in the Presidential chair.
+
+      Whatever is is so by Right Divine;
+          Whate'er occurs, God wills it so.  Good land!
+      It were a wondrous thing if His design
+          A fool could baffle or a rogue withstand!
+  If so, then God, I say (intending no offence)
+  Is guilty of contributory negligence.
+
+RIGHTEOUSNESS, n.  A sturdy virtue that was once found among the
+Pantidoodles inhabiting the lower part of the peninsula of Oque.  Some
+feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it
+into several European countries, but it appears to have been
+imperfectly expounded.  An example of this faulty exposition is found
+in the only extant sermon of the pious Bishop Rowley, a characteristic
+passage from which is here given:
+
+      "Now righteousness consisteth not merely in a holy state of
+  mind, nor yet in performance of religious rites and obedience to
+  the letter of the law.  It is not enough that one be pious and
+  just:  one must see to it that others also are in the same state;
+  and to this end compulsion is a proper means.  Forasmuch as my
+  injustice may work ill to another, so by his injustice may evil be
+  wrought upon still another, the which it is as manifestly my duty
+  to estop as to forestall mine own tort.  Wherefore if I would be
+  righteous I am bound to restrain my neighbor, by force if needful,
+  in all those injurious enterprises from which, through a better
+  disposition and by the help of Heaven, I do myself refrain."
+
+RIME, n.  Agreeing sounds in the terminals of verse, mostly bad.  The
+verses themselves, as distinguished from prose, mostly dull.  Usually
+(and wickedly) spelled "rhyme."
+
+RIMER, n.  A poet regarded with indifference or disesteem.
+
+  The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,
+  The sound surceases and the sense expires.
+  Then the domestic dog, to east and west,
+  Expounds the passions burning in his breast.
+  The rising moon o'er that enchanted land
+  Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.
+
+Mowbray Myles
+
+
+RIOT, n.  A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent
+bystanders.
+
+R.I.P.  A careless abbreviation of _requiescat in pace_, attesting an
+indolent goodwill to the dead.  According to the learned Dr. Drigge,
+however, the letters originally meant nothing more than _reductus in
+pulvis_.
+
+RITE, n.  A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept
+or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out
+of it.
+
+RITUALISM, n.  A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear
+freedom, keeping off the grass.
+
+ROAD, n.  A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is
+too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.
+
+  All roads, howsoe'er they diverge, lead to Rome,
+  Whence, thank the good Lord, at least one leads back home.
+
+Borey the Bald
+
+
+ROBBER, n.  A candid man of affairs.
+  It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling
+companion lodged at a wayside inn.  The surroundings were suggestive,
+and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn.  "Once
+there was a Farmer-General of the Revenues."  Saying nothing more, he
+was encouraged to continue.  "That," he said, "is the story."
+
+ROMANCE, n.  Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as
+They Are.  In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to
+probability, as a domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance
+it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination--free,
+lawless, immune to bit and rein.  Your novelist is a poor creature, as
+Carlyle might say--a mere reporter.  He may invent his characters
+and plot, but he must not imagine anything taking place that might not
+occur, albeit his entire narrative is candidly a lie.  Why he imposes
+this hard condition on himself, and "drags at each remove a
+lengthening chain" of his own forging he can explain in ten thick
+volumes without illuminating by so much as a candle's ray the black
+profound of his own ignorance of the matter.  There are great novels,
+for great writers have "laid waste their powers" to write them, but it
+remains true that far and away the most fascinating fiction that we
+have is "The Thousand and One Nights."
+
+ROPE, n.  An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they
+too are mortal.  It is put about the neck and remains in place one's
+whole life long.  It has been largely superseded by a more complex
+electrical device worn upon another part of the person; and this is
+rapidly giving place to an apparatus known as the preachment.
+
+ROSTRUM, n.  In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship.  In
+America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically
+expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.
+
+ROUNDHEAD, n.  A member of the Parliamentarian party in the English
+civil war--so called from his habit of wearing his hair short,
+whereas his enemy, the Cavalier, wore his long.  There were other
+points of difference between them, but the fashion in hair was the
+fundamental cause of quarrel.  The Cavaliers were royalists because
+the king, an indolent fellow, found it more convenient to let his hair
+grow than to wash his neck.  This the Roundheads, who were mostly
+barbers and soap-boilers, deemed an injury to trade, and the royal
+neck was therefore the object of their particular indignation.
+Descendants of the belligerents now wear their hair all alike, but the
+fires of animosity enkindled in that ancient strife smoulder to this
+day beneath the snows of British civility.
+
+RUBBISH, n.  Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies,
+literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions
+lying due south from Boreaplas.
+
+RUIN, v.  To destroy.  Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the
+virtue of maids.
+
+RUM, n.  Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total
+abstainers.
+
+RUMOR, n.  A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.
+
+  Sharp, irresistible by mail or shield,
+      By guard unparried as by flight unstayed,
+  O serviceable Rumor, let me wield
+      Against my enemy no other blade.
+  His be the terror of a foe unseen,
+      His the inutile hand upon the hilt,
+  And mine the deadly tongue, long, slender, keen,
+      Hinting a rumor of some ancient guilt.
+  So shall I slay the wretch without a blow,
+  Spare me to celebrate his overthrow,
+  And nurse my valor for another foe.
+
+Joel Buxter
+
+
+RUSSIAN, n.  A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul.  A
+Tartar Emetic.
+
+
+
+
+S
+
+
+SABBATH, n.  A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God
+made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.  Among the
+Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this
+is the Christian version:  "Remember the seventh day to make thy
+neighbor keep it wholly."  To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient
+that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early
+Fathers of the Church held other views.  So great is the sanctity of
+the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious
+jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is
+reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water
+version of the Fourth Commandment:
+
+  Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,
+  And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.
+
+Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the
+captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine
+ordinance.
+
+SACERDOTALIST, n.  One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a
+priest.  Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge
+that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the
+Neo-Dictionarians.
+
+SACRAMENT, n.  A solemn religious ceremony to which several degrees of
+authority and significance are attached.  Rome has seven sacraments,
+but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can
+afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity.  Some of the smaller
+sects have no sacraments at all--for which mean economy they will
+indubitable be damned.
+
+SACRED, adj.  Dedicated to some religious purpose; having a divine
+character; inspiring solemn thoughts or emotions; as, the Dalai Lama
+of Thibet; the Moogum of M'bwango; the temple of Apes in Ceylon; the
+Cow in India; the Crocodile, the Cat and the Onion of ancient Egypt;
+the Mufti of Moosh; the hair of the dog that bit Noah, etc.
+
+  All things are either sacred or profane.
+  The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
+  The latter to the devil appertain.
+
+Dumbo Omohundro
+
+
+SANDLOTTER, n.  A vertebrate mammal holding the political views of
+Denis Kearney, a notorious demagogue of San Francisco, whose audiences
+gathered in the open spaces (sandlots) of the town.  True to the
+traditions of his species, this leader of the proletariat was finally
+bought off by his law-and-order enemies, living prosperously silent
+and dying impenitently rich.  But before his treason he imposed upon
+California a constitution that was a confection of sin in a diction of
+solecisms.  The similarity between the words "sandlotter" and
+"sansculotte" is problematically significant, but indubitably
+suggestive.
+
+SAFETY-CLUTCH, n.  A mechanical device acting automatically to prevent
+the fall of an elevator, or cage, in case of an accident to the
+hoisting apparatus.
+
+  Once I seen a human ruin
+      In an elevator-well,
+  And his members was bestrewin'
+      All the place where he had fell.
+
+  And I says, apostrophisin'
+      That uncommon woful wreck:
+  "Your position's so surprisin'
+      That I tremble for your neck!"
+
+  Then that ruin, smilin' sadly
+      And impressive, up and spoke:
+  "Well, I wouldn't tremble badly,
+      For it's been a fortnight broke."
+
+  Then, for further comprehension
+      Of his attitude, he begs
+  I will focus my attention
+      On his various arms and legs--
+
+  How they all are contumacious;
+      Where they each, respective, lie;
+  How one trotter proves ungracious,
+      T'other one an _alibi_.
+
+  These particulars is mentioned
+      For to show his dismal state,
+  Which I wasn't first intentioned
+      To specifical relate.
+
+  None is worser to be dreaded
+      That I ever have heard tell
+  Than the gent's who there was spreaded
+      In that elevator-well.
+
+  Now this tale is allegoric--
+      It is figurative all,
+  For the well is metaphoric
+      And the feller didn't fall.
+
+  I opine it isn't moral
+      For a writer-man to cheat,
+  And despise to wear a laurel
+      As was gotten by deceit.
+
+  For 'tis Politics intended
+      By the elevator, mind,
+  It will boost a person splendid
+      If his talent is the kind.
+
+  Col. Bryan had the talent
+      (For the busted man is him)
+  And it shot him up right gallant
+      Till his head begun to swim.
+
+  Then the rope it broke above him
+      And he painful come to earth
+  Where there's nobody to love him
+      For his detrimented worth.
+
+  Though he's livin' none would know him,
+      Or at leastwise not as such.
+  Moral of this woful poem:
+      Frequent oil your safety-clutch.
+
+Porfer Poog
+
+
+SAINT, n.  A dead sinner revised and edited.
+
+The Duchess of Orleans relates that the irreverent old
+calumniator, Marshal Villeroi, who in his youth had known St. Francis
+de Sales, said, on hearing him called saint:  "I am delighted to hear
+that Monsieur de Sales is a saint.  He was fond of saying indelicate
+things, and used to cheat at cards.  In other respects he was a
+perfect gentleman, though a fool."
+
+SALACITY, n.  A certain literary quality frequently observed in
+popular novels, especially in those written by women and young girls,
+who give it another name and think that in introducing it they are
+occupying a neglected field of letters and reaping an overlooked
+harvest.  If they have the misfortune to live long enough they are
+tormented with a desire to burn their sheaves.
+
+SALAMANDER, n.  Originally a reptile inhabiting fire; later, an
+anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile.  Salamanders are now
+believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account
+having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it
+with a bucket of holy water.
+
+SARCOPHAGUS, n.  Among the Greeks a coffin which being made of a
+certain kind of carnivorous stone, had the peculiar property of
+devouring the body placed in it.  The sarcophagus known to modern
+obsequiographers is commonly a product of the carpenter's art.
+
+SATAN, n.  One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in
+sashcloth and axes.  Being instated as an archangel, Satan made
+himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from
+Heaven.  Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a
+moment and at last went back.  "There is one favor that I should like
+to ask," said he.
+
+"Name it."
+
+"Man, I understand, is about to be created.  He will need laws."
+
+"What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn
+of eternity with hatred of his soul--you ask for the right to make
+his laws?"
+
+"Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them
+himself."
+
+It was so ordered.
+
+SATIETY, n.  The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten
+its contents, madam.
+
+SATIRE, n.  An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the
+vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with
+imperfect tenderness.  In this country satire never had more than a
+sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we
+are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all
+humor, being tolerant and sympathetic.  Moreover, although Americans
+are "endowed by their Creator" with abundant vice and folly, it is not
+generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the
+satirist is popularly regarded as a sour-spirited knave, and his ever
+victim's outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent.
+
+  Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung
+  In the dead language of a mummy's tongue,
+  For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well--
+  Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell.
+  Had it been such as consecrates the Bible
+  Thou hadst not perished by the law of libel.
+
+Barney Stims
+
+
+SATYR, n.  One of the few characters of the Grecian mythology accorded
+recognition in the Hebrew.  (Leviticus, xvii, 7.)  The satyr was at
+first a member of the dissolute community acknowledging a loose
+allegiance with Dionysius, but underwent many transformations and
+improvements.  Not infrequently he is confounded with the faun, a
+later and decenter creation of the Romans, who was less like a man and
+more like a goat.
+
+SAUCE, n.  The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment.
+A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one
+sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine.  For every sauce invented
+and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.
+
+SAW, n.  A trite popular saying, or proverb.  (Figurative and
+colloquial.)  So called because it makes its way into a wooden head.
+Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.
+
+      A penny saved is a penny to squander.
+
+      A man is known by the company that he organizes.
+
+      A bad workman quarrels with the man who calls him that.
+
+      A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
+
+      Better late than before anybody has invited you.
+
+      Example is better than following it.
+
+      Half a loaf is better than a whole one if there is much else.
+
+      Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.
+
+      What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
+
+      Least said is soonest disavowed.
+
+      He laughs best who laughs least.
+
+      Speak of the Devil and he will hear about it.
+
+      Of two evils choose to be the least.
+
+      Strike while your employer has a big contract.
+
+      Where there's a will there's a won't.
+
+SCARABAEUS, n.  The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to
+our familiar "tumble-bug."  It was supposed to symbolize immortality,
+the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity.  Its habit
+of incubating its eggs in a ball of ordure may also have commended it
+to the favor of the priesthood, and may some day assure it an equal
+reverence among ourselves.  True, the American beetle is an inferior
+beetle, but the American priest is an inferior priest.
+
+SCARABEE, n.  The same as scarabaeus.
+
+              He fell by his own hand
+                  Beneath the great oak tree.
+              He'd traveled in a foreign land.
+              He tried to make her understand
+              The dance that's called the Saraband,
+                  But he called it Scarabee.
+  He had called it so through an afternoon,
+      And she, the light of his harem if so might be,
+      Had smiled and said naught.  O the body was fair to see,
+  All frosted there in the shine o' the moon--
+                      Dead for a Scarabee
+  And a recollection that came too late.
+                          O Fate!
+                  They buried him where he lay,
+                  He sleeps awaiting the Day,
+                          In state,
+  And two Possible Puns, moon-eyed and wan,
+  Gloom over the grave and then move on.
+                      Dead for a Scarabee!
+                                                     Fernando Tapple
+
+SCARIFICATION, n.  A form of penance practised by the mediaeval pious.
+The rite was performed, sometimes with a knife, sometimes with a hot
+iron, but always, says Arsenius Asceticus, acceptably if the penitent
+spared himself no pain nor harmless disfigurement.  Scarification,
+with other crude penances, has now been superseded by benefaction.
+The founding of a library or endowment of a university is said to
+yield to the penitent a sharper and more lasting pain than is
+conferred by the knife or iron, and is therefore a surer means of
+grace.  There are, however, two grave objections to it as a
+penitential method:  the good that it does and the taint of justice.
+
+SCEPTER, n.  A king's staff of office, the sign and symbol of his
+authority.  It was originally a mace with which the sovereign
+admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the
+bones of their proponents.
+
+SCIMITAR, n.  A curved sword of exceeding keenness, in the conduct of
+which certain Orientals attain a surprising proficiency, as the
+incident here related will serve to show.  The account is translated
+from the Japanese of Shusi Itama, a famous writer of the thirteenth
+century.
+
+      When the great Gichi-Kuktai was Mikado he condemned to
+  decapitation Jijiji Ri, a high officer of the Court.  Soon after
+  the hour appointed for performance of the rite what was his
+  Majesty's surprise to see calmly approaching the throne the man
+  who should have been at that time ten minutes dead!
+      "Seventeen hundred impossible dragons!" shouted the enraged
+  monarch.  "Did I not sentence you to stand in the market-place and
+  have your head struck off by the public executioner at three
+  o'clock?  And is it not now 3:10?"
+      "Son of a thousand illustrious deities," answered the
+  condemned minister, "all that you say is so true that the truth is
+  a lie in comparison.  But your heavenly Majesty's sunny and
+  vitalizing wishes have been pestilently disregarded.  With joy I
+  ran and placed my unworthy body in the market-place.  The
+  executioner appeared with his bare scimitar, ostentatiously
+  whirled it in air, and then, tapping me lightly upon the neck,
+  strode away, pelted by the populace, with whom I was ever a
+  favorite.  I am come to pray for justice upon his own dishonorable
+  and treasonous head."
+      "To what regiment of executioners does the black-boweled
+  caitiff belong?" asked the Mikado.
+      "To the gallant Ninety-eight Hundred and Thirty-seventh--I
+  know the man.  His name is Sakko-Samshi."
+      "Let him be brought before me," said the Mikado to an
+  attendant, and a half-hour later the culprit stood in the
+  Presence.
+      "Thou bastard son of a three-legged hunchback without thumbs!"
+  roared the sovereign--"why didst thou but lightly tap the neck
+  that it should have been thy pleasure to sever?"
+      "Lord of Cranes an Cherry Blooms," replied the executioner,
+  unmoved, "command him to blow his nose with his fingers."
+      Being commanded, Jijiji Ri laid hold of his nose and trumpeted
+  like an elephant, all expecting to see the severed head flung
+  violently from him.  Nothing occurred:  the performance prospered
+  peacefully to the close, without incident.
+      All eyes were now turned on the executioner, who had grown as
+  white as the snows on the summit of Fujiama.  His legs trembled
+  and his breath came in gasps of terror.
+      "Several kinds of spike-tailed brass lions!" he cried; "I am a
+  ruined and disgraced swordsman!  I struck the villain feebly
+  because in flourishing the scimitar I had accidentally passed it
+  through my own neck!  Father of the Moon, I resign my office."
+      So saying, he gasped his top-knot, lifted off his head, and
+  advancing to the throne laid it humbly at the Mikado's feet.
+
+SCRAP-BOOK, n.  A book that is commonly edited by a fool.  Many
+persons of some small distinction compile scrap-books containing
+whatever they happen to read about themselves or employ others to
+collect.  One of these egotists was addressed in the lines following,
+by Agamemnon Melancthon Peters:
+
+  Dear Frank, that scrap-book where you boast
+      You keep a record true
+  Of every kind of peppered roast
+          That's made of you;
+
+  Wherein you paste the printed gibes
+      That revel round your name,
+  Thinking the laughter of the scribes
+          Attests your fame;
+
+  Where all the pictures you arrange
+      That comic pencils trace--
+  Your funny figure and your strange
+          Semitic face--
+
+  Pray lend it me.  Wit I have not,
+      Nor art, but there I'll list
+  The daily drubbings you'd have got
+          Had God a fist.
+
+SCRIBBLER, n.  A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to
+one's own.
+
+SCRIPTURES, n.  The sacred books of our holy religion, as
+distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other
+faiths are based.
+
+SEAL, n.  A mark impressed upon certain kinds of documents to attest
+their authenticity and authority.  Sometimes it is stamped upon wax,
+and attached to the paper, sometimes into the paper itself.  Sealing,
+in this sense, is a survival of an ancient custom of inscribing
+important papers with cabalistic words or signs to give them a magical
+efficacy independent of the authority that they represent.  In the
+British museum are preserved many ancient papers, mostly of a
+sacerdotal character, validated by necromantic pentagrams and other
+devices, frequently initial letters of words to conjure with; and in
+many instances these are attached in the same way that seals are
+appended now.  As nearly every reasonless and apparently meaningless
+custom, rite or observance of modern times had origin in some remote
+utility, it is pleasing to note an example of ancient nonsense
+evolving in the process of ages into something really useful.  Our
+word "sincere" is derived from _sine cero_, without wax, but the
+learned are not in agreement as to whether this refers to the absence
+of the cabalistic signs, or to that of the wax with which letters were
+formerly closed from public scrutiny.  Either view of the matter will
+serve one in immediate need of an hypothesis.  The initials L.S.,
+commonly appended to signatures of legal documents, mean _locum
+sigillis_, the place of the seal, although the seal is no longer used
+--an admirable example of conservatism distinguishing Man from the
+beasts that perish.  The words _locum sigillis_ are humbly suggested
+as a suitable motto for the Pribyloff Islands whenever they shall take
+their place as a sovereign State of the American Union.
+
+SEINE, n.  A kind of net for effecting an involuntary change of
+environment.  For fish it is made strong and coarse, but women are
+more easily taken with a singularly delicate fabric weighted with
+small, cut stones.
+
+  The devil casting a seine of lace,
+      (With precious stones 'twas weighted)
+  Drew it into the landing place
+      And its contents calculated.
+
+  All souls of women were in that sack--
+      A draft miraculous, precious!
+  But ere he could throw it across his back
+      They'd all escaped through the meshes.
+
+Baruch de Loppis
+
+
+SELF-ESTEEM, n.  An erroneous appraisement.
+
+SELF-EVIDENT, adj.  Evident to one's self and to nobody else.
+
+SELFISH, adj.  Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
+
+SENATE, n.  A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
+misdemeanors.
+
+SERIAL, n.  A literary work, usually a story that is not true,
+creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.
+Frequently appended to each installment is a "synposis of preceding
+chapters" for those who have not read them, but a direr need is a
+synposis of succeeding chapters for those who do not intend to read
+_them_.  A synposis of the entire work would be still better.
+
+The late James F. Bowman was writing a serial tale for a weekly
+paper in collaboration with a genius whose name has not come down to
+us.  They wrote, not jointly but alternately, Bowman supplying the
+installment for one week, his friend for the next, and so on, world
+without end, they hoped.  Unfortunately they quarreled, and one Monday
+morning when Bowman read the paper to prepare himself for his task, he
+found his work cut out for him in a way to surprise and pain him.  His
+collaborator had embarked every character of the narrative on a ship
+and sunk them all in the deepest part of the Atlantic.
+
+SEVERALTY, n.  Separateness, as, lands in severalty, i.e., lands held
+individually, not in joint ownership.  Certain tribes of Indians are
+believed now to be sufficiently civilized to have in severalty the
+lands that they have hitherto held as tribal organizations, and could
+not sell to the Whites for waxen beads and potato whiskey.
+
+  Lo! the poor Indian whose unsuited mind
+  Saw death before, hell and the grave behind;
+  Whom thrifty settler ne'er besought to stay--
+  His small belongings their appointed prey;
+  Whom Dispossession, with alluring wile,
+  Persuaded elsewhere every little while!
+  His fire unquenched and his undying worm
+  By "land in severalty" (charming term!)
+  Are cooled and killed, respectively, at last,
+  And he to his new holding anchored fast!
+
+SHERIFF, n.  In America the chief executive officer of a county, whose
+most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern
+States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.
+
+  John Elmer Pettibone Cajee
+  (I write of him with little glee)
+  Was just as bad as he could be.
+
+  'Twas frequently remarked:  "I swon!
+  The sun has never looked upon
+  So bad a man as Neighbor John."
+
+  A sinner through and through, he had
+  This added fault:  it made him mad
+  To know another man was bad.
+
+  In such a case he thought it right
+  To rise at any hour of night
+  And quench that wicked person's light.
+
+  Despite the town's entreaties, he
+  Would hale him to the nearest tree
+  And leave him swinging wide and free.
+
+  Or sometimes, if the humor came,
+  A luckless wight's reluctant frame
+  Was given to the cheerful flame.
+
+  While it was turning nice and brown,
+  All unconcerned John met the frown
+  Of that austere and righteous town.
+
+  "How sad," his neighbors said, "that he
+  So scornful of the law should be--
+  An anar c, h, i, s, t."
+
+  (That is the way that they preferred
+  To utter the abhorrent word,
+  So strong the aversion that it stirred.)
+
+  "Resolved," they said, continuing,
+  "That Badman John must cease this thing
+  Of having his unlawful fling.
+
+  "Now, by these sacred relics"--here
+  Each man had out a souvenir
+  Got at a lynching yesteryear--
+
+  "By these we swear he shall forsake
+  His ways, nor cause our hearts to ache
+  By sins of rope and torch and stake.
+
+  "We'll tie his red right hand until
+  He'll have small freedom to fulfil
+  The mandates of his lawless will."
+
+  So, in convention then and there,
+  They named him Sheriff.  The affair
+  Was opened, it is said, with prayer.
+
+J. Milton Sloluck
+
+
+SIREN, n.  One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt
+to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave.  Figuratively, any
+lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing
+performance.
+
+SLANG, n.  The grunt of the human hog (_Pignoramus intolerabilis_)
+with an audible memory.  The speech of one who utters with his tongue
+what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in
+accomplishing the feat of a parrot.  A means (under Providence) of
+setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.
+
+SMITHAREEN, n.  A fragment, a decomponent part, a remain.  The word is
+used variously, but in the following verse on a noted female reformer
+who opposed bicycle-riding by women because it "led them to the devil"
+it is seen at its best:
+
+  The wheels go round without a sound--
+      The maidens hold high revel;
+  In sinful mood, insanely gay,
+  True spinsters spin adown the way
+      From duty to the devil!
+  They laugh, they sing, and--ting-a-ling!
+      Their bells go all the morning;
+  Their lanterns bright bestar the night
+      Pedestrians a-warning.
+  With lifted hands Miss Charlotte stands,
+      Good-Lording and O-mying,
+  Her rheumatism forgotten quite,
+      Her fat with anger frying.
+  She blocks the path that leads to wrath,
+      Jack Satan's power defying.
+  The wheels go round without a sound
+      The lights burn red and blue and green.
+  What's this that's found upon the ground?
+      Poor Charlotte Smith's a smithareen!
+
+John William Yope
+
+
+SOPHISTRY, n.  The controversial method of an opponent, distinguished
+from one's own by superior insincerity and fooling.  This method is
+that of the later Sophists, a Grecian sect of philosophers who began
+by teaching wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in brief, whatever men
+ought to know, but lost themselves in a maze of quibbles and a fog of
+words.
+
+  His bad opponent's "facts" he sweeps away,
+  And drags his sophistry to light of day;
+  Then swears they're pushed to madness who resort
+  To falsehood of so desperate a sort.
+  Not so; like sods upon a dead man's breast,
+  He lies most lightly who the least is pressed.
+
+Polydore Smith
+
+
+SORCERY, n.  The ancient prototype and forerunner of political
+influence.  It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was
+punished by torture and death.  Augustine Nicholas relates that a poor
+peasant who had been accused of sorcery was put to the torture to
+compel a confession.  After enduring a few gentle agonies the
+suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively asked his
+tormentors if it were not possible to be a sorcerer without knowing
+it.
+
+SOUL, n.  A spiritual entity concerning which there hath been brave
+disputation.  Plato held that those souls which in a previous state of
+existence (antedating Athens) had obtained the clearest glimpses of
+eternal truth entered into the bodies of persons who became
+philosophers.  Plato himself was a philosopher.  The souls that had
+least contemplated divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and
+despots.  Dionysius I, who had threatened to decapitate the
+broad-browed philosopher, was a usurper and a despot.  Plato, doubtless,
+was not the first to construct a system of philosophy that could be
+quoted against his enemies; certainly he was not the last.
+
+"Concerning the nature of the soul," saith the renowned author of
+_Diversiones Sanctorum_, "there hath been hardly more argument than
+that of its place in the body.  Mine own belief is that the soul hath
+her seat in the abdomen--in which faith we may discern and interpret
+a truth hitherto unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men
+most devout.  He is said in the Scripture to 'make a god of his belly'
+--why, then, should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him
+to freshen his faith?  Who so well as he can know the might and
+majesty that he shrines?  Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach
+are one Divine Entity; and such was the belief of Promasius, who
+nevertheless erred in denying it immortality.  He had observed that
+its visible and material substance failed and decayed with the rest of
+the body after death, but of its immaterial essence he knew nothing.
+This is what we call the Appetite, and it survives the wreck and reek
+of mortality, to be rewarded or punished in another world, according
+to what it hath demanded in the flesh.  The Appetite whose coarse
+clamoring was for the unwholesome viands of the general market and the
+public refectory shall be cast into eternal famine, whilst that which
+firmly though civilly insisted on ortolans, caviare, terrapin,
+anchovies, _pates de foie gras_ and all such Christian comestibles
+shall flesh its spiritual tooth in the souls of them forever and ever,
+and wreak its divine thirst upon the immortal parts of the rarest and
+richest wines ever quaffed here below.  Such is my religious faith,
+though I grieve to confess that neither His Holiness the Pope nor His
+Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I equally and profoundly
+revere) will assent to its dissemination."
+
+SPOOKER, n.  A writer whose imagination concerns itself with
+supernatural phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks.  One of
+the most illustrious spookers of our time is Mr. William D. Howells,
+who introduces a well-credentialed reader to as respectable and
+mannerly a company of spooks as one could wish to meet.  To the terror
+that invests the chairman of a district school board, the Howells
+ghost adds something of the mystery enveloping a farmer from another
+township.
+
+STORY, n.  A narrative, commonly untrue.  The truth of the stories
+here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.
+
+One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated
+at dinner alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
+
+"Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_,
+is published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its
+authorship.  Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the
+Idiot of the Century.  Do you think that fair criticism?"
+
+"I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did
+not occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who
+wrote it."
+
+Mr. W.C. Morrow, who used to live in San Jose, California, was
+addicted to writing ghost stories which made the reader feel as if a
+stream of lizards, fresh from the ice, were streaking it up his back
+and hiding in his hair.  San Jose was at that time believed to be
+haunted by the visible spirit of a noted bandit named Vasquez, who had
+been hanged there.  The town was not very well lighted, and it is
+putting it mildly to say that San Jose was reluctant to be out o'
+nights.  One particularly dark night two gentlemen were abroad in the
+loneliest spot within the city limits, talking loudly to keep up their
+courage, when they came upon Mr. J.J. Owen, a well-known journalist.
+
+"Why, Owen," said one, "what brings you here on such a night as
+this?  You told me that this is one of Vasquez' favorite haunts!  And
+you are a believer.  Aren't you afraid to be out?"
+
+"My dear fellow," the journalist replied with a drear autumnal
+cadence in his speech, like the moan of a leaf-laden wind, "I am
+afraid to be in.  I have one of Will Morrow's stories in my pocket and
+I don't dare to go where there is light enough to read it."
+
+Rear-Admiral Schley and Representative Charles F. Joy were
+standing near the Peace Monument, in Washington, discussing the
+question, Is success a failure?  Mr. Joy suddenly broke off in the
+middle of an eloquent sentence, exclaiming:  "Hello!  I've heard that
+band before.  Santlemann's, I think."
+
+"I don't hear any band," said Schley.
+
+"Come to think, I don't either," said Joy; "but I see General
+Miles coming down the avenue, and that pageant always affects me in
+the same way as a brass band.  One has to scrutinize one's impressions
+pretty closely, or one will mistake their origin."
+
+While the Admiral was digesting this hasty meal of philosophy
+General Miles passed in review, a spectacle of impressive dignity.
+When the tail of the seeming procession had passed and the two
+observers had recovered from the transient blindness caused by its
+effulgence--
+
+"He seems to be enjoying himself," said the Admiral.
+
+"There is nothing," assented Joy, thoughtfully, "that he enjoys
+one-half so well."
+
+
+The illustrious statesman, Champ Clark, once lived about a mile
+from the village of Jebigue, in Missouri.  One day he rode into town
+on a favorite mule, and, hitching the beast on the sunny side of a
+street, in front of a saloon, he went inside in his character of
+teetotaler, to apprise the barkeeper that wine is a mocker.  It was a
+dreadfully hot day.  Pretty soon a neighbor came in and seeing Clark,
+said:
+
+"Champ, it is not right to leave that mule out there in the sun.
+He'll roast, sure!--he was smoking as I passed him."
+
+"O, he's all right," said Clark, lightly; "he's an inveterate
+smoker."
+
+The neighbor took a lemonade, but shook his head and repeated that
+it was not right.
+
+He was a conspirator.  There had been a fire the night before:  a
+stable just around the corner had burned and a number of horses had
+put on their immortality, among them a young colt, which was roasted
+to a rich nut-brown.  Some of the boys had turned Mr. Clark's mule
+loose and substituted the mortal part of the colt.  Presently another
+man entered the saloon.
+
+"For mercy's sake!" he said, taking it with sugar, "do remove that
+mule, barkeeper:  it smells."
+
+"Yes," interposed Clark, "that animal has the best nose in
+Missouri.  But if he doesn't mind, you shouldn't."
+
+In the course of human events Mr. Clark went out, and there,
+apparently, lay the incinerated and shrunken remains of his charger.
+The boys did not have any fun out of Mr. Clarke, who looked at the
+body and, with the non-committal expression to which he owes so much
+of his political preferment, went away.  But walking home late that
+night he saw his mule standing silent and solemn by the wayside in the
+misty moonlight.  Mentioning the name of Helen Blazes with uncommon
+emphasis, Mr. Clark took the back track as hard as ever he could hook
+it, and passed the night in town.
+
+General H.H. Wotherspoon, president of the Army War College, has a
+pet rib-nosed baboon, an animal of uncommon intelligence but
+imperfectly beautiful.  Returning to his apartment one evening, the
+General was surprised and pained to find Adam (for so the creature is
+named, the general being a Darwinian) sitting up for him and wearing
+his master's best uniform coat, epaulettes and all.
+
+"You confounded remote ancestor!" thundered the great strategist,
+"what do you mean by being out of bed after naps?--and with my coat
+on!"
+
+Adam rose and with a reproachful look got down on all fours in the
+manner of his kind and, scuffling across the room to a table, returned
+with a visiting-card:  General Barry had called and, judging by an
+empty champagne bottle and several cigar-stumps, had been hospitably
+entertained while waiting.  The general apologized to his faithful
+progenitor and retired.  The next day he met General Barry, who said:
+
+"Spoon, old man, when leaving you last evening I forgot to ask you
+about those excellent cigars.  Where did you get them?"
+
+General Wotherspoon did not deign to reply, but walked away.
+
+"Pardon me, please," said Barry, moving after him; "I was joking
+of course.  Why, I knew it was not you before I had been in the room
+fifteen minutes."
+
+SUCCESS, n.  The one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.  In
+literature, and particularly in poetry, the elements of success are
+exceedingly simple, and are admirably set forth in the following lines
+by the reverend Father Gassalasca Jape, entitled, for some mysterious
+reason, "John A. Joyce."
+
+  The bard who would prosper must carry a book,
+      Do his thinking in prose and wear
+  A crimson cravat, a far-away look
+      And a head of hexameter hair.
+  Be thin in your thought and your body'll be fat;
+  If you wear your hair long you needn't your hat.
+
+SUFFRAGE, n.  Expression of opinion by means of a ballot.  The right
+of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means,
+as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another
+man's choice, and is highly prized.  Refusal to do so has the bad name
+of "incivism."  The incivilian, however, cannot be properly arraigned
+for his crime, for there is no legitimate accuser.  If the accuser is
+himself guilty he has no standing in the court of opinion; if not, he
+profits by the crime, for A's abstention from voting gives greater
+weight to the vote of B.  By female suffrage is meant the right of a
+woman to vote as some man tells her to.  It is based on female
+responsibility, which is somewhat limited.  The woman most eager to
+jump out of her petticoat to assert her rights is first to jump back
+into it when threatened with a switching for misusing them.
+
+SYCOPHANT, n.  One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he
+may not be commanded to turn and be kicked.  He is sometimes an
+editor.
+
+  As the lean leech, its victim found, is pleased
+  To fix itself upon a part diseased
+  Till, its black hide distended with bad blood,
+  It drops to die of surfeit in the mud,
+  So the base sycophant with joy descries
+  His neighbor's weak spot and his mouth applies,
+  Gorges and prospers like the leech, although,
+  Unlike that reptile, he will not let go.
+  Gelasma, if it paid you to devote
+  Your talent to the service of a goat,
+  Showing by forceful logic that its beard
+  Is more than Aaron's fit to be revered;
+  If to the task of honoring its smell
+  Profit had prompted you, and love as well,
+  The world would benefit at last by you
+  And wealthy malefactors weep anew--
+  Your favor for a moment's space denied
+  And to the nobler object turned aside.
+  Is't not enough that thrifty millionaires
+  Who loot in freight and spoliate in fares,
+  Or, cursed with consciences that bid them fly
+  To safer villainies of darker dye,
+  Forswearing robbery and fain, instead,
+  To steal (they call it "cornering") our bread
+  May see you groveling their boots to lick
+  And begging for the favor of a kick?
+  Still must you follow to the bitter end
+  Your sycophantic disposition's trend,
+  And in your eagerness to please the rich
+  Hunt hungry sinners to their final ditch?
+  In Morgan's praise you smite the sounding wire,
+  And sing hosannas to great Havemeyer!
+  What's Satan done that him you should eschew?
+  He too is reeking rich--deducting _you_.
+
+SYLLOGISM, n.  A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor
+assumption and an inconsequent.  (See LOGIC.)
+
+SYLPH, n.  An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when
+the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory
+smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.  Sylphs were
+allied to gnomes, nymphs and salamanders, which dwelt, respectively,
+in earth, water and fire, all now insalubrious.  Sylphs, like fowls of
+the air, were male and female, to no purpose, apparently, for if they
+had progeny they must have nested in inaccessible places, none of the
+chicks having ever been seen.
+
+SYMBOL, n.  Something that is supposed to typify or stand for
+something else.  Many symbols are mere "survivals"--things which
+having no longer any utility continue to exist because we have
+inherited the tendency to make them; as funereal urns carved on
+memorial monuments.  They were once real urns holding the ashes of the
+dead.  We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that
+conceals our helplessness.
+
+SYMBOLIC, adj.  Pertaining to symbols and the use and interpretation
+of symbols.
+
+  They say 'tis conscience feels compunction;
+  I hold that that's the stomach's function,
+  For of the sinner I have noted
+  That when he's sinned he's somewhat bloated,
+  Or ill some other ghastly fashion
+  Within that bowel of compassion.
+  True, I believe the only sinner
+  Is he that eats a shabby dinner.
+  You know how Adam with good reason,
+  For eating apples out of season,
+  Was "cursed."  But that is all symbolic:
+  The truth is, Adam had the colic.
+
+G.J.
+
+
+
+
+T
+
+
+T, the twentieth letter of the English alphabet, was by the Greeks
+absurdly called _tau_.  In the alphabet whence ours comes it had the
+form of the rude corkscrew of the period, and when it stood alone
+(which was more than the Phoenicians could always do) signified
+_Tallegal_, translated by the learned Dr. Brownrigg, "tanglefoot."
+
+TABLE D'HOTE, n.  A caterer's thrifty concession to the universal
+passion for irresponsibility.
+
+  Old Paunchinello, freshly wed,
+      Took Madam P. to table,
+  And there deliriously fed
+      As fast as he was able.
+
+  "I dote upon good grub," he cried,
+      Intent upon its throatage.
+  "Ah, yes," said the neglected bride,
+      "You're in your _table d'hotage_."
+
+Associated Poets
+
+
+TAIL, n.  The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its
+natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of
+its own.  Excepting in its foetal state, Man is without a tail, a
+privation of which he attests an hereditary and uneasy consciousness
+by the coat-skirt of the male and the train of the female, and by a
+marked tendency to ornament that part of his attire where the tail
+should be, and indubitably once was.  This tendency is most observable
+in the female of the species, in whom the ancestral sense is strong
+and persistent.  The tailed men described by Lord Monboddo are now
+generally regarded as a product of an imagination unusually
+susceptible to influences generated in the golden age of our pithecan
+past.
+
+TAKE, v.t.  To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.
+
+TALK, v.t.  To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an
+impulse without purpose.
+
+TARIFF, n.  A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the
+domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.
+
+  The Enemy of Human Souls
+  Sat grieving at the cost of coals;
+  For Hell had been annexed of late,
+  And was a sovereign Southern State.
+
+  "It were no more than right," said he,
+  "That I should get my fuel free.
+  The duty, neither just nor wise,
+  Compels me to economize--
+  Whereby my broilers, every one,
+  Are execrably underdone.
+  What would they have?--although I yearn
+  To do them nicely to a turn,
+  I can't afford an honest heat.
+  This tariff makes even devils cheat!
+  I'm ruined, and my humble trade
+  All rascals may at will invade:
+  Beneath my nose the public press
+  Outdoes me in sulphureousness;
+  The bar ingeniously applies
+  To my undoing my own lies;
+  My medicines the doctors use
+  (Albeit vainly) to refuse
+  To me my fair and rightful prey
+  And keep their own in shape to pay;
+  The preachers by example teach
+  What, scorning to perform, I teach;
+  And statesmen, aping me, all make
+  More promises than they can break.
+  Against such competition I
+  Lift up a disregarded cry.
+  Since all ignore my just complaint,
+  By Hokey-Pokey!  I'll turn saint!"
+  Now, the Republicans, who all
+  Are saints, began at once to bawl
+  Against _his_ competition; so
+  There was a devil of a go!
+  They locked horns with him, tete-a-tete
+  In acrimonious debate,
+  Till Democrats, forlorn and lone,
+  Had hopes of coming by their own.
+  That evil to avert, in haste
+  The two belligerents embraced;
+  But since 'twere wicked to relax
+  A tittle of the Sacred Tax,
+  'Twas finally agreed to grant
+  The bold Insurgent-protestant
+  A bounty on each soul that fell
+  Into his ineffectual Hell.
+
+Edam Smith
+
+
+TECHNICALITY, n.  In an English court a man named Home was tried for
+slander in having accused his neighbor of murder.  His exact words
+were:  "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook
+upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and
+the other side upon the other shoulder."  The defendant was acquitted
+by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words
+did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook,
+that being only an inference.
+
+TEDIUM, n.  Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored.  Many
+fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an
+authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious
+source--the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum
+Laudamus_.  In this apparently natural derivation there is something
+that saddens.
+
+TEETOTALER, n.  One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally,
+sometimes tolerably totally.
+
+TELEPHONE, n.  An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
+advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
+
+TELESCOPE, n.  A device having a relation to the eye similar to that
+of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us
+with a multitude of needless details.  Luckily it is unprovided with a
+bell summoning us to the sacrifice.
+
+TENACITY, n.  A certain quality of the human hand in its relation to
+the coin of the realm.  It attains its highest development in the hand
+of authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in
+politics.  The following illustrative lines were written of a
+Californian gentleman in high political preferment, who has passed to
+his accounting:
+
+  Of such tenacity his grip
+  That nothing from his hand can slip.
+  Well-buttered eels you may o'erwhelm
+  In tubs of liquid slippery-elm
+  In vain--from his detaining pinch
+  They cannot struggle half an inch!
+  'Tis lucky that he so is planned
+  That breath he draws not with his hand,
+  For if he did, so great his greed
+  He'd draw his last with eager speed.
+  Nay, that were well, you say.  Not so
+  He'd draw but never let it go!
+
+THEOSOPHY, n.  An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion
+and all the mystery of science.  The modern Theosophist holds, with
+the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this
+earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough
+for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime
+does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to
+wish to become.  To be absolutely wise and good--that is perfection;
+and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that
+everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection.
+Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem
+neither wiser nor better than they were last year.  The greatest and
+fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had
+no cat.
+
+TIGHTS, n.  An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the
+general acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity.
+Public attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss
+Lillian Russell's refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as
+to her motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of
+ingenuity and sustained reflection.  It was Miss Hall's belief that
+nature had not endowed Miss Russell with beautiful legs.  This theory
+was impossible of acceptance by the male understanding, but the
+conception of a faulty female leg was of so prodigious originality as
+to rank among the most brilliant feats of philosophical speculation!
+It is strange that in all the controversy regarding Miss Russell's
+aversion to tights no one seems to have thought to ascribe it to what
+was known among the ancients as "modesty."  The nature of that
+sentiment is now imperfectly understood, and possibly incapable of
+exposition with the vocabulary that remains to us.  The study of lost
+arts has, however, been recently revived and some of the arts
+themselves recovered.  This is an epoch of _renaissances_, and there
+is ground for hope that the primitive "blush" may be dragged from its
+hiding-place amongst the tombs of antiquity and hissed on to the
+stage.
+
+TOMB, n.  The House of Indifference.  Tombs are now by common consent
+invested with a certain sanctity, but when they have been long
+tenanted it is considered no sin to break them open and rifle them,
+the famous Egyptologist, Dr. Huggyns, explaining that a tomb may be
+innocently "glened" as soon as its occupant is done "smellynge," the
+soul being then all exhaled.  This reasonable view is now generally
+accepted by archaeologists, whereby the noble science of Curiosity has
+been greatly dignified.
+
+TOPE, v.  To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig.
+In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping
+nations are in the forefront of civilization and power.  When pitted
+against the hard-drinking Christians the abstemious Mahometans go down
+like grass before the scythe.  In India one hundred thousand
+beef-eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two
+hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race.
+With what an easy grace the whisky-loving American pushed the temperate
+Spaniard out of his possessions!  From the time when the Berserkers
+ravaged all the coasts of western Europe and lay drunk in every
+conquered port it has been the same way:  everywhere the nations that
+drink too much are observed to fight rather well and not too
+righteously.  Wherefore the estimable old ladies who abolished the
+canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially
+augmented the nation's military power.
+
+TORTOISE, n.  A creature thoughtfully created to supply occasion for
+the following lines by the illustrious Ambat Delaso:
+
+
+TO MY PET TORTOISE
+
+
+  My friend, you are not graceful--not at all;
+  Your gait's between a stagger and a sprawl.
+
+  Nor are you beautiful:  your head's a snake's
+  To look at, and I do not doubt it aches.
+
+  As to your feet, they'd make an angel weep.
+  'Tis true you take them in whene'er you sleep.
+
+  No, you're not pretty, but you have, I own,
+  A certain firmness--mostly you're [sic] backbone.
+
+  Firmness and strength (you have a giant's thews)
+  Are virtues that the great know how to use--
+
+  I wish that they did not; yet, on the whole,
+  You lack--excuse my mentioning it--Soul.
+
+  So, to be candid, unreserved and true,
+  I'd rather you were I than I were you.
+
+  Perhaps, however, in a time to be,
+  When Man's extinct, a better world may see
+
+  Your progeny in power and control,
+  Due to the genesis and growth of Soul.
+
+  So I salute you as a reptile grand
+  Predestined to regenerate the land.
+
+  Father of Possibilities, O deign
+  To accept the homage of a dying reign!
+
+  In the far region of the unforeknown
+  I dream a tortoise upon every throne.
+
+  I see an Emperor his head withdraw
+  Into his carapace for fear of Law;
+
+  A King who carries something else than fat,
+  Howe'er acceptably he carries that;
+
+  A President not strenuously bent
+  On punishment of audible dissent--
+
+  Who never shot (it were a vain attack)
+  An armed or unarmed tortoise in the back;
+
+  Subject and citizens that feel no need
+  To make the March of Mind a wild stampede;
+
+  All progress slow, contemplative, sedate,
+  And "Take your time" the word, in Church and State.
+
+  O Tortoise, 'tis a happy, happy dream,
+  My glorious testudinous regime!
+
+  I wish in Eden you'd brought this about
+  By slouching in and chasing Adam out.
+
+TREE, n.  A tall vegetable intended by nature to serve as a penal
+apparatus, though through a miscarriage of justice most trees bear
+only a negligible fruit, or none at all.  When naturally fruited, the
+tree is a beneficient agency of civilization and an important factor
+in public morals.  In the stern West and the sensitive South its fruit
+(white and black respectively) though not eaten, is agreeable to the
+public taste and, though not exported, profitable to the general
+welfare.  That the legitimate relation of the tree to justice was no
+discovery of Judge Lynch (who, indeed, conceded it no primacy over the
+lamp-post and the bridge-girder) is made plain by the following
+passage from Morryster, who antedated him by two centuries:
+
+      While in yt londe I was carried to see ye Ghogo tree, whereof
+  I had hearde moch talk; but sayynge yt I saw naught remarkabyll in
+  it, ye hed manne of ye villayge where it grewe made answer as
+  followeth:
+      "Ye tree is not nowe in fruite, but in his seasonne you shall
+  see dependynge fr. his braunches all soch as have affroynted ye
+  King his Majesty."
+      And I was furder tolde yt ye worde "Ghogo" sygnifyeth in yr
+  tong ye same as "rapscal" in our owne.
+
+_Trauvells in ye Easte_
+
+
+TRIAL, n.  A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the
+blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.  In order to
+effect this purpose it is necessary to supply a contrast in the person
+of one who is called the defendant, the prisoner, or the accused.  If
+the contrast is made sufficiently clear this person is made to undergo
+such an affliction as will give the virtuous gentlemen a comfortable
+sense of their immunity, added to that of their worth.  In our day the
+accused is usually a human being, or a socialist, but in mediaeval
+times, animals, fishes, reptiles and insects were brought to trial.  A
+beast that had taken human life, or practiced sorcery, was duly
+arrested, tried and, if condemned, put to death by the public
+executioner.  Insects ravaging grain fields, orchards or vineyards
+were cited to appeal by counsel before a civil tribunal, and after
+testimony, argument and condemnation, if they continued _in
+contumaciam_ the matter was taken to a high ecclesiastical court,
+where they were solemnly excommunicated and anathematized.  In a
+street of Toledo, some pigs that had wickedly run between the
+viceroy's legs, upsetting him, were arrested on a warrant, tried and
+punished.  In Naples an ass was condemned to be burned at the stake,
+but the sentence appears not to have been executed.  D'Addosio relates
+from the court records many trials of pigs, bulls, horses, cocks,
+dogs, goats, etc., greatly, it is believed, to the betterment of their
+conduct and morals.  In 1451 a suit was brought against the leeches
+infesting some ponds about Berne, and the Bishop of Lausanne,
+instructed by the faculty of Heidelberg University, directed that some
+of "the aquatic worms" be brought before the local magistracy.  This
+was done and the leeches, both present and absent, were ordered to
+leave the places that they had infested within three days on pain of
+incurring "the malediction of God."  In the voluminous records of this
+_cause celebre_ nothing is found to show whether the offenders braved
+the punishment, or departed forthwith out of that inhospitable
+jurisdiction.
+
+TRICHINOSIS, n.  The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.
+
+Moses Mendlessohn having fallen ill sent for a Christian
+physician, who at once diagnosed the philosopher's disorder as
+trichinosis, but tactfully gave it another name.  "You need an
+immediate change of diet," he said; "you must eat six ounces of pork
+every other day."
+
+"Pork?" shrieked the patient--"pork?  Nothing shall induce me to
+touch it!"
+
+"Do you mean that?" the doctor gravely asked.
+
+"I swear it!"
+
+"Good!--then I will undertake to cure you."
+
+TRINITY, n.  In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches,
+three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one.  Subordinate
+deities of the polytheistic faith, such as devils and angels, are not
+dowered with the power of combination, and must urge individually
+their claims to adoration and propitiation.  The Trinity is one of the
+most sublime mysteries of our holy religion.  In rejecting it because
+it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of
+theological fundamentals.  In religion we believe only what we do not
+understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that
+contradicts an incomprehensible one.  In that case we believe the
+former as a part of the latter.
+
+TROGLODYTE, n.  Specifically, a cave-dweller of the paleolithic
+period, after the Tree and before the Flat.  A famous community of
+troglodytes dwelt with David in the Cave of Adullam.  The colony
+consisted of "every one that was in distress, and every one that was
+in debt, and every one that was discontented"--in brief, all the
+Socialists of Judah.
+
+TRUCE, n.  Friendship.
+
+TRUTH, n.  An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.
+Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the
+most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of
+existing with increasing activity to the end of time.
+
+TRUTHFUL, adj.  Dumb and illiterate.
+
+TRUST, n.  In American politics, a large corporation composed in
+greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in
+the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors
+and public enemies.
+
+TURKEY, n.  A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious
+anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and
+gratitude.  Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.
+
+TWICE, adv.  Once too often.
+
+TYPE, n.  Pestilent bits of metal suspected of destroying
+civilization and enlightenment, despite their obvious agency in this
+incomparable dictionary.
+
+TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n.  An African insect (_Glossina morsitans_)
+whose bite is commonly regarded as nature's most efficacious remedy
+for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American
+novelist (_Mendax interminabilis_).
+
+
+
+
+U
+
+
+UBIQUITY, n.  The gift or power of being in all places at one time,
+but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an
+attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.  This important
+distinction between ubiquity and omnipresence was not clear to the
+mediaeval Church and there was much bloodshed about it.  Certain
+Lutherans, who affirmed the presence everywhere of Christ's body were
+known as Ubiquitarians.  For this error they were doubtless damned,
+for Christ's body is present only in the eucharist, though that
+sacrament may be performed in more than one place simultaneously.  In
+recent times ubiquity has not always been understood--not even by
+Sir Boyle Roche, for example, who held that a man cannot be in two
+places at once unless he is a bird.
+
+UGLINESS, n.  A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue
+without humility.
+
+ULTIMATUM, n.  In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to
+concessions.
+
+Having received an ultimatum from Austria, the Turkish Ministry
+met to consider it.
+
+"O servant of the Prophet," said the Sheik of the Imperial Chibouk
+to the Mamoosh of the Invincible Army, "how many unconquerable
+soldiers have we in arms?"
+
+"Upholder of the Faith," that dignitary replied after examining
+his memoranda, "they are in numbers as the leaves of the forest!"
+
+"And how many impenetrable battleships strike terror to the hearts
+of all Christian swine?" he asked the Imaum of the Ever Victorious
+Navy.
+
+"Uncle of the Full Moon," was the reply, "deign to know that they
+are as the waves of the ocean, the sands of the desert and the stars
+of Heaven!"
+
+For eight hours the broad brow of the Sheik of the Imperial
+Chibouk was corrugated with evidences of deep thought:  he was
+calculating the chances of war.  Then, "Sons of angels," he said, "the
+die is cast!  I shall suggest to the Ulema of the Imperial Ear that he
+advise inaction.  In the name of Allah, the council is adjourned."
+
+UN-AMERICAN, adj.  Wicked, intolerable, heathenish.
+
+UNCTION, n.  An oiling, or greasing.  The rite of extreme unction
+consists in touching with oil consecrated by a bishop several parts of
+the body of one engaged in dying.  Marbury relates that after the rite
+had been administered to a certain wicked English nobleman it was
+discovered that the oil had not been properly consecrated and no other
+could be obtained.  When informed of this the sick man said in anger:
+"Then I'll be damned if I die!"
+
+"My son," said the priest, "this is what we fear."
+
+UNDERSTANDING, n.  A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to
+know a house from a horse by the roof on the house.  Its nature and
+laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and
+Kant, who lived in a horse.
+
+  His understanding was so keen
+  That all things which he'd felt, heard, seen,
+  He could interpret without fail
+  If he was in or out of jail.
+  He wrote at Inspiration's call
+  Deep disquisitions on them all,
+  Then, pent at last in an asylum,
+  Performed the service to compile 'em.
+  So great a writer, all men swore,
+  They never had not read before.
+
+Jorrock Wormley
+
+
+UNITARIAN, n.  One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.
+
+UNIVERSALIST, n.  One who forgoes the advantage of a Hell for persons
+of another faith.
+
+URBANITY, n.  The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to
+dwellers in all cities but New York.  Its commonest expression is
+heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not inconsistent with
+disregard of the rights of others.
+
+  The owner of a powder mill
+  Was musing on a distant hill--
+      Something his mind foreboded--
+  When from the cloudless sky there fell
+  A deviled human kidney!  Well,
+      The man's mill had exploded.
+  His hat he lifted from his head;
+  "I beg your pardon, sir," he said;
+      "I didn't know 'twas loaded."
+
+Swatkin
+
+
+USAGE, n.  The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and
+Third being Custom and Conventionality.  Imbued with a decent
+reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to
+produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
+
+UXORIOUSNESS, n.  A perverted affection that has strayed to one's own
+wife.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+VALOR, n.  A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler's
+hope.
+
+"Why have you halted?" roared the commander of a division and
+Chickamauga, who had ordered a charge; "move forward, sir, at once."
+
+"General," said the commander of the delinquent brigade, "I am
+persuaded that any further display of valor by my troops will bring
+them into collision with the enemy."
+
+VANITY, n.  The tribute of a fool to the worth of the nearest ass.
+
+  They say that hens do cackle loudest when
+      There's nothing vital in the eggs they've laid;
+      And there are hens, professing to have made
+  A study of mankind, who say that men
+  Whose business 'tis to drive the tongue or pen
+      Make the most clamorous fanfaronade
+      O'er their most worthless work; and I'm afraid
+  They're not entirely different from the hen.
+  Lo! the drum-major in his coat of gold,
+      His blazing breeches and high-towering cap--
+  Imperiously pompous, grandly bold,
+      Grim, resolute, an awe-inspiring chap!
+  Who'd think this gorgeous creature's only virtue
+  Is that in battle he will never hurt you?
+
+Hannibal Hunsiker
+
+
+VIRTUES, n.pl.  Certain abstentions.
+
+VITUPERATION, n.  Satire, as understood by dunces and all such as
+suffer from an impediment in their wit.
+
+VOTE, n.  The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a
+fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
+
+
+
+
+W
+
+
+W (double U) has, of all the letters in our alphabet, the only
+cumbrous name, the names of the others being monosyllabic.  This
+advantage of the Roman alphabet over the Grecian is the more valued
+after audibly spelling out some simple Greek word, like
+_epixoriambikos_.  Still, it is now thought by the learned that other
+agencies than the difference of the two alphabets may have been
+concerned in the decline of "the glory that was Greece" and the rise
+of "the grandeur that was Rome."  There can be no doubt, however, that
+by simplifying the name of W (calling it "wow," for example) our
+civilization could be, if not promoted, at least better endured.
+
+WALL STREET, n.  A symbol of sin for every devil to rebuke.  That
+Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every
+unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven.  Even the great and
+good Andrew Carnegie has made his profession of faith in the matter.
+
+  Carnegie the dauntless has uttered his call
+  To battle:  "The brokers are parasites all!"
+  Carnegie, Carnegie, you'll never prevail;
+  Keep the wind of your slogan to belly your sail,
+  Go back to your isle of perpetual brume,
+  Silence your pibroch, doff tartan and plume:
+  Ben Lomond is calling his son from the fray--
+  Fly, fly from the region of Wall Street away!
+  While still you're possessed of a single baubee
+  (I wish it were pledged to endowment of me)
+  'Twere wise to retreat from the wars of finance
+  Lest its value decline ere your credit advance.
+  For a man 'twixt a king of finance and the sea,
+  Carnegie, Carnegie, your tongue is too free!
+
+Anonymus Bink
+
+
+WAR, n.  A by-product of the arts of peace.  The most menacing
+political condition is a period of international amity.  The student
+of history who has not been taught to expect the unexpected may justly
+boast himself inaccessible to the light.  "In time of peace prepare
+for war" has a deeper meaning than is commonly discerned; it means,
+not merely that all things earthly have an end--that change is the
+one immutable and eternal law--but that the soil of peace is thickly
+sown with the seeds of war and singularly suited to their germination
+and growth.  It was when Kubla Khan had decreed his "stately pleasure
+dome"--when, that is to say, there were peace and fat feasting in
+Xanadu--that he
+
+                      heard from afar
+  Ancestral voices prophesying war.
+
+One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of
+men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable.  Let us
+have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of
+that elemental distrust that is the security of nations.  War loves to
+come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide
+the night.
+
+WASHINGTONIAN, n.  A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of
+governing himself for the advantage of good government.  In justice to
+him it should be said that he did not want to.
+
+  They took away his vote and gave instead
+  The right, when he had earned, to _eat_ his bread.
+  In vain--he clamors for his "boss," pour soul,
+  To come again and part him from his roll.
+
+Offenbach Stutz
+
+
+WEAKNESSES, n.pl.  Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she
+holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the
+service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.
+
+WEATHER, n.  The climate of the hour.  A permanent topic of
+conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have
+inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal
+ancestors whom it keenly concerned.  The setting up official weather
+bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments
+are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle.
+
+  Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
+  And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be--
+  Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
+  With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
+  While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
+  From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
+  He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
+  On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote--
+  For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
+  "Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."
+
+Halcyon Jones
+
+
+WEDDING, n.  A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one,
+one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become
+supportable.
+
+WEREWOLF, n.  A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man.  All
+werewolves are of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to
+gratify a beastial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are as
+humane as is consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.
+
+Some Bavarian peasants having caught a wolf one evening, tied it
+to a post by the tail and went to bed.  The next morning nothing was
+there!  Greatly perplexed, they consulted the local priest, who told
+them that their captive was undoubtedly a werewolf and had resumed its
+human form during the night.  "The next time that you take a wolf," the
+good man said, "see that you chain it by the leg, and in the morning
+you will find a Lutheran."
+
+WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n.  In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected
+affliction that strikes hard.
+
+  Should you ask me whence this laughter,
+  Whence this audible big-smiling,
+  With its labial extension,
+  With its maxillar distortion
+  And its diaphragmic rhythmus
+  Like the billowing of an ocean,
+  Like the shaking of a carpet,
+  I should answer, I should tell you:
+  From the great deeps of the spirit,
+  From the unplummeted abysmus
+  Of the soul this laughter welleth
+  As the fountain, the gug-guggle,
+  Like the river from the canon [sic],
+  To entoken and give warning
+  That my present mood is sunny.
+  Should you ask me further question--
+  Why the great deeps of the spirit,
+  Why the unplummeted abysmus
+  Of the soule extrudes this laughter,
+  This all audible big-smiling,
+  I should answer, I should tell you
+  With a white heart, tumpitumpy,
+  With a true tongue, honest Injun:
+  William Bryan, he has Caught It,
+  Caught the Whangdepootenawah!
+
+  Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank,
+  Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,
+  Standing silent in the kneedeep
+  With his wing-tips crossed behind him
+  And his neck close-reefed before him,
+  With his bill, his william, buried
+  In the down upon his bosom,
+  With his head retracted inly,
+  While his shoulders overlook it?
+  Does the sandhill crane, the shankank,
+  Shiver grayly in the north wind,
+  Wishing he had died when little,
+  As the sparrow, the chipchip, does?
+  No 'tis not the Shankank standing,
+  Standing in the gray and dismal
+  Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep.
+  No, 'tis peerless William Bryan
+  Realizing that he's Caught It,
+  Caught the Whangdepootenawah!
+
+WHEAT, n.  A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some
+difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread.  The French are
+said to eat more bread _per capita_ of population than any other
+people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff
+palatable.
+
+WHITE, adj. and n.  Black.
+
+WIDOW, n.  A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to
+take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one
+of the most marked features of his character.
+
+WINE, n.  Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union
+as "liquor," sometimes as "rum."  Wine, madam, is God's next best gift
+to man.
+
+WIT, n.  The salt with which the American humorist spoils his
+intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
+
+WITCH, n.  (1)  Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league
+with the devil.  (2)  A beautiful and attractive young woman, in
+wickedness a league beyond the devil.
+
+WITTICISM, n.  A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldom
+noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a "joke."
+
+WOMAN, n.
+
+      An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a
+  rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.  It is credited by
+  many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility
+  acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the
+  postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion,
+  deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld,
+  it roareth now.  The species is the most widely distributed of all
+  beasts of prey, infesting all habitable parts of the globe, from
+  Greenland's spicy mountains to India's moral strand.  The popular
+  name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind.
+  The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the
+  American variety (_felis pugnans_), is omnivorous and can be
+  taught not to talk.
+
+Balthasar Pober
+
+
+WORMS'-MEAT, n.  The finished product of which we are the raw
+material.  The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the
+Grantarium.  Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that
+houses it, but "this too must pass away."  Probably the silliest work
+in which a human being can engage is construction of a tomb for
+himself.  The solemn purpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by
+contrast the foreknown futility.
+
+  Ambitious fool! so mad to be a show!
+  How profitless the labor you bestow
+      Upon a dwelling whose magnificence
+  The tenant neither can admire nor know.
+
+  Build deep, build high, build massive as you can,
+  The wanton grass-roots will defeat the plan
+      By shouldering asunder all the stones
+  In what to you would be a moment's span.
+
+  Time to the dead so all unreckoned flies
+  That when your marble is all dust, arise,
+      If wakened, stretch your limbs and yawn--
+  You'll think you scarcely can have closed your eyes.
+
+  What though of all man's works your tomb alone
+  Should stand till Time himself be overthrown?
+      Would it advantage you to dwell therein
+  Forever as a stain upon a stone?
+
+Joel Huck
+
+
+WORSHIP, n.  Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and
+fine finish of Deus Creatus.  A popular form of abjection, having an
+element of pride.
+
+WRATH, n.  Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to
+exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, "the wrath of God,"
+"the day of wrath," etc.  Amongst the ancients the wrath of kings was
+deemed sacred, for it could usually command the agency of some god for
+its fit manifestation, as could also that of a priest.  The Greeks
+before Troy were so harried by Apollo that they jumped out of the
+frying-pan of the wrath of Chryses into the fire of the wrath of
+Achilles, though Agamemnon, the sole offender, was neither fried nor
+roasted.  A similar noted immunity was that of David when he incurred
+the wrath of Yahveh by numbering his people, seventy thousand of whom
+paid the penalty with their lives.  God is now Love, and a director of
+the census performs his work without apprehension of disaster.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+X in our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility
+to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will
+doubtless last as long as the language.  X is the sacred symbol of ten
+dollars, and in such words as Xmas, Xn, etc., stands for Christ, not,
+as is popular supposed, because it represents a cross, but because the
+corresponding letter in the Greek alphabet is the initial of his name
+--_Xristos_.  If it represented a cross it would stand for St.
+Andrew, who "testified" upon one of that shape.  In the algebra of
+psychology x stands for Woman's mind.  Words beginning with X are
+Grecian and will not be defined in this standard English dictionary.
+
+
+
+
+Y
+
+
+YANKEE, n.  In Europe, an American.  In the Northern States of our
+Union, a New Englander.  In the Southern States the word is unknown.
+(See DAMNYANK.)
+
+YEAR, n.  A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
+
+YESTERDAY, n.  The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire
+past of age.
+
+  But yesterday I should have thought me blest
+      To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak
+      Of middle life and look adown the bleak
+  And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,
+  Where solemn shadows all the land invest
+      And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak
+      Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak
+  The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest.
+  Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame
+      To stay the shadow on the dial's face
+  At manhood's noonmark!  Now, in God His name
+      I chide aloud the little interspace
+  Disparting me from Certitude, and fain
+  Would know the dream and vision ne'er again.
+
+Baruch Arnegriff
+
+
+It is said that in his last illness the poet Arnegriff was
+attended at different times by seven doctors.
+
+YOKE, n.  An implement, madam, to whose Latin name, _jugum_, we owe
+one of the most illuminating words in our language--a word that
+defines the matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy.
+A thousand apologies for withholding it.
+
+YOUTH, n.  The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum,
+Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of
+endowing a living Homer.
+
+      Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth
+  again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with
+  whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and
+  cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice never
+  is heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and,
+  howling, is cast into Baltimost!
+
+Polydore Smith
+
+
+
+
+Z
+
+
+ZANY, n.  A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with
+ludicrous incompetence the _buffone_, or clown, and was therefore the
+ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters
+of the play.  The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as
+we to-day have the unhappiness to know him.  In the zany we see an
+example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission.  Another
+excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the
+rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the
+devil.
+
+ZANZIBARI, n.  An inhabitant of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, off the
+eastern coast of Africa.  The Zanzibaris, a warlike people, are best
+known in this country through a threatening diplomatic incident that
+occurred a few years ago.  The American consul at the capital occupied
+a dwelling that faced the sea, with a sandy beach between.  Greatly to
+the scandal of this official's family, and against repeated
+remonstrances of the official himself, the people of the city
+persisted in using the beach for bathing.  One day a woman came down
+to the edge of the water and was stooping to remove her attire (a pair
+of sandals) when the consul, incensed beyond restraint, fired a charge
+of bird-shot into the most conspicuous part of her person.
+Unfortunately for the existing _entente cordiale_ between two great
+nations, she was the Sultana.
+
+ZEAL, n.  A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and
+inexperienced.  A passion that goeth before a sprawl.
+
+  When Zeal sought Gratitude for his reward
+  He went away exclaiming:  "O my Lord!"
+  "What do you want?" the Lord asked, bending down.
+  "An ointment for my cracked and bleeding crown."
+
+Jum Coople
+
+
+ZENITH, n.  The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man
+standing or a growing cabbage.  A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot
+is not considered as having a zenith, though from this view of the
+matter there was once a considerably dissent among the learned, some
+holding that the posture of the body was immaterial.  These were
+called Horizontalists, their opponents, Verticalists.  The
+Horizontalist heresy was finally extinguished by Xanobus, the
+philosopher-king of Abara, a zealous Verticalist.  Entering an
+assembly of philosophers who were debating the matter, he cast a
+severed human head at the feet of his opponents and asked them to
+determine its zenith, explaining that its body was hanging by the
+heels outside.  Observing that it was the head of their leader, the
+Horizontalists hastened to profess themselves converted to whatever
+opinion the Crown might be pleased to hold, and Horizontalism took its
+place among _fides defuncti_.
+
+ZEUS, n.  The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter
+and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog.  Some explorers
+who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to
+have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought
+that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his
+monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives
+are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he
+worships under many sacred names.
+
+ZIGZAG, v.t.  To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one
+carrying the white man's burden.  (From _zed_, _z_, and _jag_, an
+Icelandic word of unknown meaning.)
+
+  He zedjagged so uncomen wyde
+  Thet non coude pas on eyder syde;
+  So, to com saufly thruh, I been
+  Constreynet for to doodge betwene.
+
+Munwele
+
+
+ZOOLOGY, n.  The science and history of the animal kingdom, including
+its king, the House Fly (_Musca maledicta_).  The father of Zoology
+was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother
+has not come down to us.  Two of the science's most illustrious
+expounders were Buffon and Oliver Goldsmith, from both of whom we
+learn (_L'Histoire generale des animaux_ and _A History of Animated
+Nature_) that the domestic cow sheds its horn every two years.
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
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+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Devil’s Dictionary</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Ambrose Bierce</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July, 1997 [eBook #972]<br />
+[Most recently updated: June 27, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Aloysius and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY ***</div>
+
+    <h1>
+      THE DEVIL&rsquo;S DICTIONARY
+    </h1>
+
+    <h2>
+      by Ambrose Bierce
+    </h2>
+
+    <hr />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> AUTHOR'S PREFACE </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> A</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> B </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> C </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> D </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> E </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> F </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> G </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> H </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> I </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> J </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> K </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> L </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> M </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> N </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> O </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> P </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> Q </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> R </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> S </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> T </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> U </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> V </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> W </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> X </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> Y </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> Z </a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+    <hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"></a>
+      AUTHOR'S PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Devil's Dictionary</i> 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 <i>The Cynic's
+      Word Book</i>, a name which the author had not the power to reject or
+      happiness to approve. To quote the publishers of the present work:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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&mdash;<i>The Cynic's This</i>, <i>The Cynic's That</i>, and <i>The
+      Cynic's t'Other</i>. 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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;enlightened
+      souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humor and
+      clean English to slang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 ingenius 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A.B. 
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"></a>
+      A
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      ABASEMENT, n. A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of
+      wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an
+      employer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ABATIS, n. Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from
+      molesting the rubbish inside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high
+      temperature of the throne.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+  Merely a plain parched pea that jumped the griddle.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and
+      conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be
+      detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the
+      straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself.
+      Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the
+      hope of Hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ABORIGINIES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a
+      newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ABRACADABRA.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  By <i>Abracadabra</i> we signify
+      An infinite number of things.
+  'Tis the answer to What? and How? and Why?
+  And Whence? and Whither?&mdash;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&mdash;
+      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 "<i>Abracadabra, abracadab</i>,
+          <i>Abracada, abracad</i>,
+      <i>Abraca, abrac, abra, ab!</i>"
+          'Twas all he had,
+  'Twas all they wanted to hear, and each
+  Made copious notes of the mystical speech,
+          Which they published next&mdash;
+          A trickle of text
+  In a meadow of commentary.
+      Mighty big books were these,
+      In number, as leaves of trees;
+  In learning, remarkable&mdash;very!
+
+          He's dead,
+          As I said,
+  And the books of the sages have perished,
+  But his wisdom is sacredly cherished.
+  In <i>Abracadabra</i> 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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jamrach Holobom
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ABRIDGE, v.t. To shorten.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Oliver Cromwell
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ABSCOND, v.i. To "move in a mysterious way," commonly with the property of
+      another.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Spring beckons!  All things to the call respond;
+  The trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Phela Orm
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ABSENT, adj. Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed;
+      hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection of
+      another.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jogo Tyree
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ABSENTEE, n. A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
+      himself from the sphere of exaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+      "But not, sir, a bigoted one."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
+      opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACADEME, n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACADEMY, n. [from ACADEME] A modern school where football is taught.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable
+      natural laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACCORD, n. Harmony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACCORDION, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "My accountability, bear in mind,"
+      Said the Grand Vizier:  "Yes, yes,"
+  Said the Shah:  "I do&mdash;'tis the only kind
+      Of ability you possess."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Joram Tate
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACCUSE, v.t. To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a
+      justification of ourselves for having wronged him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACHIEVEMENT, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACKNOWLEDGE, v.t. To confess. Acknowledgement of one another's faults is
+      the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACTUALLY, adv. Perhaps; possibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAGE, n. Boned wisdom for weak teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAMANT, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in
+      solicitate of gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral
+      outlays to the other expenses of living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADHERENT, n. A follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects to
+      get.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADMIRAL, n. That part of a war-ship which does the talking while the
+      figure-head does the thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADMIRATION, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
+      ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADMONITION, n. Gentle reproof, as with a meat-axe. Friendly warning.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Consigned by way of admonition,
+  His soul forever to perdition.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Judibras
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADORE, v.t. To venerate expectantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADVICE, n. The smallest current coin.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jebel Jocordy
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AFFIANCED, pp. Fitted with an ankle-ring for the ball-and-chain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AFFLICTION, n. An acclimatizing process preparing the soul for another and
+      bitter world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AFRICAN, n. A nigger that votes our way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AGITATOR, n. A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors
+      &mdash;to dislodge the worms.
+    </p>
+<p>
+AIM, n.
+</p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     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&mdash;I have fired."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AIR, n. A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the
+      fattening of the poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALDERMAN, n. An ingenious criminal who covers his secret thieving with a
+      pretence of open marauding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALIEN, n. An American sovereign in his probationary state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALLAH, n. The Mahometan Supreme Being, as distinguished from the
+      Christian, Jewish, and so forth.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Junker Barlow
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALLEGIANCE, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALONE, adj. In bad company.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Booley Fito
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  They stood before the altar and supplied
+  The fire themselves in which their fat was fried.
+  In vain the sacrifice!&mdash;no god will claim
+  An offering burnt with an unholy flame.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      M.P. Nopput
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AMBIDEXTROUS, adj. Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a
+      left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AMBITION, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while
+      living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AMNESTY, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be
+      too expensive to punish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOINT, v.t. To grease a king or other great functionary already
+      sufficiently slippery.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  As sovereigns are anointed by the priesthood,
+  So pigs to lead the populace are greased good.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Judibras
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANTIPATHY, n. The sentiment inspired by one's friend's friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The flabby wine-skin of his brain
+  Yields to some pathologic strain,
+  And voids from its unstored abysm
+  The driblet of an aphorism.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "The Mad Philosopher," 1697
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      APOLOGIZE, v.i. To lay the foundation for a future offence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      APOTHECARY, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and
+      grave worm's provider.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      APPEAL, v.t. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      APPETITE, n. An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a
+      solution to the labor question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      APPLAUSE, n. The echo of a platitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      APRIL FOOL, n. The March fool with another month added to his folly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARCHBISHOP, n. An ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  If I were a jolly archbishop,
+  On Fridays I'd eat all the fish up&mdash;
+  Salmon and flounders and smelts;
+  On other days everything else.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jodo Rem
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARCHITECT, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of
+      your money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARDOR, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARENA, n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman
+      wrestles with his record.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;guilty of education and suspected of bank accounts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARRAYED, pp. Drawn up and given an orderly disposition, as a rioter hanged
+      to a lamppost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARREST, v.t. Formally to detain one accused of unusualness.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Unauthorized Version</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it
+      greatly affects in turn.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Eat arsenic?  Yes, all you get,"
+      Consenting, he did speak up;
+  "'Tis better you should eat it, pet,
+      Than put it in my teacup."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Joel Huck
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ART, n. This word has no definition. Its origin is related as follows by
+      the ingenious Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  One day a wag&mdash;what would the wretch be at?&mdash;
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ASPERSE, v.t. Maliciously to ascribe to another vicious actions which one
+      has not had the temptation and opportunity to commit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, <i>lib. II., De Clem.</i>, and C.
+      Stantatus, <i>De Temperamente</i>) 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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AUCTIONEER, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a
+      pocket with his tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  <i>Facilis descensus Averni,</i>
+      The poet remarks; and the sense
+  Of it is that when down-hill I turn I
+      Will get more of punches than pence.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jehal Dai Lupe
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"></a>
+      B
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          Ere babes were invented
+          The girls were contended.
+          Now man is tormented
+  Until to buy babes he has squandered
+  His money.  And so I have pondered
+          This thing, and thought may be
+          'T were better that Baby
+  The First had been eagled or condored.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Ro Amil
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BACCHUS, n. A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
+      getting drunk.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jorace
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BACK, n. That part of your friend which it is your privilege to
+      contemplate in your adversity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BACKBITE, v.t. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BAIT, n. A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind
+      is beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;by immersion, or plunging, and by
+      aspersion, or sprinkling.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BAROMETER, n. An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather
+      we are having.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARRACK, n. A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of which it
+      is their business to deprive others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BASTINADO, n. The act of walking on wood without exertion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with
+      what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Richard Gwow
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BATTLE, n. A method of untying with the teeth of a political knot that
+      would not yield to the tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BEARD, n. The hair that is commonly cut off by those who justly execrate
+      the absurd Chinese custom of shaving the head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BEAUTY, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a
+      husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BEFRIEND, v.t. To make an ingrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BEG, v. To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the
+      belief that it will not be given.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Who is that, father?
+                        A mendicant, child,
+  Haggard, morose, and unaffable&mdash;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&mdash;
+  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&mdash;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&mdash;
+
+                      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 <i>all</i> father dear?
+
+                              There's little to tell:
+  They sent him to jail, and they'll send him to&mdash;well,
+  The company's better than here we can boast,
+  And there's&mdash;
+
+                  Bread for the needy, dear father?
+
+                                                     Um&mdash;toast.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Atka Mip
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BEGGAR, n. One who has relied on the assistance of his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Dies Irae</i>:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A
+      striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BENEDICTINES, n. An order of monks otherwise known as black friars.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+      "Black friars in this world, fried black in the next."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "The Devil on Earth" (London, 1712)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BENEFACTOR, n. One who makes heavy purchases of ingratitude, without,
+      however, materially affecting the price, which is still within the means
+      of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BERENICE'S HAIR, n. A constellation (<i>Coma Berenices</i>) named in honor
+      of one who sacrificed her hair to save her husband.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Her locks an ancient lady gave
+  Her loving husband's life to save;
+  And men&mdash;they honored so the dame&mdash;
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BIGAMY, n. A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will
+      adjudge a punishment called trigamy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BIGOT, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that
+      you do not entertain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BILLINGSGATE, n. The invective of an opponent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BLACKGUARD, n. A man whose qualities, prepared for display like a box of
+      berries in a market&mdash;the fine ones on top&mdash;have been opened on
+      the wrong side. An inverted gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters&mdash;the most difficult kind
+      of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much affected by
+      those who cannot acceptably write any kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Bettel K. Jhones
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BONDSMAN, n. A fool who, having property of his own, undertakes to become
+      responsible for that entrusted to another to a third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BORE, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BOTANY, n. The science of vegetables&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BOTTLE-NOSED, adj. Having a nose created in the image of its maker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two
+      nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights
+      of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BOUNTY, n. The liberality of one who has much, in permitting one who has
+      nothing to get all that he can.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Henry Ward Beecher
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BRAHMA, n. He who created the Hindoos, who are preserved by Vishnu and
+      destroyed by Siva&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+  You're the First Person Singular, surely.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Polydore Smith
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think what we think. That which
+      distinguishes the man who is content to <i>be</i> something from the man
+      who wishes to <i>do</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BRIDE, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BRUTE, n. See HUSBAND.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"></a>
+      C
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CABBAGE, n. A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
+      a man's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting
+      another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAMEL, n. A quadruped (the <i>Splaypes humpidorsus</i>) of great value to
+      the show business. There are two kinds of camels&mdash;the camel proper
+      and the camel improper. It is the latter that is always exhibited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CANNIBAL, n. A gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple
+      tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national
+      boundaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CANONICALS, n. The motley worn by Jesters of the Court of Heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. <i>Capital
+      Punishment</i>, a penalty regarding the justice and expediency of which
+      many worthy persons&mdash;including all the assassins&mdash;entertain
+      grave misgivings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CARMELITE, n. A mendicant friar of the order of Mount Carmel.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;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!"&mdash;and <i>thump</i>
+      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&mdash;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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CARNIVOROUS, adj. Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorous
+      vegetarian, his heirs and assigns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the
+      celebrated dictum, <i>Cogito ergo sum</i>&mdash;whereby he was pleased to
+      suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might
+      be improved, however, thus: <i>Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum</i>&mdash; "I
+      think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to
+      certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAT, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked
+      when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  This is a dog,
+      This is a cat.
+  This is a frog,
+      This is a rat.
+  Run, dog, mew, cat.
+  Jump, frog, gnaw, rat.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Elevenson
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAVILER, n. A critic of our own work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Thomas M. and Mary Frazer
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      P.S.&mdash;Gabriel will raise her.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CERBERUS, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the
+      entrance&mdash;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&mdash;a
+      judgment that would be entirely conclusive if Professor Graybill had known
+      (a) something about dogs, and (b) something about arithmetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CHILDHOOD, n. The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of
+      infancy and the folly of youth&mdash;two removes from the sin of manhood
+      and three from the remorse of age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+  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&mdash;his manner with disdain was spiced:
+  "What!  I a Christian?  No, indeed!  I'm Christ."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CIRCUS, n. A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see
+      men, women and children acting the fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;two
+      clarionets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs
+      as a method of bettering his temporal ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CLIO, n. One of the nine Muses. Clio's function was to preside over
+      history&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+  We're never for an hour without it."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Purzil Crofe
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CLOSE-FISTED, adj. Unduly desirous of keeping that which many meritorious
+      persons wish to obtain.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Close-fisted Scotchman!" Johnson cried
+      To thrifty J. Macpherson;
+  "See me&mdash;I'm ready to divide
+      With any worthy person."
+  Sad Jamie:  "That is very true&mdash;
+      The boast requires no backing;
+  And all are worthy, sir, to you,
+      Who have what you are lacking."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Anita M. Bobe
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Quincy Giles
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's
+      uneasiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      COMMENDATION, n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resembles,
+      but do not equal, our own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      COMMONWEALTH, n. An administrative entity operated by an incalculable
+      multitude of political parasites, logically active but fortuitously
+      efficient.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      K.Q.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      COMPULSION, n. The eloquence of power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONDOLE, v.i. To show that bereavement is a smaller evil than sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFIDANT, CONFIDANTE, n. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B,
+      confided by <i>him</i> to C.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONGRATULATION, n. The civility of envy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONGRESS, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONNOISSEUR, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and
+      nothing about anything else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision, some wine
+      was pouted on his lips to revive him. "Pauillac, 1873," he murmured and
+      died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as
+      distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONSOLATION, n. The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than
+      yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONSULT, v.i. To seek another's disapproval of a course already decided
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONTEMPT, n. The feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too
+      formidable safely to be opposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONTROVERSY, n. A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious
+      cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  In controversy with the facile tongue&mdash;
+  That bloodless warfare of the old and young&mdash;
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Conmore Apel Brune
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONVENT, n. A place of retirement for woman who wish for leisure to
+      meditate upon the vice of idleness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CORPORAL, n. A man who occupies the lowest rung of the military ladder.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Giacomo Smith
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit
+      without individual responsibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CORSAIR, n. A politician of the seas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      COURT FOOL, n. The plaintiff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      COWARD, n. One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CRAYFISH, n. A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but less
+      indigestible.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Sir James Merivale
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CREDITOR, n. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial
+      Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CREMONA, n. A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CRITIC, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
+      to please him.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Orrin Goof
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>crux ansata</i> 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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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&mdash;don't let him.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      CUI BONO? [Latin] What good would that do <i>me</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art grossly to
+      materialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work&mdash; this is
+      eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on the doorstep
+      of prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"></a>
+      D
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>jod</i> or <i>god</i>, meaning "joy." It
+      would be with great diffidence that I should advance an opinion
+      conflicting with that of either of these formidable authorities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DANGER, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  A savage beast which, when it sleeps,
+      Man girds at and despises,
+  But takes himself away by leaps
+      And bounds when it arises.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Ambat Delaso
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DARING, n. One of the most conspicuous qualities of a man in security.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DATARY, n. A high ecclesiastic official of the Roman Catholic Church,
+      whose important function is to brand the Pope's bulls with the words <i>Datum
+      Romae</i>. He enjoys a princely revenue and the friendship of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the
+      former devoted to sins of business, the latter consecrated to the other
+      sort. These two kinds of social activity overlap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAD, adj.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Squatol Johnes
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEBAUCHEE, n. One who has so earnestly pursued pleasure that he has had
+      the misfortune to overtake it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEBT, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the
+      slave-driver.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Barlow S. Vode
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DECALOGUE, n. A series of commandments, ten in number&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;that is low&mdash;
+  But "hear 'tis rumored so and so."
+
+  Covet thou naught that thou hast not
+  By hook or crook, or somehow, got.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DECIDE, v.i. To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over
+      another set.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEFAME, v.t. To lie about another. To tell the truth about another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEFENCELESS, adj. Unable to attack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a marked instance of returning good for evil, by the
+      way, for if they had forbidden him he would certainly have starved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from
+      private station to political preferment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEJEUNER, n. The breakfast of an American who has been in Paris. Variously
+      pronounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DELEGATION, n. In American politics, an article of merchandise that comes
+      in sets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DELIBERATION, n. The act of examining one's bread to determine which side
+      it is buttered on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DELUGE, n. A notable first experiment in baptism which washed away the
+      sins (and sinners) of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising
+      Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other
+      goodly sons and daughters.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Mumfrey Mappel
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DENTIST, n. A prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls
+      coins out of your pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEPENDENT, adj. Reliant upon another's generosity for the support which
+      you are not in a position to exact from his fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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&mdash;which they will count.
+  I've long admired your punctual way&mdash;
+  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&mdash;
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jamrach Holobom
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DESTINY, n. A tyrant's authority for crime and fool's excuse for failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DIAGNOSIS, n. A physician's forecast of the disease by the patient's pulse
+      and purse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DIAPHRAGM, n. A muscular partition separating disorders of the chest from
+      disorders of the bowels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DIARY, n. A daily record of that part of one's life, which he can relate
+      to himself without blushing.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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"&mdash;
+  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&mdash;
+  For big ideas Heaven has little room,
+  And Hell's no latitude for making mirth,"
+  He said, and kicked the fellow back to earth.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "The Mad Philosopher"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DICTATOR, n. The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of
+      despotism to the plague of anarchy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  A cube of cheese no larger than a die
+  May bait the trap to catch a nibbling mie.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is
+      imperfect, vices are evolved instead&mdash;a circumstance from which that
+      wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater
+      sufferers from dyspepsia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DISABUSE, v.t. To present your neighbor with another and better error
+      than the one which he has deemed it advantageous to embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DISCRIMINATE, v.i. To note the particulars in which one person or thing
+      is, if possible, more objectionable than another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DISOBEY, v.t. To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a
+      command.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Israfel Brown
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+DISSEMBLE, v.i.  To put a clean shirt upon the character.
+  Let us dissemble.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Adam
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DISTANCE, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call
+      theirs, and keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DISTRESS, n. A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DRAMATIST, n. One who adapts plays from the French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;as they were once complacently catalogued by a
+      distinguished prelate of the Church of England&mdash; Dissenters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DUCK-BILL, n. Your account at your restaurant during the canvas-back
+      season.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+  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&mdash;a mighty throng.
+      It looks as if to challenge <i>me</i> they came,
+  Jauntily marching with brass bands and banners!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Xamba Q. Dar
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Mayflower</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DUTY, n. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along
+      the line of desire.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J. 
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"></a>
+      E
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      EAT, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of
+      mastication, humectation, and deglutition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EAVESDROP, v.i. Secretly to overhear a catalogue of the crimes and vices
+      of another or yourself.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  A lady with one of her ears applied
+  To an open keyhole heard, inside,
+  Two female gossips in converse free&mdash;
+  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!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Gopete Sherany
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to
+      accentuate their incapacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECONOMY, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the
+      price of the cow that you cannot afford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the
+      foolish their lack of understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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'."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      EJECTION, n. An approved remedy for the disease of garrulity. It is also
+      much used in cases of extreme poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of
+      another man's choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      "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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;may their souls be happy in Heaven!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EMANCIPATION, n. A bondman's change from the tyranny of another to the
+      despotism of himself.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>glutoeus
+      maximus</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ENCOMIAST, n. A special (but not particular) kind of liar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END, n. The position farthest removed on either hand from the
+      Interlocutor.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The man was perishing apace
+      Who played the tambourine;
+  The seal of death was on his face&mdash;
+      '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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Tinley Roquot
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ENOUGH, pro. All there is in the world if you like it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Enough is as good as a feast&mdash;for that matter
+  Enougher's as good as a feast for the platter.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Arbely C. Strunk
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death
+      by injection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;to Missolonghi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ENVELOPE, n. The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a bill; the husk of
+      a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EPAULET, n. An ornamented badge, serving to distinguish a military officer
+      from the enemy&mdash;that is to say, from the officer of lower rank to
+      whom his death would give promotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      EPITAPH, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by
+      death have a retroactive effect. Following is a touching example:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;and God forgive it!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      ERUDITION, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  So wide his erudition's mighty span,
+  He knew Creation's origin and plan
+  And only came by accident to grief&mdash;
+  He thought, poor man, 'twas right to be a thief.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Romach Pute
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ESOTERIC, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The
+      ancient philosophies were of two kinds,&mdash;<i>exoteric</i>, those that
+      the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and <i>esoteric</i>,
+      those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most
+      profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as
+      robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and
+      power, or the consideration to be dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, <i>A Partial Definition of the Word "Everlasting," as
+      Used in the Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures</i>. 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, "<i>Exceptio probat regulam</i>" means that the
+      exception <i>tests</i> the rule, puts it to the proof, not <i>confirms</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EXCESS, n. In morals, an indulgence that enforces by appropriate penalties
+      the law of moderation.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Hail, high Excess&mdash;especially in wine,
+      To thee in worship do I bend the knee
+      Who preach abstemiousness unto me&mdash;
+  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!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      EXCOMMUNICATION, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+  A rite permitting Satan to enslave him
+  Forever, and forbidding Christ to save him.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Gat Huckle
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, <i>The Lunarian
+      Astonished</i>&mdash;Pfeiffer &amp; Co., Boston, 1803:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon
+      the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an
+      ambassador.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Aug. 3d, 1842.  Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin.  Coldly
+  received.  War with the whole world!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      EXISTENCE, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      EXPERIENCE, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable
+      old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Joel Frad Bink
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EXPOSTULATION, n. One of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose
+      their friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the future
+      state.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"></a>
+      F
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>bourgeois</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks
+      without knowledge, of things without parallel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Hassan Brubuddy
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FASHION, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Naramy Oof
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Nemeseia</i>, 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 <i>Novemdiale</i>, which was held, according to Livy,
+      whenever stones fell from heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FELON, n. A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing
+      an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FEMALE, n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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"&mdash;
+  Then tucked his head beneath his wing
+  To laugh&mdash;he had no sleeve&mdash;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"&mdash;
+  So flew away and soon brought back
+  The number needed, in a sack.
+  That night earth rang with sounds of strife&mdash;
+  Ten million males each had a wife;
+  That night sweet Peace her pinions spread
+  O'er Hell&mdash;ten million devils dead!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest
+      approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Bartle Quinker
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FICKLENESS, n. The iterated satiety of an enterprising affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's
+      tail on the entrails of a cat.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Orm Pludge
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;"Rubbish may be shot here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FLESH, n. The Second Person of the secular Trinity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;that is to say,
+      the early writers whose work is so esteemed by later scribes and critics
+      in the same language&mdash;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&mdash;<i>Musca
+      maledicta</i>. 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FOLLY, n. That "gift and faculty divine" whose creative and controlling
+      energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions and adorns his life.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Aramis Loto Frope
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;founded theology, philosophy, law, medicine and
+      Chicago. He established monarchical and republican government. He is from
+      everlasting to everlasting&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FORCE, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Force is but might," the teacher said&mdash;
+      "That definition's just."
+  The boy said naught but thought instead,
+  Remembering his pounded head:
+      "Force is not might but must!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      FOREFINGER, n. The finger commonly used in pointing out two malefactors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FORGETFULNESS, n. A gift of God bestowed upon doctors in compensation for
+      their destitution of conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FORMA PAUPERIS. [Latin] In the character of a poor person&mdash;a method
+      by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted
+      to lose his case.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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 <i>in forma pauperis</i>, I see," Eve cried;
+      "Actions can't here be that way prosecuted."
+  So all poor Adam's motions coldly were denied:
+      He went away&mdash;as he had come&mdash;nonsuited.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKALMOIGNE, n. The tenure by which a religious corporation holds lands
+      on condition of praying for the soul of the donor. In mediaeval times many
+      of the wealthiest fraternities obtained their estates in this simple and
+      cheap manner, and once when Henry VIII of England sent an officer to
+      confiscate certain vast possessions which a fraternity of monks held by
+      frankalmoigne, "What!" said the Prior, "would you master stay our
+      benefactor's soul in Purgatory?" "Ay," said the officer, coldly, "an ye
+      will not pray him thence for naught he must e'en roast." "But look you, my
+      son," persisted the good man, "this act hath rank as robbery of God!"
+      "Nay, nay, good father, my master the king doth but deliver him from the
+      manifold temptations of too great wealth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations
+      lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Blary O'Gary
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;always
+      by a Freemason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRIENDLESS, adj. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune.
+      Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRIENDSHIP, n. A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only
+      one in foul.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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!)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Armit Huff Bettle
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>fricasees</i>,
+      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&mdash;"brekekex-koax";
+      the music is apparently by that eminent composer, Richard Wagner. Horses
+      have a frog in each hoof&mdash;a thoughtful provision of nature, enabling
+      them to shine in a hurdle race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;fill it up with fat&mdash;
+      Fry sinners brown and good in't."
+  "I know a trick worth two o' that,"
+      Said Nick&mdash;"I'll cook their food in't."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The savage dies&mdash;they sacrifice a horse
+  To bear to happy hunting-grounds the corse.
+  Our friends expire&mdash;we make the money fly
+  In hope their souls will chase it to the sky.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jex Wopley
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends
+      are true and our happiness is assured.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"></a>
+      G
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Whether on the gallows high
+      Or where blood flows the reddest,
+  The noblest place for man to die&mdash;
+      Is where he died the deadest.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      (Old play)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GARTHER, n. An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of
+      her stockings and desolating the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GENEALOGY, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not
+      particularly care to trace his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GENTEEL, adj. Refined, after the fashion of a gent.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GEOGRAPHER, n. A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between the
+      outside of the world and the inside.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Henry Haukhorn
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GEOLOGY, n. The science of the earth's crust&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GHOST, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          He saw a ghost.
+  It occupied&mdash;that dismal thing!&mdash;
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jared Macphester
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GLUTTON, n. A person who escapes the evils of moderation by committing
+      dyspepsia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jarn Leffer
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer. Alive,
+      sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GORGON, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      GOUT, n. A physician's name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GRAPE, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Hail noble fruit!&mdash;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&mdash;
+      I'll help to kill the scoffer.
+  The water-drinkers and the cranks
+      Who load their skins with liquor&mdash;
+  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!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jamrach Holobom
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the
+      demands of American Socialism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the
+      medical student.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Beside a lonely grave I stood&mdash;
+      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&mdash;
+      He can't hear nowt [sic] that's going."
+
+  "Too true," I said; "alas, too true&mdash;
+      No sound his sense can quicken!"
+  "Well, mister, wot is that to you?&mdash;
+      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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Pobeter Dunko
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GRAVITATION, n. The tendency of all bodies to approach one another with a
+      strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain&mdash; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GREAT, adj.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "I'm great," the Lion said&mdash;"I reign
+  The monarch of the wood and plain!"
+
+  The Elephant replied:  "I'm great&mdash;
+  No quadruped can match my weight!"
+
+  "I'm great&mdash;no animal has half
+  So long a neck!" said the Giraffe.
+
+  "I'm great," the Kangaroo said&mdash;"see
+  My femoral muscularity!"
+
+  The 'Possum said:  "I'm great&mdash;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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Arion Spurl Doke
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with
+      good reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his great work on <i>Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution</i>, the
+      learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture
+      &mdash;the shrug&mdash;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 <i>Hereditary Emotions</i>&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Flashawful
+      flabbergastor</i>, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial value,
+      admirably adapted to this climate. The good Secretary was instructed to
+      spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with soil. This he at
+      once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line of it all the way
+      across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look backward by a shout from
+      the generous donor, who at once dropped a lighted match into the furrow at
+      the starting-point. Contact with the earth had somewhat dampened the
+      powder, but the startled functionary saw himself pursued by a tall moving
+      pillar of fire and smoke and fierce evolution. He stood for a moment
+      paralyzed and speechless, then he recollected an engagement and, dropping
+      all, absented himself thence with such surprising celerity that to the
+      eyes of spectators along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim
+      streak prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven
+      villages, and audibly refusing to be comforted. "Great Scott! what is
+      that?" cried a surveyor's chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the
+      fading line of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon. "That,"
+      said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again
+      centering his attention upon his instrument, "is the Meridian of
+      Washington."
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"></a>
+      H
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      HABEAS CORPUS. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when
+      confined for the wrong crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HABIT, n. A shackle for the free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HADES, n. The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the place
+      where the dead live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;that compliment is reserved for the use of her
+      grandchildren.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and
+      commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;an evidence that
+      revolutions sometimes go backward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the first instance known to
+      this lexicographer of anybody questioning the expediency of hanging
+      Jerseymen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HAPPINESS, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery
+      of another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HARANGUE, n. A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harangue-outang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HARBOR, n. A place where ships taking shelter from stores are exposed to
+      the fury of the customs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASH, x. There is no definition for this word&mdash;nobody knows what hash
+      is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HATCHET, n. A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      John Lukkus
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HATRED, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
+      superiority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HEAD-MONEY, n. A capitation tax, or poll-tax.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  In ancient times there lived a king
+  Whose tax-collectors could not wring
+  From all his subjects gold enough
+  To make the royal way less rough.
+  For pleasure's highway, like the dames
+  Whose premises adjoin it, claims
+  Perpetual repairing.  So
+  The tax-collectors in a row
+  Appeared before the throne to pray
+  Their master to devise some way
+  To swell the revenue.  "So great,"
+  Said they, "are the demands of state
+  A tithe of all that we collect
+  Will scarcely meet them.  Pray reflect:
+  How, if one-tenth we must resign,
+  Can we exist on t'other nine?"
+  The monarch asked them in reply:
+  "Has it occurred to you to try
+  The advantage of economy?"
+  "It has," the spokesman said:  "we sold
+  All of our gray garrotes of gold;
+  With plated-ware we now compress
+  The necks of those whom we assess.
+  Plain iron forceps we employ
+  To mitigate the miser's joy
+  Who hoards, with greed that never tires,
+  That which your Majesty requires."
+  Deep lines of thought were seen to plow
+  Their way across the royal brow.
+  "Your state is desperate, no question;
+  Pray favor me with a suggestion."
+  "O King of Men," the spokesman said,
+  "If you'll impose upon each head
+  A tax, the augmented revenue
+  We'll cheerfully divide with you."
+  As flashes of the sun illume
+  The parted storm-cloud's sullen gloom,
+  The king smiled grimly.  "I decree
+  That it be so&mdash;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&mdash;his gleaming axe revealed!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HEARSE, n. Death's baby-carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HEART, n. An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this useful
+      organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;these
+      things have been patiently ascertained by M. Pasteur, and by him expounded
+      with convincing lucidity. (See, also, my monograph, <i>The Essential
+      Identity of the Spiritual Affections and Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in
+      Digestion</i>&mdash;4to, 687 pp.) In a scientific work entitled, I
+      believe, <i>Delectatio Demonorum</i> (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 <i>Love as a
+      Product of Alimentary Maceration</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HEAT, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode
+      Of motion, but I know now how he's proving
+  His point; but this I know&mdash;hot words bestowed
+      With skill will set the human fist a-moving,
+  And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
+  <i>Crede expertum</i>&mdash;I have seen them, child.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Gorton Swope
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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 <i>modus vivendi</i>&mdash;not they!&mdash;
+  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&mdash;
+      And I'm down upon him or her!
+
+  Let Howison urge with perfunctory chin
+      Toleration&mdash;that's all very well,
+  But a roast is "nuts" to his nostril thin,
+      And he's running&mdash;I know by the smell&mdash;
+      A secret and personal Hell!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Bissell Gip
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HEBREW, n. A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an altogether
+      superior creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HELPMATE, n. A wife, or bitter half.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Now, why is yer wife called a helpmate, Pat?"
+      Says the priest.  "Since the time 'o yer wooin'
+  She's niver [sic] assisted in what ye were at&mdash;
+      For it's naught ye are ever doin'."
+
+  "That's true of yer Riverence [sic]," Patrick replies,
+      And no sign of contrition envices;
+  "But, bedad, it's a fact which the word implies,
+      For she helps to mate the expinses [sic]!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Marley Wottel
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HERS, pron. His.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HISTORIAN, n. A broad-gauge gossip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which
+      are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Salder Bupp
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Porcus
+      Rockefelleri</i>. Mr. Rockefeller did not discover the hog, but it is
+      considered his by right of resemblance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HOMOEOPATHIST, n. The humorist of the medical profession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the classification is for advantage of the
+      lawyers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs,
+      capacities and conditions of the congregation.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;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&mdash;itself all coated&mdash;uttered
+  Her bilious mind and scandalously muttered
+  That in the case of patients having money
+  The pills were sugar and the pukes were honey.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <i>Biography of Bishop Potter</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HOPE, n. Desire and expectation rolled into one.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Delicious Hope! when naught to man is left&mdash;
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Fogarty Weffing
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain
+      persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HOUSE, n. A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse,
+      beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus and microbe. <i>House of
+      Correction</i>, a place of reward for political and personal service, and
+      for the detention of offenders and appropriations. <i>House of God</i>, a
+      building with a steeple and a mortgage on it. <i>House-dog</i>, a
+      pestilent beast kept on domestic premises to insult persons passing by and
+      appal the hardy visitor. <i>House-maid</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HOUSELESS, adj. Having paid all taxes on household goods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HOVEL, n. The fruit of a flower called the Palace.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      Twaddle had a hovel,
+          Twiddle had a palace;
+      Twaddle said:  "I'll grovel
+          Or he'll think I bear him malice"&mdash;
+  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.]
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HUMANITY, n. The human race, collectively, exclusive of the anthropoid
+      poets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Lo! the poor humorist, whose tortured mind
+  See jokes in crowds, though still to gloom inclined&mdash;
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Alexander Poke
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HURRY, n. The dispatch of bunglers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HUSBAND, n. One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HYBRID, n. A pooled issue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HYPOCHONDRIASIS, n. Depression of one's own spirits.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Some heaps of trash upon a vacant lot
+  Where long the village rubbish had been shot
+  Displayed a sign among the stuff and stumps&mdash;
+  "Hypochondriasis."  It meant The Dumps.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Bogul S. Purvy
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HYPOCRITE, n. One who, professing virtues that he does not respect secures
+      the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"></a>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>We</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ICHOR, n. A fluid that serves the gods and goddesses in place of blood.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Fair Venus, speared by Diomed,
+  Restrained the raging chief and said:
+  "Behold, rash mortal, whom you've bled&mdash;
+  Your soul's stained white with ichorshed!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Mary Doke
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new
+      sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IGNORAMUS, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge
+      familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing
+      about.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;you of all beside."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Borelli
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ILLUMINATI, n. A sect of Spanish heretics of the latter part of the
+      sixteenth century; so called because they were light weights&mdash; <i>cunctationes
+      illuminati</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ILLUSTRIOUS, adj. Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and
+      detraction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint
+      ownership.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMBECILITY, n. A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting
+      censorious critics of this dictionary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMMIGRANT, n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than
+      another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMMODEST, adj. Having a strong sense of one's own merit, coupled with a
+      feeble conception of worth in others.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+  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!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Sukker Uffro
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;then
+      all philosophy is a lie and reason a disorder of the mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMMORTALITY, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMPARTIAL, adj. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
+      espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
+      conflicting opinions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMPENITENCE, n. A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin
+      and punishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMPIETY, n. Your irreverence toward my deity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMPOSITION, n. The act of blessing or consecrating by the laying on of
+      hands&mdash;a ceremony common to many ecclesiastical systems, but
+      performed with the frankest sincerity by the sect known as Thieves.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Pollo Doncas
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMPOSTOR n. A rival aspirant to public honors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMPROBABILITY, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+  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&mdash;
+      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&mdash;not at all; I'm a liar myself."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      IMPROVIDENCE, n. Provision for the needs of to-day from the revenues of
+      to-morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IMPUNITY, n. Wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the omens thence derived being called <i>auspices</i>.
+      Newspaper reporters and certain miscreant lexicographers have decided that
+      the word&mdash;always in the plural&mdash;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."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  A Roman slave appeared one day
+  Before the Augur.  "Tell me, pray,
+  If&mdash;" here the Augur, smiling, made
+  A checking gesture and displayed
+  His open palm, which plainly itched,
+  For visibly its surface twitched.
+  A <i>denarius</i> (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&mdash;I think
+  'Tis writ on this"&mdash;and with a wink
+  Which darkened half the earth, he drew
+  Another denarius to view,
+  Its shining face attentive scanned,
+  Then slipped it into the good man's hand,
+  Who with great gravity said:  "Wait
+  While I retire to question Fate."
+  That holy person then withdrew
+  His scared clay and, passing through
+  The temple's rearward gate, cried "Shoo!"
+  Waving his robe of office.  Straight
+  Each sacred peacock and its mate
+  (Maintained for Juno's favor) fled
+  With clamor from the trees o'erhead,
+  Where they were perching for the night.
+  The temple's roof received their flight,
+  For thither they would always go,
+  When danger threatened them below.
+  Back to the slave the Augur went:
+  "My son, forecasting the event
+  By flight of birds, I must confess
+  The auspices deny success."
+  That slave retired, a sadder man,
+  Abandoning his secret plan&mdash;
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>incubi</i> and <i>succubi</i>, including <i>incubae</i>
+      and <i>succubae</i>, see the <i>Liber Demonorum</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Victor Hugo relates that in the Channel Islands Satan himself&mdash;
+      tempted more than elsewhere by the beauty of the women, doubtless&mdash;
+      sometimes plays at <i>incubus</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INCUMBENT, n. A person of the liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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"&mdash;a most clear and
+      satisfactory exposition of the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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&mdash;I toss up a copper."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you mean to say that's what you did this time?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, General; but for Heaven's sake don't reprimand me: I disobeyed the
+      coin."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Apuleius M. Gokul
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INDISCRETION, n. The guilt of woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INEXPEDIENT, adj. Not calculated to advance one's interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INFANCY, n. The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven
+      lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INFERIAE, n. [Latin] Among the Greeks and Romans, sacrifices for
+      propitiation of the <i>Dii Manes</i>, 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&mdash;wow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INFLUENCE, n. In politics, a visionary <i>quo</i> given in exchange for a
+      substantial <i>quid</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INFRALAPSARIAN, n. One who ventures to believe that Adam need not have
+      sinned unless he had a mind to&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Two theologues once, as they wended their way
+  To chapel, engaged in colloquial fray&mdash;
+  An earnest logomachy, bitter as gall,
+  Concerning poor Adam and what made him fall.
+  "'Twas Predestination," cried one&mdash;"for the Lord
+  Decreed he should fall of his own accord."
+  "Not so&mdash;'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&mdash;I'm ready to swear
+  Ye wrongly interpret the names that they bear.
+  <i>You</i>&mdash;Infralapsarian son of a clown!&mdash;
+  Should only contend that Adam slipped down;
+  While <i>you</i>&mdash;you Supralapsarian pup!&mdash;
+  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!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INGRATE, n. One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise an
+      object of charity.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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&mdash;
+      With veneration I am overcome,
+  And fain would have his blessing."  "Sad your fate&mdash;
+  He cannot bless you, for I grieve to state
+              This man is dumb."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Ariel Selp
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INJURY, n. An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INNATE, adj. Natural, inherent&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.)
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      INSECTIVORA, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Sempen Railey
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  My dear sir, that is a fine house&mdash;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&mdash;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>I</i> afford <i>that</i>?
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  Why, your house may burn down at any time.
+      There was Smith's house, for example, which&mdash;
+  HOUSE OWNER:  Spare me&mdash;there were Brown's house, on the
+      contrary, and Jones's house, and Robinson's house, which&mdash;
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  Spare <i>me</i>!
+  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&mdash;by your own actuary's tables I
+      shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I
+      would otherwise have paid to you&mdash;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&mdash;
+  HOUSE OWNER:  I would not trust you with my money.  Very well
+      then.  If it is <i>certain</i>, with reference to the whole body of
+      your clients, that they lose money on you it is <i>probable</i>,
+      with reference to any one of them, that <i>he</i> will.  It is
+      these individual probabilities that make the aggregate
+      certainty.
+  INSURANCE AGENT:  I will not deny it&mdash;but look at the figures in
+      this pamph&mdash;
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      INSURRECTION, n. An unsuccessful revolution. Disaffection's failure to
+      substitute misrule for bad government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for
+      their mutual destruction.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      "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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      INVENTOR, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers
+      and springs, and believes it civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IRRELIGION, n. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ITCH, n. The patriotism of a Scotchman.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"></a>
+      J
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      J is a consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel&mdash;
+      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, <i>jacere</i>,
+      "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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      JEALOUS, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be
+      lost only if not worth keeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+      My sins are more than scarlet:
+  I love my fool&mdash;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!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Barel Dort
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      JEWS-HARP, n. An unmusical instrument, played by holding it fast with the
+      teeth and trying to brush it away with the finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      JOSS-STICKS, n. Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan
+      tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"></a>
+      K
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Klatch</i>, 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, <i>circa</i> 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&mdash;not
+      to say touching&mdash;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 <i>Klatch</i> and the
+      destruction one of nature's puns. As each theory seems probable enough, I
+      see no objection to believing both&mdash;and Dr. Snedeker arrayed himself
+      on that side of the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      KEEP, v.t.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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?&mdash;for the dead keep naught.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Durang Gophel Arn
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      KILL, v.t. To create a vacancy without nominating a successor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      KILT, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in
+      Scotland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      KINDNESS, n. A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+      Nor care nor grief to pester."
+
+  "The reason, Sire, that you would thrive,"
+      The fool said&mdash;"if you'll hear it&mdash;
+  Is that of all the fools alive
+  Who own you for their sovereign, I've
+      The most forgiving spirit."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Oogum Bem
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                  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,
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      as the "Doctor" in <i>Macbeth</i> hath it. This useful property of the
+      royal hand could, it appears, be transmitted along with other crown
+      properties; for according to "Malcolm,"
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                          'tis spoken
+  To the succeeding royalty he leaves
+  The healing benediction.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>scrofa</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                      strangely visited people,
+  All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
+  The mere despair of surgery,
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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"&mdash;one which brings the sainted
+      past close home in our "business and bosoms."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      KLEPTOMANIAC, n. A rich thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      KNIGHT, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Once a warrior gentle of birth,
+  Then a person of civic worth,
+  Now a fellow to move our mirth.
+  Warrior, person, and fellow&mdash;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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"></a>
+      L
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>terra firma</i> 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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+      I'm a natural commodore!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Dodle
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's
+      treasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LAP, n. One of the most important organs of the female system&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LAST, n. A shoemaker's implement, named by a frowning Providence as
+      opportunity to the maker of puns.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Ah, punster, would my lot were cast,
+      Where the cobbler is unknown,
+  So that I might forget his last
+      And hear your own.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Gargo Repsky
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash; 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 <i>sputa</i> diffused in a spray. From
+      this peculiarity he names the disorder <i>Convulsio spargens</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LAUREL, n. The <i>laurus</i>, a vegetable dedicated to Apollo, and
+      formerly defoliated to wreathe the brows of victors and such poets as had
+      influence at court. (<i>Vide supra.</i>)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LAW, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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:
+      "<i>Your</i> status?&mdash;devil seize you!"
+  "<i>Amica curiae,</i>" she replied&mdash;
+      "Friend of the court, so please you."
+  "Begone!" he shouted&mdash;"there's the door&mdash;
+  I never saw your face before!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LAWFUL, adj. Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LAZINESS, n. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to light
+      lovers&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Hail, holy Lead!&mdash;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!&mdash;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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      LEARNING, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LECTURER, n. One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and
+      his faith in your patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LEGACY, n. A gift from one who is legging it out of this vale of tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The electric light invades the dunnest deep of Hades.
+  Cries Pluto, 'twixt his snores:  "O tempora! O mores!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LETTUCE, n. An herb of the genus <i>Lactuca</i>, "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 (<i>Thaddeus Polandensis</i>) or Polliwig&mdash;<i>Maria
+      pseudo-hirsuta</i>. For an exhaustive description and history of the
+      Tadpole consult the famous monograph of Jane Potter, <i>Thaddeus of Warsaw</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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"
+      &mdash;although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven
+      forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that <i>was</i> 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&mdash;sweeter
+      than honey and stronger than a lion&mdash;the lexicographer was a person
+      unknown, the dictionary a creation which his Creator had not created him
+      to create.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;they are mostly out of fashion."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Sigismund Smith
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LIAR, n. A lawyer with a roving commission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LIBERTY, n. One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Martha Braymance
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Han Soper
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LIGHTHOUSE, n. A tall building on the seashore in which the government
+      maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LIMB, n. The branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  'Twas a pair of boots that the lady bought,
+      And the salesman laced them tight
+      To a very remarkable height&mdash;
+  Higher, indeed, than I think he ought&mdash;
+      Higher than <i>can</i> be right.
+  For the Bible declares&mdash;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 <i>made</i> 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&mdash;hurts my&mdash;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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      B. Percival Dike
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LINEN, n. "A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails
+      a great waste of hemp."&mdash;Calcraft the Hangman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LITIGANT, n. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining
+      his bones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LITIGATION, n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a
+      sausage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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 <i>pate</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LL.D. Letters indicating the degree <i>Legumptionorum Doctor</i>, one
+      learned in laws, gifted with legal gumption. Some suspicion is cast upon
+      this derivation by the fact that the title was formerly <i>LL.d.</i>, 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.&mdash;<i>Damnator
+      Diaboli</i>. The new honor will be known as <i>Sanctorum Custus</i>, and
+      written <i>$$c</i>. 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LOCK-AND-KEY, n. The distinguishing device of civilization and
+      enlightenment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LODGER, n. A less popular name for the Second Person of that delectable
+      newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;thus:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Major Premise</i>: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as
+      quickly as one man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Minor Premise</i>: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds;
+      therefore&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Conclusion</i>: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining
+      logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds
+      punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem&mdash;a kind of contest in
+      which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied
+      the reward of success.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  '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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      LONGANIMITY, n. The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance
+      while maturing a plan of revenge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LONGEVITY, n. Uncommon extension of the fear of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LOOKING-GLASS, n. A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show
+      for man's disillusion given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LOQUACITY, n. A disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb his
+      tongue when you wish to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Miss Sallie Ann Splurge, of her own accord,
+  Wedded a wandering English lord&mdash;
+  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&mdash;'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&mdash;suffering Caesar!&mdash;in love with her dad!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LORE, n. Learning&mdash;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 <i>Curious Myths of
+      the Middle Ages</i> the reader will find many of these traced backward,
+      through various people on converging lines, toward a common origin in
+      remote antiquity. Among these are the fables of "Teddy the Giant Killer,"
+      "The Sleeping John Sharp Williams," "Little Red Riding Hood and the Sugar
+      Trust," "Beauty and the Brisbane," "The Seven Aldermen of Ephesus," "Rip
+      Van Fairbanks," and so forth. The fable which Goethe so affectingly relates
+      under the title of "The Erl-King" was known two thousand years ago in
+      Greece as "The Demos and the Infant Industry." One of the most general and
+      ancient of these myths is that Arabian tale of "Ali Baba and the Forty
+      Rockefellers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>caries</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LOW-BRED, adj. "Raised" instead of brought up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUMINARY, n. One who throws light upon a subject; as an editor by not
+      writing about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Farquharson Harris
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"></a>
+      M
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MACHINATION, n. The method employed by one's opponents in baffling one's
+      open and honorable efforts to do the right thing.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      R.S.K.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 (<i>macrobiosis</i>)
+      in our own country. Senator Chauncey Depew is old enough to know better.
+      The editor of <i>The American</i>, 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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;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!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Venable Strigg
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MAGNET, n. Something acted upon by magnetism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MAGNETISM, n. Something acting upon a magnet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MAGPIE, n. A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it
+      might be taught to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;which,
+      also, is more portable.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  A lovelorn maiden she sat and sang&mdash;
+      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&mdash;me!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Opoline Jones
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MALEFACTOR, n. The chief factor in the progress of the human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MAMMON, n. The god of the world's leading religion. The chief temple is in
+      the holy city of New York.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  He swore that all other religions were gammon,
+  And wore out his knees in the worship of Mammon.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jared Oopf
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Apperton Duke
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARRIAGE, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master,
+      a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTYR, n. One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired
+      death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MATERIAL, adj. Having an actual existence, as distinguished from an
+      imaginary one. Important.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Material things I know, or feel, or see;
+  All else is immaterial to me.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jamrach Holobom
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MAUSOLEUM, n. The final and funniest folly of the rich.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MAYONNAISE, n. One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a
+      state religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MEDAL, n. A small metal disk given as a reward for virtues, attainments or
+      services more or less authentic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MEDICINE, n. A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MEEKNESS, n. Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Biographical Alphabet</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+      'Tis plain as day to you:
+  Don't play your game on any thing
+      That is a gamester too.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Martin Bulstrode
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MENDACIOUS, adj. Addicted to rhetoric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MERCHANT, n. One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is
+      one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MERCY, n. An attribute beloved of detected offenders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MESMERISM, n. Hypnotism before it wore good clothes, kept a carriage and
+      asked Incredulity to dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      METROPOLIS, n. A stronghold of provincialism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MILLENNIUM, n. The period of a thousand years when the lid is to be
+      screwed down, with all reformers on the under side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>mens</i>, a fact unknown to
+      that honest shoe-seller, who, observing that his learned competitor over
+      the way had displayed the motto "<i>Mens conscia recti</i>," emblazoned
+      his own front with the words "Men's, women's and children's conscia
+      recti."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MINE, adj. Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MINOR, adj. Less objectionable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MISDEMEANOR, n. An infraction of the law having less dignity than a felony
+      and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal society.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  By misdemeanors he essays to climb
+  Into the aristocracy of crime.
+  O, woe was him!&mdash;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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      S.V. Hanipur
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MISERICORDE, n. A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot
+      soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MISFORTUNE, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MONAD, n. The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. (See <i>Molecule</i>.)
+      According to Leibnitz, as nearly as he seems willing to be understood, the
+      monad has body without bulk, and mind without manifestation&mdash;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 &mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MONARCHICAL GOVERNMENT, n. Government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MONDAY, n. In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MONKEY, n. An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical
+      trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;that is to
+      say, words of a barbarous people destitute of ideas and incapable of any
+      but the most elementary sentiments and emotions.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The man who writes in Saxon
+  Is the man to use an ax on
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Judibras
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MONSIGNOR, n. A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder of our
+      religion overlooked the advantages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either
+      needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The bones of Agammemnon are a show,
+  And ruined is his royal monument,
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      but Agammemnon's fame suffers no diminution in consequence. The monument
+      custom has its <i>reductiones ad absurdum</i> in monuments "to the unknown
+      dead"&mdash;that is to say, monuments to perpetuate the memory of those
+      who have left no memory.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+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.
+
+  <i>Gooke's Meditations</i>
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MORE, adj. The comparative degree of too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MOUSQUETAIRE, n. A long glove covering a part of the arm. Worn in New
+      Jersey. But "mousquetaire" is a might poor way to spell muskeeter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MOUTH, n. In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of the
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to
+      the vice of independence. A term of contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MULATTO, n. A child of two races, ashamed of both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Scopas Brune
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MUSTANG, n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society,
+      the American wife of an English nobleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MYRMIDON, n. A follower of Achilles&mdash;particularly when he didn't
+      lead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"></a>
+      N
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Juno drank a cup of nectar,
+  But the draught did not affect her.
+  Juno drank a cup of rye&mdash;
+  Then she bad herself good-bye.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      J.G.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NEGRO, n. The <i>piece de resistance</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NEIGHBOR, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does
+      all he knows how to make us disobedient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NEPOTISM, n. Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the
+      party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi.
+      The leader of the school is Tolstoi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NIRVANA, n. In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation
+      awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to understand it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NOBLEMAN, n. Nature's provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to
+      incur social distinction and suffer high life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NOISE, n. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and
+      authenticating sign of civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NOMINATE, v. To designate for the heaviest political assessment. To put
+      forward a suitable person to incur the mudgobbing and deadcatting of the
+      opposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NOMINEE, n. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private
+      life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NON-COMBATANT, n. A dead Quaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NONSENSE, n. The objections that are urged against this excellent
+      dictionary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      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."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Arpad Singiny
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;some of which have a large sale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NOVEMBER, n. The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"></a>
+      O
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the
+      conscience by a penalty for perjury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of
+      their predecessors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OBSTINATE, adj. Inaccessible to the truth as it is manifest in the
+      splendor and stress of our advocacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The popular type and exponent of obstinacy is the mule, a most intelligent
+      animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OCEAN, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for
+      man&mdash;who has no gills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OFFENSIVE, adj. Generating disagreeable emotions or sensations, as the
+      advance of an army against its enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OLD, adj. In that stage of usefulness which is not inconsistent with
+      general inefficiency, as an <i>old man</i>. Discredited by lapse of time
+      and offensive to the popular taste, as an <i>old</i> book.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Harley Shum
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OLEAGINOUS, adj. Oily, smooth, sleek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  His name the smirking tourist scrawls
+  Upon Minerva's temple walls,
+  Where thundered once Olympian Zeus,
+  And marks his appetite's abuse.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Averil Joop
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OMEN, n. A sign that something will happen if nothing happens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ONCE, adv. Enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>simulation</i> is
+      from <i>simia</i>, an ape; but in opera the actor takes for his model <i>Simia
+      audibilis</i> (or <i>Pithecanthropos stentor</i>)&mdash;the ape that
+      howls.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The actor apes a man&mdash;at least in shape;
+  The opera performer apes an ape.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      OPIATE, n. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the
+      jail yard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OPPORTUNITY, n. A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OPPOSE, v. To assist with obstructions and objections.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  How lonely he who thinks to vex
+  With bandinage the Solemn Sex!
+  Of levity, Mere Man, beware;
+  None but the Grave deserve the Unfair.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Percy P. Orminder
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OPPOSITION, n. In politics the party that prevents the Government from
+      running amuck by hamstringing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What shall we do now?" the King asked. "Liberal institutions cannot be
+      maintained without a party of Opposition."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;an intellectual
+      disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but
+      fortunately not contagious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OPTIMIST, n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pessimist applied to God for relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness," said God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," replied the petitioner, "I wish you to create something that would
+      justify them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The world is all created," said God, "but you have overlooked something&mdash;the
+      mortality of the optimist."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the
+      understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ORPHAN, n. A living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial
+      ingratitude&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ORTHODOX, n. An ox wearing the popular religious yoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  A spelling reformer indicted
+  For fudge was before the court cicted.
+      The judge said:  "Enough&mdash;
+      His candle we'll snough,
+  And his sepulchre shall not be whicted."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OTHERWISE, adv. No better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OUTCOME, n. A particular type of disappointment. By the kind of
+      intelligence that sees in an exception a proof of the rule the wisdom of
+      an act is judged by the outcome, the result. This is immortal nonsense;
+      the wisdom of an act is to be juded by the light that the doer had when he
+      performed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OUTDO, v.t. To make an enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;with thought and emotion.
+  I pity the dunces who don't understand
+      The speech of earth, heaven and ocean.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Stromboli Smith
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Dudley Spink
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OVEREAT, v. To dine.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Hail, Gastronome, Apostle of Excess,
+  Well skilled to overeat without distress!
+  Thy great invention, the unfatal feast,
+  Shows Man's superiority to Beast.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      John Boop
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OVERWORK, n. A dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who
+      want to go fishing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"></a>
+      P
+    </h2>
+    <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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PAINTING, n. The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and
+      exposing them to the critic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PALM, n. A species of tree having several varieties, of which the familiar
+      "itching palm" (<i>Palma hominis</i>) 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."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PALMISTRY, n. The 947th method (according to Mimbleshaw's classification)
+      of obtaining money by false pretences. It consists in "reading character"
+      in the wrinkles made by closing the hand. The pretence is not altogether
+      false; character can really be read very accurately in this way, for the
+      wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word "dupe." The
+      imposture consists in not reading it aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PANDEMONIUM, n. Literally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them have
+      escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a lecture
+      hall by the Audible Reformer. When disturbed by his voice the ancient
+      echoes clamor appropriate responses most gratifying to his pride of
+      distinction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The
+      garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion.
+      Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called "trousers" by the
+      enlightened and "pants" by the unworthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PANTHEISM, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to
+      the doctrine that God is everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the
+      language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PARDON, v. To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime. To add to
+      the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PASSPORT, n. A document treacherously inflicted upon a citizen going
+      abroad, exposing him as an alien and pointing him out for special
+      reprobation and outrage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a
+      slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present
+      parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand
+      divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other,
+      are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the
+      other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the
+      Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth
+      and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope
+      flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of
+      ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of
+      to-morrow. They are one&mdash;the knowledge and the dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for
+      intellectual debility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PATIENCE, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of
+      the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious
+      to illuminate his name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
+      resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior
+      lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
+      periods of fighting.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  O, what's the loud uproar assailing
+      Mine ears without cease?
+  'Tis the voice of the hopeful, all-hailing
+      The horrors of peace.
+
+  Ah, Peace Universal; they woo it&mdash;
+      Would marry it, too.
+  If only they knew how to do it
+      'Twere easy to do.
+
+  They're working by night and by day
+      On their problem, like moles.
+  Have mercy, O Heaven, I pray,
+      On their meddlesome souls!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Ro Amil
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEDESTRIAN, n. The variable (an audible) part of the roadway for an
+      automobile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEDIGREE, n. The known part of the route from an arboreal ancestor with a
+      swim bladder to an urban descendant with a cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PENITENT, adj. Undergoing or awaiting punishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual
+      by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The editor of an English magazine having received a letter pointing out
+      the erroneous nature of his views and style, and signed "Perfection,"
+      promptly wrote at the foot of the letter: "I don't agree with you," and
+      mailed it to Matthew Arnold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PERIPATETIC, adj. Walking about. Relating to the philosophy of Aristotle,
+      who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in order to avoid his
+      pupil's objections. A needless precaution&mdash;they knew no more of the
+      matter than he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PERORATION, n. The explosion of an oratorical rocket. It dazzles, but to
+      an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous peculiarity
+      is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in preparing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PERSEVERANCE, n. A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious
+      success.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Persevere, persevere!" cry the homilists all,
+  Themselves, day and night, persevering to bawl.
+  "Remember the fable of tortoise and hare&mdash;
+  The one at the goal while the other is&mdash;where?"
+  Why, back there in Dreamland, renewing his lease
+  Of life, all his muscles preserving the peace,
+  The goal and the rival forgotten alike,
+  And the long fatigue of the needless hike.
+  His spirit a-squat in the grass and the dew
+  Of the dogless Land beyond the Stew,
+  He sleeps, like a saint in a holy place,
+  A winner of all that is good in a race.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Sukker Uffro
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by
+      the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and
+      his unsightly smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PHILANTHROPIST, n. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained
+      himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PHILISTINE, n. One whose mind is the creature of its environment,
+      following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment. He is sometimes
+      learned, frequently prosperous, commonly clean and always solemn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PHILOSOPHY, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PHOENIX, n. The classical prototype of the modern "small hot bird."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PHONOGRAPH, n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PHOTOGRAPH, n. A picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. It
+      is a little better than the work of an Apache, but not quite so good as
+      that of a Cheyenne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PHRENOLOGY, n. The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It
+      consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PHYSICIAN, n. One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when
+      well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the
+      resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the
+      standard of excellence.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "There is no art," says Shakespeare, foolish man,
+      "To read the mind's construction in the face."
+  The physiognomists his portrait scan,
+      And say:  "How little wisdom here we trace!
+  He knew his face disclosed his mind and heart,
+  So, in his own defence, denied our art."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Lavatar Shunk
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is
+      operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the
+      audience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PICKANINNY, n. The young of the <i>Procyanthropos</i>, or <i>Americanus
+      dominans</i>. It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PICTURE, n. A representation in two dimensions of something wearisome in
+      three.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Behold great Daubert's picture here on view&mdash;
+  Taken from Life."  If that description's true,
+  Grant, heavenly Powers, that I be taken, too.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jali Hane
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PIE, n. An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Cold pie was highly esteemed by the remains.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Rev. Dr. Mucker
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (in a funeral sermon over a British nobleman)
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Cold pie is a detestable
+  American comestible.
+  That's why I'm done&mdash;or undone&mdash;
+  So far from that dear London.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      (from the headstone of a British nobleman in Kalamazoo)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PIETY, n. Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed
+      resemblance to man.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The pig is taught by sermons and epistles
+  To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Judibras
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PIG, n. An animal (<i>Porcus omnivorus</i>) closely allied to the human
+      race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is
+      inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PIGMY, n. One of a tribe of very small men found by ancient travelers in
+      many parts of the world, but by modern in Central Africa only. The Pigmies
+      are so called to distinguish them from the bulkier Caucasians &mdash;who
+      are Hogmies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one
+      who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms through
+      his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God
+      according to the dictates of his conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PILLORY, n. A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction
+      &mdash;prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere
+      virtues and blameless lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary
+      encounter with oneself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PITY, n. A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLAGIARISM, n. A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable
+      priority and an honorable subsequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLAGIARIZE, v. To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has
+      never, never read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLAGUE, n. In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for
+      admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the
+      Immune. The plague as we of to-day have the happiness to know it is merely
+      Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLAN, v.t. To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental
+      result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular
+      literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a
+      million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in
+      artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a
+      departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality. The Pope's-nose of a
+      featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of
+      thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLATONIC, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is
+      a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLAUDITS, n. Coins with which the populace pays those who tickle and
+      devour it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLEASE, v. To lay the foundation for a superstructure of imposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLEASURE, n. The least hateful form of dejection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained
+      nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a
+      saturated solution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLEBISCITE, n. A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLENIPOTENTIARY, adj. Having full power. A Minister Plenipotentiary is a
+      diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he never exert
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLEONASM, n. An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLOW, n. An implement that cries aloud for hands accustomed to the pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent
+      and customary reticences of theft. To effect a change of ownership with
+      the candid concomitance of a brass band. To wrest the wealth of A from B
+      and leave C lamenting a vanished opportunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POCKET, n. The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience. In woman this
+      organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her conscience, denied
+      burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POETRY, n. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POKER, n. A game said to be played with cards for some purpose to this
+      lexicographer unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POLICE, n. An armed force for protection and participation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POLITENESS, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of
+      principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure
+      of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation
+      of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the
+      statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POLYGAMY, n. A house of atonement, or expiatory chapel, fitted with
+      several stools of repentance, as distinguished from monogamy, which has
+      but one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POPULIST, n. A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found in
+      the old red soapstone underlying Kansas; characterized by an uncommon
+      spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the power of
+      flight, though Professors Morse and Whitney, pursuing independent lines of
+      thought, have ingeniously pointed out that had he possessed it he would
+      have gone elsewhere. In the picturesque speech of his period, some
+      fragments of which have come down to us, he was known as "The Matter with
+      Kansas."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PORTABLE, adj. Exposed to a mutable ownership through vicissitudes of
+      possession.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  His light estate, if neither he did make it
+  Nor yet its former guardian forsake it,
+  Is portable improperty, I take it.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Worgum Slupsky
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are
+      mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with
+      garlic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POSITIVE, adj. Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POSITIVISM, n. A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and
+      affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its
+      broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POSTERITY, n. An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular
+      author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POTABLE, n. Suitable for drinking. Water is said to be potable; indeed,
+      some declare it our natural beverage, although even they find it palatable
+      only when suffering from the recurrent disorder known as thirst, for which
+      it is a medicine. Upon nothing has so great and diligent ingenuity been
+      brought to bear in all ages and in all countries, except the most
+      uncivilized, as upon the invention of substitutes for water. To hold that
+      this general aversion to that liquid has no basis in the preservative
+      instinct of the race is to be unscientific&mdash;and without science we
+      are as the snakes and toads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POVERTY, n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. The
+      number of plans for its abolition equals that of the reformers who suffer
+      from it, plus that of the philosophers who know nothing about it. Its
+      victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues and by their
+      faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a prosperity where they
+      believe these to be unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a
+      single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race
+      of antedated Creation and lived under conditions not easily conceived.
+      Melsius believed them to have inhabited "the Void" and to have been
+      something intermediate between fishes and birds. Little its known of them
+      beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a
+      controversy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRECEDENT, n. In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in the
+      absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a Judge
+      may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of doing as he
+      pleases. As there are precedents for everything, he has only to ignore
+      those that make against his interest and accentuate those in the line of
+      his desire. Invention of the precedent elevates the trial-at-law from the
+      low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the noble attitude of a dirigible
+      arbitrament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRECIPITATE, adj. Anteprandial.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Precipitate in all, this sinner
+  Took action first, and then his dinner.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Judibras
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PREDESTINATION, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to
+      programme. This doctrine should not be confused with that of
+      foreordination, which means that all things are programmed, but does not
+      affirm their occurrence, that being only an implication from other
+      doctrines by which this is entailed. The difference is great enough to
+      have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore. With the
+      distinction of the two doctrines kept well in mind, and a reverent belief
+      in both, one may hope to escape perdition if spared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PREDICAMENT, n. The wage of consistency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PREDILECTION, n. The preparatory stage of disillusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRE-EXISTENCE, n. An unnoted factor in creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PREFERENCE, n. A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the erroneous
+      belief that one thing is better than another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An ancient philosopher, expounding his conviction that life is no better
+      than death, was asked by a disciple why, then, he did not die. "Because,"
+      he replied, "death is no better than life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PREHISTORIC, adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating
+      the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  He lived in a period prehistoric,
+  When all was absurd and phantasmagoric.
+  Born later, when Clio, celestial recorder,
+  Set down great events in succession and order,
+  He surely had seen nothing droll or fortuitous
+  In anything here but the lies that she threw at us.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Orpheus Bowen
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PREJUDICE, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRELATE, n. A church officer having a superior degree of holiness and a
+      fat preferment. One of Heaven's aristocracy. A gentleman of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PREROGATIVE, n. A sovereign's right to do wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRESBYTERIAN, n. One who holds the conviction that the government
+      authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRESCRIPTION, n. A physician's guess at what will best prolong the
+      situation with least harm to the patient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRESENT, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment
+      from the realm of hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRESENTABLE, adj. Hideously appareled after the manner of the time and
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Boorioboola-Gha a man is presentable on occasions of ceremony if he
+      have his abdomen painted a bright blue and wear a cow's tail; in New York
+      he may, if it please him, omit the paint, but after sunset he must wear
+      two tails made of the wool of a sheep and dyed black.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRESIDE, v. To guide the action of a deliberative body to a desirable
+      result. In Journalese, to perform upon a musical instrument; as, "He
+      presided at the piccolo."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The Headliner, holding the copy in hand,
+      Read with a solemn face:
+  "The music was very uncommonly grand&mdash;
+          The best that was every provided,
+          For our townsman Brown presided
+      At the organ with skill and grace."
+  The Headliner discontinued to read,
+      And, spread the paper down
+  On the desk, he dashed in at the top of the screed:
+      "Great playing by President Brown."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Orpheus Bowen
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom&mdash;
+      and of whom only&mdash;it is positively known that immense numbers of
+      their countrymen did not want any of them for President.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  If that's an honor surely 'tis a greater
+  To have been a simple and undamned spectator.
+  Behold in me a man of mark and note
+  Whom no elector e'er denied a vote!&mdash;
+  An undiscredited, unhooted gent
+  Who might, for all we know, be President
+  By acclamation.  Cheer, ye varlets, cheer&mdash;
+  I'm passing with a wide and open ear!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jonathan Fomry
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PREVARICATOR, n. A liar in the caterpillar state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRICE, n. Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of conscience
+      in demanding it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by
+      involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the Archbishop of
+      Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when
+      living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is commonly dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRISON, n. A place of punishments and rewards. The poet assures us that&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Stone walls do not a prison make,"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      but a combination of the stone wall, the political parasite and the moral
+      instructor is no garden of sweets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIVATE, n. A military gentleman with a field-marshal's baton in his
+      knapsack and an impediment in his hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in
+      place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For
+      purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asked how he knew that an elephant was going on a journey, the illustrious
+      Jo. Miller cast a reproachful look upon his tormentor, and answered,
+      absently: "When it is ajar," and threw himself from a high promontory into
+      the sea. Thus perished in his pride the most famous humorist of antiquity,
+      leaving to mankind a heritage of woe! No successor worthy of the title has
+      appeared, though Mr. Edward Bok, of <i>The Ladies' Home Journal</i>, is
+      much respected for the purity and sweetness of his personal character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PROJECTILE, n. The final arbiter in international disputes. Formerly these
+      disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants, with such
+      simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could supply&mdash;the
+      sword, the spear, and so forth. With the growth of prudence in military
+      affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in
+      high esteem by the most courageous. Its capital defect is that it requires
+      personal attendance at the point of propulsion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PROOF, n. Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of
+      unlikelihood. The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to that
+      of only one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PROOF-READER, n. A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense
+      by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PROPERTY, n. Any material thing, having no particular value, that may be
+      held by A against the cupidity of B. Whatever gratifies the passion for
+      possession in one and disappoints it in all others. The object of man's
+      brief rapacity and long indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future
+      delivery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PROSPECT, n. An outlook, usually forbidding. An expectation, usually
+      forbidden.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Blow, blow, ye spicy breezes&mdash;
+      O'er Ceylon blow your breath,
+  Where every prospect pleases,
+      Save only that of death.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Bishop Sheber
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PROVIDENTIAL, adj. Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the person
+      so describing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRUDE, n. A bawd hiding behind the back of her demeanor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PUBLISH, n. In literary affairs, to become the fundamental element in a
+      cone of critics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PUSH, n. One of the two things mainly conducive to success, especially in
+      politics. The other is Pull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYRRHONISM, n. An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted
+      of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern
+      professors have added that.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"></a>
+      Q
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and
+      through whom it is ruled when there is not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      QUILL, n. An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly wielded
+      by an ass. This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its modern
+      equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting Presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      QUIVER, n. A portable sheath in which the ancient statesman and the
+      aboriginal lawyer carried their lighter arguments.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  He extracted from his quiver,
+      Did the controversial Roman,
+  An argument well fitted
+  To the question as submitted,
+  Then addressed it to the liver,
+      Of the unpersuaded foeman.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Oglum P. Boomp
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      QUIXOTIC, adj. Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote. An insight into the
+      beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily denied
+      to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman's name is
+      pronounced Ke-ho-tay.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  When ignorance from out of our lives can banish
+  Philology, 'tis folly to know Spanish.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Juan Smith
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      QUORUM, n. A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to have
+      their own way and their own way of having it. In the United States Senate
+      a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on Finance and a
+      messenger from the White House; in the House of Representatives, of the
+      Speaker and the devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      QUOTATION, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The
+      words erroneously repeated.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Intent on making his quotation truer,
+  He sought the page infallible of Brewer,
+  Then made a solemn vow that he would be
+  Condemned eternally.  Ah, me, ah, me!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Stumpo Gaker
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      QUOTIENT, n. A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging to
+      one person is contained in the pocket of another&mdash;usually about as
+      many times as it can be got there.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"></a>
+      R
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      RABBLE, n. In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered
+      by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian
+      fable&mdash;omnipotent on condition that it do nothing. (The word is
+      Aristocratese, and has no exact equivalent in our tongue, but means, as
+      nearly as may be, "soaring swine.")
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RACK, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading
+      devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth. As a call to the
+      unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now held in
+      light popular esteem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RANK, n. Relative elevation in the scale of human worth.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  He held at court a rank so high
+  That other noblemen asked why.
+  "Because," 'twas answered, "others lack
+  His skill to scratch the royal back."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Aramis Jukes
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RANSOM, n. The purchase of that which neither belongs to the seller, nor
+      can belong to the buyer. The most unprofitable of investments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RAPACITY, n. Providence without industry. The thrift of power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RAREBIT, n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out
+      that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the
+      comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that <i>riz-de-veau
+      a la financiere</i> is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe
+      of a she banker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RASCAL, n. A fool considered under another aspect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RASCALITY, n. Stupidity militant. The activity of a clouded intellect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RASH, adj. Insensible to the value of our advice.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Now lay your bet with mine, nor let
+      These gamblers take your cash."
+  "Nay, this child makes no bet."  "Great snakes!
+      How can you be so rash?"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Bootle P. Gish
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation,
+      experience and reflection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RATTLESNAKE, n. Our prostrate brother, <i>Homo ventrambulans</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RAZOR, n. An instrument used by the Caucasian to enhance his beauty, by
+      the Mongolian to make a guy of himself, and by the Afro-American to affirm
+      his worth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REACH, n. The radius of action of the human hand. The area within which it
+      is possible (and customary) to gratify directly the propensity to provide.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  This is a truth, as old as the hills,
+      That life and experience teach:
+  The poor man suffers that keenest of ills,
+      An impediment in his reach.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      READING, n. The general body of what one reads. In our country it
+      consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in "dialect" and
+      humor in slang.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  We know by one's reading
+  His learning and breeding;
+  By what draws his laughter
+  We know his Hereafter.
+  Read nothing, laugh never&mdash;
+  The Sphinx was less clever!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jupiter Muke
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RADICALISM, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of
+      to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RADIUM, n. A mineral that gives off heat and stimulates the organ that a
+      scientist is a fool with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RAILROAD, n. The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away
+      from where we are to where we are no better off. For this purpose the
+      railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits him to
+      make the transit with great expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RAMSHACKLE, adj. Pertaining to a certain order of architecture, otherwise
+      known as the Normal American. Most of the public buildings of the United
+      States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our earlier architects
+      preferred the Ironic. Recent additions to the White House in Washington
+      are Theo-Doric, the ecclesiastic order of the Dorians. They are
+      exceedingly fine and cost one hundred dollars a brick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm
+      suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a
+      measuring-worm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the
+      cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REALLY, adv. Apparently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REAR, n. In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that
+      is nearest to Congress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REASON, v.i. To weigh probabilities in the scales of desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REASON, n. Propensitate of prejudice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REASONABLE, adj. Accessible to the infection of our own opinions.
+      Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REBEL, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RECOLLECT, v. To recall with additions something not previously known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the
+      purpose of digging up the dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RECONSIDER, v. To seek a justification for a decision already made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RECOUNT, n. In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded to
+      the player against whom they are loaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RECREATION, n. A particular kind of dejection to relieve a general
+      fatigue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RECRUIT, n. A person distinguishable from a civilian by his uniform and
+      from a soldier by his gait.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Fresh from the farm or factory or street,
+  His marching, in pursuit or in retreat,
+      Were an impressive martial spectacle
+  Except for two impediments&mdash;his feet.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Thompson Johnson
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RECTOR, n. In the Church of England, the Third Person of the parochial
+      Trinity, the Curate and the Vicar being the other two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REDEMPTION, n. Deliverance of sinners from the penalty of their sin,
+      through their murder of the deity against whom they sinned. The doctrine
+      of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy religion, and whoso
+      believeth in it shall not perish, but have everlasting life in which to
+      try to understand it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  We must awake Man's spirit from his sin,
+      And take some special measure for redeeming it;
+  Though hard indeed the task to get it in
+      Among the angels any way but teaming it,
+      Or purify it otherwise than steaming it.
+  I'm awkward at Redemption&mdash;a beginner:
+  My method is to crucify the sinner.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Golgo Brone
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REDRESS, n. Reparation without satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the Anglo-Saxon a subject conceiving himself wronged by the king was
+      permitted, on proving his injury, to beat a brazen image of the royal
+      offender with a switch that was afterward applied to his own naked back.
+      The latter rite was performed by the public hangman, and it assured
+      moderation in the plaintiff's choice of a switch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RED-SKIN, n. A North American Indian, whose skin is not red&mdash;at least
+      not on the outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REDUNDANT, adj. Superfluous; needless; <i>de trop</i>.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The Sultan said:  "There's evidence abundant
+  To prove this unbelieving dog redundant."
+  To whom the Grand Vizier, with mien impressive,
+  Replied:  "His head, at least, appears excessive."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Habeeb Suleiman
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Mr. Debs is a redundant citizen.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Theodore Roosevelt
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REFERENDUM, n. A law for submission of proposed legislation to a popular
+      vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REFLECTION, n. An action of the mind whereby we obtain a clearer view of
+      our relation to the things of yesterday and are able to avoid the perils
+      that we shall not again encounter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REFORM, v. A thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to reformation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REFUGE, n. Anything assuring protection to one in peril. Moses and Joshua
+      provided six cities of refuge&mdash;Bezer, Golan, Ramoth, Kadesh, Schekem
+      and Hebron&mdash;to which one who had taken life inadvertently could flee
+      when hunted by relatives of the deceased. This admirable expedient
+      supplied him with wholesome exercise and enabled them to enjoy the
+      pleasures of the chase; whereby the soul of the dead man was appropriately
+      honored by observances akin to the funeral games of early Greece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REFUSAL, n. Denial of something desired; as an elderly maiden's hand in
+      marriage, to a rich and handsome suitor; a valuable franchise to a rich
+      corporation, by an alderman; absolution to an impenitent king, by a
+      priest, and so forth. Refusals are graded in a descending scale of
+      finality thus: the refusal absolute, the refusal conditional, the refusal
+      tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists
+      the refusal assentive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REGALIA, n. Distinguishing insignia, jewels and costume of such ancient
+      and honorable orders as Knights of Adam; Visionaries of Detectable Bosh;
+      the Ancient Order of Modern Troglodytes; the League of Holy Humbug; the
+      Golden Phalanx of Phalangers; the Genteel Society of Expurgated Hoodlums;
+      the Mystic Alliances of Gorgeous Regalians; Knights and Ladies of the
+      Yellow Dog; the Oriental Order of Sons of the West; the Blatherhood of
+      Insufferable Stuff; Warriors of the Long Bow; Guardians of the Great Horn
+      Spoon; the Band of Brutes; the Impenitent Order of Wife-Beaters; the
+      Sublime Legion of Flamboyant Conspicuants; Worshipers at the Electroplated
+      Shrine; Shining Inaccessibles; Fee-Faw-Fummers of the Inimitable Grip;
+      Jannissaries of the Broad-Blown Peacock; Plumed Increscencies of the Magic
+      Temple; the Grand Cabal of Able-Bodied Sedentarians; Associated Deities of
+      the Butter Trade; the Garden of Galoots; the Affectionate Fraternity of
+      Men Similarly Warted; the Flashing Astonishers; Ladies of Horror;
+      Cooperative Association for Breaking into the Spotlight; Dukes of Eden;
+      Disciples Militant of the Hidden Faith; Knights-Champions of the Domestic
+      Dog; the Holy Gregarians; the Resolute Optimists; the Ancient Sodality of
+      Inhospitable Hogs; Associated Sovereigns of Mendacity; Dukes-Guardian of
+      the Mystic Cess-Pool; the Society for Prevention of Prevalence; Kings of
+      Drink; Polite Federation of Gents-Consequential; the Mysterious Order of
+      the Undecipherable Scroll; Uniformed Rank of Lousy Cats; Monarchs of Worth
+      and Hunger; Sons of the South Star; Prelates of the Tub-and-Sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the
+      nature of the Unknowable.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "What is your religion my son?" inquired the Archbishop of Rheims.
+  "Pardon, monseigneur," replied Rochebriant; "I am ashamed of it."
+  "Then why do you not become an atheist?"
+  "Impossible!  I should be ashamed of atheism."
+  "In that case, monsieur, you should join the Protestants."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      RELIQUARY, n. A receptacle for such sacred objects as pieces of the true
+      cross, short-ribs of the saints, the ears of Balaam's ass, the lung of the
+      cock that called Peter to repentance and so forth. Reliquaries are
+      commonly of metal, and provided with a lock to prevent the contents from
+      coming out and performing miracles at unseasonable times. A feather from
+      the wing of the Angel of the Annunciation once escaped during a sermon in
+      Saint Peter's and so tickled the noses of the congregation that they woke
+      and sneezed with great vehemence three times each. It is related in the
+      "Gesta Sanctorum" that a sacristan in the Canterbury cathedral surprised
+      the head of Saint Dennis in the library. Reprimanded by its stern
+      custodian, it explained that it was seeking a body of doctrine. This
+      unseemly levity so raged the diocesan that the offender was publicly
+      anathematized, thrown into the Stour and replaced by another head of Saint
+      Dennis, brought from Rome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RENOWN, n. A degree of distinction between notoriety and fame&mdash;a
+      little more supportable than the one and a little more intolerable than
+      the other. Sometimes it is conferred by an unfriendly and inconsiderate
+      hand.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  I touched the harp in every key,
+      But found no heeding ear;
+  And then Ithuriel touched me
+      With a revealing spear.
+
+  Not all my genius, great as 'tis,
+      Could urge me out of night.
+  I felt the faint appulse of his,
+      And leapt into the light!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      W.J. Candleton
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REPARATION, n. Satisfaction that is made for a wrong and deducted from the
+      satisfaction felt in committing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a
+      constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend.
+      In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REPENTANCE, n. The faithful attendant and follower of Punishment. It is
+      usually manifest in a degree of reformation that is not inconsistent with
+      continuity of sin.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Desirous to avoid the pains of Hell,
+  You will repent and join the Church, Parnell?
+  How needless!&mdash;Nick will keep you off the coals
+  And add you to the woes of other souls.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jomater Abemy
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REPLICA, n. A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made the
+      original. It is so called to distinguish it from a "copy," which is made
+      by another artist. When the two are made with equal skill the replica is
+      the more valuable, for it is supposed to be more beautiful than it looks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with
+      a tempest of words.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "More dear than all my bosom knows, O thou
+  Whose 'lips are sealed' and will not disavow!"
+  So sang the blithe reporter-man as grew
+  Beneath his hand the leg-long "interview."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Barson Maith
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REPOSE, v.i. To cease from troubling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REPRESENTATIVE, n. In national politics, a member of the Lower House in
+      this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REPROBATION, n. In theology, the state of a luckless mortal prenatally
+      damned. The doctrine of reprobation was taught by Calvin, whose joy in it
+      was somewhat marred by the sad sincerity of his conviction that although
+      some are foredoomed to perdition, others are predestined to salvation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed
+      being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional
+      obedience. In a republic, the foundation of public order is the ever
+      lessening habit of submission inherited from ancestors who, being truly
+      governed, submitted because they had to. There are as many kinds of
+      republics as there are graduations between the despotism whence they came
+      and the anarchy whither they lead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REQUIEM, n. A mass for the dead which the minor poets assure us the winds
+      sing o'er the graves of their favorites. Sometimes, by way of providing a
+      varied entertainment, they sing a dirge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RESIDENT, adj. Unable to leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RESIGN, v.t. To renounce an honor for an advantage. To renounce an
+      advantage for a greater advantage.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  'Twas rumored Leonard Wood had signed
+      A true renunciation
+  Of title, rank and every kind
+      Of military station&mdash;
+      Each honorable station.
+
+  By his example fired&mdash;inclined
+      To noble emulation,
+  The country humbly was resigned
+      To Leonard's resignation&mdash;
+      His Christian resignation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Politian Greame
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RESOLUTE, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RESPECTABILITY, n. The offspring of a <i>liaison</i> between a bald head
+      and a bank account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RESPIRATOR, n. An apparatus fitted over the nose and mouth of an
+      inhabitant of London, whereby to filter the visible universe in its
+      passage to the lungs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RESPITE, n. A suspension of hostilities against a sentenced assassin, to
+      enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have been
+      done by the prosecuting attorney. Any break in the continuity of a
+      disagreeable expectation.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Altgeld upon his incandescent bed
+  Lay, an attendant demon at his head.
+
+  "O cruel cook, pray grant me some relief&mdash;
+  Some respite from the roast, however brief."
+
+  "Remember how on earth I pardoned all
+  Your friends in Illinois when held in thrall."
+
+  "Unhappy soul! for that alone you squirm
+  O'er fire unquenched, a never-dying worm.
+
+  "Yet, for I pity your uneasy state,
+  Your doom I'll mollify and pains abate.
+
+  "Naught, for a season, shall your comfort mar,
+  Not even the memory of who you are."
+
+  Throughout eternal space dread silence fell;
+  Heaven trembled as Compassion entered Hell.
+
+  "As long, sweet demon, let my respite be
+  As, governing down here, I'd respite thee."
+
+  "As long, poor soul, as any of the pack
+  You thrust from jail consumed in getting back."
+
+  A genial chill affected Altgeld's hide
+  While they were turning him on t'other side.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Joel Spate Woop
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RESPLENDENT, adj. Like a simple American citizen beduking himself in his
+      lodge, or affirming his consequence in the Scheme of Things as an
+      elemental unit of a parade.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      The Knights of Dominion were so resplendent in their velvet-
+  and-gold that their masters would hardly have known them.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Chronicles of the Classes"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RESPOND, v.i. To make answer, or disclose otherwise a consciousness of
+      having inspired an interest in what Herbert Spencer calls "external
+      coexistences," as Satan "squat like a toad" at the ear of Eve, responded
+      to the touch of the angel's spear. To respond in damages is to contribute
+      to the maintenance of the plaintiff's attorney and, incidentally, to the
+      gratification of the plaintiff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RESPONSIBILITY, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of
+      God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it
+      was customary to unload it upon a star.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Alas, things ain't what we should see
+  If Eve had let that apple be;
+  And many a feller which had ought
+  To set with monarchses of thought,
+  Or play some rosy little game
+  With battle-chaps on fields of fame,
+  Is downed by his unlucky star
+  And hollers:  "Peanuts!&mdash;here you are!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "The Sturdy Beggar"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RESTITUTION, n. The founding or endowing of universities and public
+      libraries by gift or bequest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RESTITUTOR, n. Benefactor; philanthropist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RETALIATION, n. The natural rock upon which is reared the Temple of Law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the
+      just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the lines following, addressed to an Emperor in exile by Father
+      Gassalasca Jape, the reverend poet appears to hint his sense of the
+      imprudence of turning about to face Retribution when it is taking
+      exercise:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  What, what! Dom Pedro, you desire to go
+      Back to Brazil to end your days in quiet?
+  Why, what assurance have you 'twould be so?
+      'Tis not so long since you were in a riot,
+      And your dear subjects showed a will to fly at
+  Your throat and shake you like a rat.  You know
+  That empires are ungrateful; are you certain
+  Republics are less handy to get hurt in?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      REVEILLE, n. A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields no
+      more, but get up and have their blue noses counted. In the American army
+      it is ingeniously called "rev-e-lee," and to that pronunciation our
+      countrymen have pledged their lives, their misfortunes and their sacred
+      dishonor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REVELATION, n. A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all
+      that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REVERENCE, n. The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REVIEW, v.t.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it,
+      Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)
+  At work upon a book, and so read out of it
+      The qualities that you have first read into it.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      REVOLUTION, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
+      Specifically, in American history, the substitution of the rule of an
+      Administration for that of a Ministry, whereby the welfare and happiness
+      of the people were advanced a full half-inch. Revolutions are usually
+      accompanied by a considerable effusion of blood, but are accounted worth
+      it&mdash;this appraisement being made by beneficiaries whose blood had not
+      the mischance to be shed. The French revolution is of incalculable value
+      to the Socialist of to-day; when he pulls the string actuating its bones
+      its gestures are inexpressibly terrifying to gory tyrants suspected of
+      fomenting law and order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RHADOMANCER, n. One who uses a divining-rod in prospecting for precious
+      metals in the pocket of a fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RIBALDRY, n. Censorious language by another concerning oneself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RIBROASTER, n. Censorious language by oneself concerning another. The word
+      is of classical refinement, and is even said to have been used in a fable
+      by Georgius Coadjutor, one of the most fastidious writers of the fifteenth
+      century&mdash;commonly, indeed, regarded as the founder of the Fastidiotic
+      School.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular
+      novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the
+      conscience. It is said to be rich in both obtundite and lethargine, and is
+      brewed in a midnight fog by a fat witch of the Dismal Swamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of
+      the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the
+      luckless. That is the view that prevails in the underworld, where the
+      Brotherhood of Man finds its most logical development and candid advocacy.
+      To denizens of the midworld the word means good and wise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RICHES, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      A gift from Heaven signifying, "This is my beloved son, in
+  whom I am well pleased."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      John D. Rockefeller
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      The reward of toil and virtue.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      J.P. Morgan
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      The savings of many in the hands of one.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Eugene Debs
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To these excellent definitions the inspired lexicographer feels that he
+      can add nothing of value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RIDICULE, n. Words designed to show that the person of whom they are
+      uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who
+      utters them. It may be graphic, mimetic or merely rident. Shaftesbury is
+      quoted as having pronounced it the test of truth&mdash;a ridiculous
+      assertion, for many a solemn fallacy has undergone centuries of ridicule
+      with no abatement of its popular acceptance. What, for example, has been
+      more valorously derided than the doctrine of Infant Respectability?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RIGHT, n. Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right to be
+      a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles, and the
+      like. The first of these rights was once universally believed to be
+      derived directly from the will of God; and this is still sometimes
+      affirmed <i>in partibus infidelium</i> outside the enlightened realms of
+      Democracy; as the well known lines of Sir Abednego Bink, following:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      By what right, then, do royal rulers rule?
+          Whose is the sanction of their state and pow'r?
+      He surely were as stubborn as a mule
+          Who, God unwilling, could maintain an hour
+  His uninvited session on the throne, or air
+  His pride securely in the Presidential chair.
+
+      Whatever is is so by Right Divine;
+          Whate'er occurs, God wills it so.  Good land!
+      It were a wondrous thing if His design
+          A fool could baffle or a rogue withstand!
+  If so, then God, I say (intending no offence)
+  Is guilty of contributory negligence.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      RIGHTEOUSNESS, n. A sturdy virtue that was once found among the
+      Pantidoodles inhabiting the lower part of the peninsula of Oque. Some
+      feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it into
+      several European countries, but it appears to have been imperfectly
+      expounded. An example of this faulty exposition is found in the only
+      extant sermon of the pious Bishop Rowley, a characteristic passage from
+      which is here given:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      "Now righteousness consisteth not merely in a holy state of
+  mind, nor yet in performance of religious rites and obedience to
+  the letter of the law.  It is not enough that one be pious and
+  just:  one must see to it that others also are in the same state;
+  and to this end compulsion is a proper means.  Forasmuch as my
+  injustice may work ill to another, so by his injustice may evil be
+  wrought upon still another, the which it is as manifestly my duty
+  to estop as to forestall mine own tort.  Wherefore if I would be
+  righteous I am bound to restrain my neighbor, by force if needful,
+  in all those injurious enterprises from which, through a better
+  disposition and by the help of Heaven, I do myself refrain."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      RIME, n. Agreeing sounds in the terminals of verse, mostly bad. The verses
+      themselves, as distinguished from prose, mostly dull. Usually (and
+      wickedly) spelled "rhyme."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RIMER, n. A poet regarded with indifference or disesteem.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,
+  The sound surceases and the sense expires.
+  Then the domestic dog, to east and west,
+  Expounds the passions burning in his breast.
+  The rising moon o'er that enchanted land
+  Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Mowbray Myles
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RIOT, n. A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent
+      bystanders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of <i>requiescat in pace</i>, attesting an
+      indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge,
+      however, the letters originally meant nothing more than <i>reductus in
+      pulvis</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or
+      custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear
+      freedom, keeping off the grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ROAD, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too
+      tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  All roads, howsoe'er they diverge, lead to Rome,
+  Whence, thank the good Lord, at least one leads back home.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Borey the Bald
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ROBBER, n.  A candid man of affairs.
+  It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling
+companion lodged at a wayside inn.  The surroundings were suggestive,
+and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn.  "Once
+there was a Farmer-General of the Revenues."  Saying nothing more, he
+was encouraged to continue.  "That," he said, "is the story."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They
+      Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to probability, as a
+      domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance it ranges at will over
+      the entire region of the imagination&mdash;free, lawless, immune to bit
+      and rein. Your novelist is a poor creature, as Carlyle might say&mdash;a
+      mere reporter. He may invent his characters and plot, but he must not
+      imagine anything taking place that might not occur, albeit his entire
+      narrative is candidly a lie. Why he imposes this hard condition on
+      himself, and "drags at each remove a lengthening chain" of his own forging
+      he can explain in ten thick volumes without illuminating by so much as a
+      candle's ray the black profound of his own ignorance of the matter. There
+      are great novels, for great writers have "laid waste their powers" to
+      write them, but it remains true that far and away the most fascinating
+      fiction that we have is "The Thousand and One Nights."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ROPE, n. An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they too
+      are mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place one's whole life
+      long. It has been largely superseded by a more complex electrical device
+      worn upon another part of the person; and this is rapidly giving place to
+      an apparatus known as the preachment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ROSTRUM, n. In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship. In
+      America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically expounds
+      the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ROUNDHEAD, n. A member of the Parliamentarian party in the English civil
+      war&mdash;so called from his habit of wearing his hair short, whereas his
+      enemy, the Cavalier, wore his long. There were other points of difference
+      between them, but the fashion in hair was the fundamental cause of
+      quarrel. The Cavaliers were royalists because the king, an indolent
+      fellow, found it more convenient to let his hair grow than to wash his
+      neck. This the Roundheads, who were mostly barbers and soap-boilers,
+      deemed an injury to trade, and the royal neck was therefore the object of
+      their particular indignation. Descendants of the belligerents now wear
+      their hair all alike, but the fires of animosity enkindled in that ancient
+      strife smoulder to this day beneath the snows of British civility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RUBBISH, n. Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies,
+      literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions lying
+      due south from Boreaplas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RUIN, v. To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the
+      virtue of maids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RUM, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total
+      abstainers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RUMOR, n. A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Sharp, irresistible by mail or shield,
+      By guard unparried as by flight unstayed,
+  O serviceable Rumor, let me wield
+      Against my enemy no other blade.
+  His be the terror of a foe unseen,
+      His the inutile hand upon the hilt,
+  And mine the deadly tongue, long, slender, keen,
+      Hinting a rumor of some ancient guilt.
+  So shall I slay the wretch without a blow,
+  Spare me to celebrate his overthrow,
+  And nurse my valor for another foe.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Joel Buxter
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RUSSIAN, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A Tartar
+      Emetic.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"></a>
+      S
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      SABBATH, n. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made
+      the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh. Among the Jews
+      observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this is the
+      Christian version: "Remember the seventh day to make thy neighbor keep it
+      wholly." To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient that the Sabbath
+      should be the last day of the week, but the Early Fathers of the Church
+      held other views. So great is the sanctity of the day that even where the
+      Lord holds a doubtful and precarious jurisdiction over those who go down
+      to (and down into) the sea it is reverently recognized, as is manifest in
+      the following deep-water version of the Fourth Commandment:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,
+  And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the captain
+      with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine ordinance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a priest.
+      Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge that is now
+      flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the Neo-Dictionarians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SACRAMENT, n. A solemn religious ceremony to which several degrees of
+      authority and significance are attached. Rome has seven sacraments, but
+      the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can afford
+      only two, and these of inferior sanctity. Some of the smaller sects have
+      no sacraments at all&mdash;for which mean economy they will indubitable be
+      damned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SACRED, adj. Dedicated to some religious purpose; having a divine
+      character; inspiring solemn thoughts or emotions; as, the Dalai Lama of
+      Thibet; the Moogum of M'bwango; the temple of Apes in Ceylon; the Cow in
+      India; the Crocodile, the Cat and the Onion of ancient Egypt; the Mufti of
+      Moosh; the hair of the dog that bit Noah, etc.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  All things are either sacred or profane.
+  The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
+  The latter to the devil appertain.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Dumbo Omohundro
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SANDLOTTER, n. A vertebrate mammal holding the political views of Denis
+      Kearney, a notorious demagogue of San Francisco, whose audiences gathered
+      in the open spaces (sandlots) of the town. True to the traditions of his
+      species, this leader of the proletariat was finally bought off by his
+      law-and-order enemies, living prosperously silent and dying impenitently
+      rich. But before his treason he imposed upon California a constitution
+      that was a confection of sin in a diction of solecisms. The similarity
+      between the words "sandlotter" and "sansculotte" is problematically
+      significant, but indubitably suggestive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAFETY-CLUTCH, n. A mechanical device acting automatically to prevent the
+      fall of an elevator, or cage, in case of an accident to the hoisting
+      apparatus.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Once I seen a human ruin
+      In an elevator-well,
+  And his members was bestrewin'
+      All the place where he had fell.
+
+  And I says, apostrophisin'
+      That uncommon woful wreck:
+  "Your position's so surprisin'
+      That I tremble for your neck!"
+
+  Then that ruin, smilin' sadly
+      And impressive, up and spoke:
+  "Well, I wouldn't tremble badly,
+      For it's been a fortnight broke."
+
+  Then, for further comprehension
+      Of his attitude, he begs
+  I will focus my attention
+      On his various arms and legs&mdash;
+
+  How they all are contumacious;
+      Where they each, respective, lie;
+  How one trotter proves ungracious,
+      T'other one an <i>alibi</i>.
+
+  These particulars is mentioned
+      For to show his dismal state,
+  Which I wasn't first intentioned
+      To specifical relate.
+
+  None is worser to be dreaded
+      That I ever have heard tell
+  Than the gent's who there was spreaded
+      In that elevator-well.
+
+  Now this tale is allegoric&mdash;
+      It is figurative all,
+  For the well is metaphoric
+      And the feller didn't fall.
+
+  I opine it isn't moral
+      For a writer-man to cheat,
+  And despise to wear a laurel
+      As was gotten by deceit.
+
+  For 'tis Politics intended
+      By the elevator, mind,
+  It will boost a person splendid
+      If his talent is the kind.
+
+  Col. Bryan had the talent
+      (For the busted man is him)
+  And it shot him up right gallant
+      Till his head begun to swim.
+
+  Then the rope it broke above him
+      And he painful come to earth
+  Where there's nobody to love him
+      For his detrimented worth.
+
+  Though he's livin' none would know him,
+      Or at leastwise not as such.
+  Moral of this woful poem:
+      Frequent oil your safety-clutch.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Porfer Poog
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Duchess of Orleans relates that the irreverent old calumniator,
+      Marshal Villeroi, who in his youth had known St. Francis de Sales, said,
+      on hearing him called saint: "I am delighted to hear that Monsieur de
+      Sales is a saint. He was fond of saying indelicate things, and used to
+      cheat at cards. In other respects he was a perfect gentleman, though a
+      fool."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SALACITY, n. A certain literary quality frequently observed in popular
+      novels, especially in those written by women and young girls, who give it
+      another name and think that in introducing it they are occupying a
+      neglected field of letters and reaping an overlooked harvest. If they have
+      the misfortune to live long enough they are tormented with a desire to
+      burn their sheaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SALAMANDER, n. Originally a reptile inhabiting fire; later, an
+      anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile. Salamanders are now
+      believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account having
+      been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it with a
+      bucket of holy water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SARCOPHAGUS, n. Among the Greeks a coffin which being made of a certain
+      kind of carnivorous stone, had the peculiar property of devouring the body
+      placed in it. The sarcophagus known to modern obsequiographers is commonly
+      a product of the carpenter's art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SATAN, n. One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth
+      and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself
+      multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway
+      in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last
+      went back. "There is one favor that I should like to ask," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Name it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of
+      eternity with hatred of his soul&mdash;you ask for the right to make his
+      laws?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was so ordered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SATIETY, n. The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten its
+      contents, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and
+      follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.
+      In this country satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain
+      existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient,
+      the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and
+      sympathetic. Moreover, although Americans are "endowed by their Creator"
+      with abundant vice and folly, it is not generally known that these are
+      reprehensible qualities, wherefore the satirist is popularly regarded as a
+      sour-spirited knave, and his ever victim's outcry for codefendants evokes
+      a national assent.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung
+  In the dead language of a mummy's tongue,
+  For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well&mdash;
+  Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell.
+  Had it been such as consecrates the Bible
+  Thou hadst not perished by the law of libel.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Barney Stims
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SATYR, n. One of the few characters of the Grecian mythology accorded
+      recognition in the Hebrew. (Leviticus, xvii, 7.) The satyr was at first a
+      member of the dissolute community acknowledging a loose allegiance with
+      Dionysius, but underwent many transformations and improvements. Not
+      infrequently he is confounded with the faun, a later and decenter creation
+      of the Romans, who was less like a man and more like a goat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAUCE, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A
+      people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has
+      only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a
+      vice is renounced and forgiven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAW, n. A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.)
+      So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are
+      examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      A penny saved is a penny to squander.
+
+      A man is known by the company that he organizes.
+
+      A bad workman quarrels with the man who calls him that.
+
+      A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
+
+      Better late than before anybody has invited you.
+
+      Example is better than following it.
+
+      Half a loaf is better than a whole one if there is much else.
+
+      Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.
+
+      What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
+
+      Least said is soonest disavowed.
+
+      He laughs best who laughs least.
+
+      Speak of the Devil and he will hear about it.
+
+      Of two evils choose to be the least.
+
+      Strike while your employer has a big contract.
+
+      Where there's a will there's a won't.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our
+      familiar "tumble-bug." It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact
+      that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity. Its habit of incubating
+      its eggs in a ball of ordure may also have commended it to the favor of
+      the priesthood, and may some day assure it an equal reverence among
+      ourselves. True, the American beetle is an inferior beetle, but the
+      American priest is an inferior priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SCARABEE, n. The same as scarabaeus.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+              He fell by his own hand
+                  Beneath the great oak tree.
+              He'd traveled in a foreign land.
+              He tried to make her understand
+              The dance that's called the Saraband,
+                  But he called it Scarabee.
+  He had called it so through an afternoon,
+      And she, the light of his harem if so might be,
+      Had smiled and said naught.  O the body was fair to see,
+  All frosted there in the shine o' the moon&mdash;
+                      Dead for a Scarabee
+  And a recollection that came too late.
+                          O Fate!
+                  They buried him where he lay,
+                  He sleeps awaiting the Day,
+                          In state,
+  And two Possible Puns, moon-eyed and wan,
+  Gloom over the grave and then move on.
+                      Dead for a Scarabee!
+                                                     Fernando Tapple
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      SCARIFICATION, n. A form of penance practised by the mediaeval pious. The
+      rite was performed, sometimes with a knife, sometimes with a hot iron, but
+      always, says Arsenius Asceticus, acceptably if the penitent spared himself
+      no pain nor harmless disfigurement. Scarification, with other crude
+      penances, has now been superseded by benefaction. The founding of a
+      library or endowment of a university is said to yield to the penitent a
+      sharper and more lasting pain than is conferred by the knife or iron, and
+      is therefore a surer means of grace. There are, however, two grave
+      objections to it as a penitential method: the good that it does and the
+      taint of justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SCEPTER, n. A king's staff of office, the sign and symbol of his
+      authority. It was originally a mace with which the sovereign admonished
+      his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the bones of their
+      proponents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SCIMITAR, n. A curved sword of exceeding keenness, in the conduct of which
+      certain Orientals attain a surprising proficiency, as the incident here
+      related will serve to show. The account is translated from the Japanese of
+      Shusi Itama, a famous writer of the thirteenth century.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      When the great Gichi-Kuktai was Mikado he condemned to
+  decapitation Jijiji Ri, a high officer of the Court.  Soon after
+  the hour appointed for performance of the rite what was his
+  Majesty's surprise to see calmly approaching the throne the man
+  who should have been at that time ten minutes dead!
+      "Seventeen hundred impossible dragons!" shouted the enraged
+  monarch.  "Did I not sentence you to stand in the market-place and
+  have your head struck off by the public executioner at three
+  o'clock?  And is it not now 3:10?"
+      "Son of a thousand illustrious deities," answered the
+  condemned minister, "all that you say is so true that the truth is
+  a lie in comparison.  But your heavenly Majesty's sunny and
+  vitalizing wishes have been pestilently disregarded.  With joy I
+  ran and placed my unworthy body in the market-place.  The
+  executioner appeared with his bare scimitar, ostentatiously
+  whirled it in air, and then, tapping me lightly upon the neck,
+  strode away, pelted by the populace, with whom I was ever a
+  favorite.  I am come to pray for justice upon his own dishonorable
+  and treasonous head."
+      "To what regiment of executioners does the black-boweled
+  caitiff belong?" asked the Mikado.
+      "To the gallant Ninety-eight Hundred and Thirty-seventh&mdash;I
+  know the man.  His name is Sakko-Samshi."
+      "Let him be brought before me," said the Mikado to an
+  attendant, and a half-hour later the culprit stood in the
+  Presence.
+      "Thou bastard son of a three-legged hunchback without thumbs!"
+  roared the sovereign&mdash;"why didst thou but lightly tap the neck
+  that it should have been thy pleasure to sever?"
+      "Lord of Cranes and Cherry Blooms," replied the executioner,
+  unmoved, "command him to blow his nose with his fingers."
+      Being commanded, Jijiji Ri laid hold of his nose and trumpeted
+  like an elephant, all expecting to see the severed head flung
+  violently from him.  Nothing occurred:  the performance prospered
+  peacefully to the close, without incident.
+      All eyes were now turned on the executioner, who had grown as
+  white as the snows on the summit of Fujiama.  His legs trembled
+  and his breath came in gasps of terror.
+      "Several kinds of spike-tailed brass lions!" he cried; "I am a
+  ruined and disgraced swordsman!  I struck the villain feebly
+  because in flourishing the scimitar I had accidentally passed it
+  through my own neck!  Father of the Moon, I resign my office."
+      So saying, he gasped his top-knot, lifted off his head, and
+  advancing to the throne laid it humbly at the Mikado's feet.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      SCRAP-BOOK, n. A book that is commonly edited by a fool. Many persons of
+      some small distinction compile scrap-books containing whatever they happen
+      to read about themselves or employ others to collect. One of these
+      egotists was addressed in the lines following, by Agamemnon Melancthon
+      Peters:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Dear Frank, that scrap-book where you boast
+      You keep a record true
+  Of every kind of peppered roast
+          That's made of you;
+
+  Wherein you paste the printed gibes
+      That revel round your name,
+  Thinking the laughter of the scribes
+          Attests your fame;
+
+  Where all the pictures you arrange
+      That comic pencils trace&mdash;
+  Your funny figure and your strange
+          Semitic face&mdash;
+
+  Pray lend it me.  Wit I have not,
+      Nor art, but there I'll list
+  The daily drubbings you'd have got
+          Had God a fist.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      SCRIBBLER, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one's
+      own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished
+      from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SEAL, n. A mark impressed upon certain kinds of documents to attest their
+      authenticity and authority. Sometimes it is stamped upon wax, and attached
+      to the paper, sometimes into the paper itself. Sealing, in this sense, is
+      a survival of an ancient custom of inscribing important papers with
+      cabalistic words or signs to give them a magical efficacy independent of
+      the authority that they represent. In the British museum are preserved
+      many ancient papers, mostly of a sacerdotal character, validated by
+      necromantic pentagrams and other devices, frequently initial letters of
+      words to conjure with; and in many instances these are attached in the
+      same way that seals are appended now. As nearly every reasonless and
+      apparently meaningless custom, rite or observance of modern times had
+      origin in some remote utility, it is pleasing to note an example of
+      ancient nonsense evolving in the process of ages into something really
+      useful. Our word "sincere" is derived from <i>sine cero</i>, without wax,
+      but the learned are not in agreement as to whether this refers to the
+      absence of the cabalistic signs, or to that of the wax with which letters
+      were formerly closed from public scrutiny. Either view of the matter will
+      serve one in immediate need of an hypothesis. The initials L.S., commonly
+      appended to signatures of legal documents, mean <i>locum sigillis</i>, the
+      place of the seal, although the seal is no longer used &mdash;an admirable
+      example of conservatism distinguishing Man from the beasts that perish.
+      The words <i>locum sigillis</i> are humbly suggested as a suitable motto
+      for the Pribyloff Islands whenever they shall take their place as a
+      sovereign State of the American Union.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SEINE, n. A kind of net for effecting an involuntary change of
+      environment. For fish it is made strong and coarse, but women are more
+      easily taken with a singularly delicate fabric weighted with small, cut
+      stones.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The devil casting a seine of lace,
+      (With precious stones 'twas weighted)
+  Drew it into the landing place
+      And its contents calculated.
+
+  All souls of women were in that sack&mdash;
+      A draft miraculous, precious!
+  But ere he could throw it across his back
+      They'd all escaped through the meshes.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Baruch de Loppis
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SELF-EVIDENT, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SELFISH, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SENATE, n. A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
+      misdemeanors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SERIAL, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping
+      through several issues of a newspaper or magazine. Frequently appended to
+      each installment is a "synposis of preceding chapters" for those who have
+      not read them, but a direr need is a synposis of succeeding chapters for
+      those who do not intend to read <i>them</i>. A synposis of the entire work
+      would be still better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The late James F. Bowman was writing a serial tale for a weekly paper in
+      collaboration with a genius whose name has not come down to us. They
+      wrote, not jointly but alternately, Bowman supplying the installment for
+      one week, his friend for the next, and so on, world without end, they
+      hoped. Unfortunately they quarreled, and one Monday morning when Bowman
+      read the paper to prepare himself for his task, he found his work cut out
+      for him in a way to surprise and pain him. His collaborator had embarked
+      every character of the narrative on a ship and sunk them all in the
+      deepest part of the Atlantic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SEVERALTY, n. Separateness, as, lands in severalty, i.e., lands held
+      individually, not in joint ownership. Certain tribes of Indians are
+      believed now to be sufficiently civilized to have in severalty the lands
+      that they have hitherto held as tribal organizations, and could not sell
+      to the Whites for waxen beads and potato whiskey.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Lo! the poor Indian whose unsuited mind
+  Saw death before, hell and the grave behind;
+  Whom thrifty settler ne'er besought to stay&mdash;
+  His small belongings their appointed prey;
+  Whom Dispossession, with alluring wile,
+  Persuaded elsewhere every little while!
+  His fire unquenched and his undying worm
+  By "land in severalty" (charming term!)
+  Are cooled and killed, respectively, at last,
+  And he to his new holding anchored fast!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      SHERIFF, n. In America the chief executive officer of a county, whose most
+      characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern States, are the
+      catching and hanging of rogues.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  John Elmer Pettibone Cajee
+  (I write of him with little glee)
+  Was just as bad as he could be.
+
+  'Twas frequently remarked:  "I swon!
+  The sun has never looked upon
+  So bad a man as Neighbor John."
+
+  A sinner through and through, he had
+  This added fault:  it made him mad
+  To know another man was bad.
+
+  In such a case he thought it right
+  To rise at any hour of night
+  And quench that wicked person's light.
+
+  Despite the town's entreaties, he
+  Would hale him to the nearest tree
+  And leave him swinging wide and free.
+
+  Or sometimes, if the humor came,
+  A luckless wight's reluctant frame
+  Was given to the cheerful flame.
+
+  While it was turning nice and brown,
+  All unconcerned John met the frown
+  Of that austere and righteous town.
+
+  "How sad," his neighbors said, "that he
+  So scornful of the law should be&mdash;
+  An anar c, h, i, s, t."
+
+  (That is the way that they preferred
+  To utter the abhorrent word,
+  So strong the aversion that it stirred.)
+
+  "Resolved," they said, continuing,
+  "That Badman John must cease this thing
+  Of having his unlawful fling.
+
+  "Now, by these sacred relics"&mdash;here
+  Each man had out a souvenir
+  Got at a lynching yesteryear&mdash;
+
+  "By these we swear he shall forsake
+  His ways, nor cause our hearts to ache
+  By sins of rope and torch and stake.
+
+  "We'll tie his red right hand until
+  He'll have small freedom to fulfil
+  The mandates of his lawless will."
+
+  So, in convention then and there,
+  They named him Sheriff.  The affair
+  Was opened, it is said, with prayer.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      J. Milton Sloluck
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to
+      dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of
+      splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SLANG, n. The grunt of the human hog (<i>Pignoramus intolerabilis</i>)
+      with an audible memory. The speech of one who utters with his tongue what
+      he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in accomplishing
+      the feat of a parrot. A means (under Providence) of setting up as a wit
+      without a capital of sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SMITHAREEN, n. A fragment, a decomponent part, a remain. The word is used
+      variously, but in the following verse on a noted female reformer who
+      opposed bicycle-riding by women because it "led them to the devil" it is
+      seen at its best:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The wheels go round without a sound&mdash;
+      The maidens hold high revel;
+  In sinful mood, insanely gay,
+  True spinsters spin adown the way
+      From duty to the devil!
+  They laugh, they sing, and&mdash;ting-a-ling!
+      Their bells go all the morning;
+  Their lanterns bright bestar the night
+      Pedestrians a-warning.
+  With lifted hands Miss Charlotte stands,
+      Good-Lording and O-mying,
+  Her rheumatism forgotten quite,
+      Her fat with anger frying.
+  She blocks the path that leads to wrath,
+      Jack Satan's power defying.
+  The wheels go round without a sound
+      The lights burn red and blue and green.
+  What's this that's found upon the ground?
+      Poor Charlotte Smith's a smithareen!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      John William Yope
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SOPHISTRY, n. The controversial method of an opponent, distinguished from
+      one's own by superior insincerity and fooling. This method is that of the
+      later Sophists, a Grecian sect of philosophers who began by teaching
+      wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in brief, whatever men ought to know,
+      but lost themselves in a maze of quibbles and a fog of words.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  His bad opponent's "facts" he sweeps away,
+  And drags his sophistry to light of day;
+  Then swears they're pushed to madness who resort
+  To falsehood of so desperate a sort.
+  Not so; like sods upon a dead man's breast,
+  He lies most lightly who the least is pressed.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Polydore Smith
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SORCERY, n. The ancient prototype and forerunner of political influence.
+      It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was punished by
+      torture and death. Augustine Nicholas relates that a poor peasant who had
+      been accused of sorcery was put to the torture to compel a confession.
+      After enduring a few gentle agonies the suffering simpleton admitted his
+      guilt, but naively asked his tormentors if it were not possible to be a
+      sorcerer without knowing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SOUL, n. A spiritual entity concerning which there hath been brave
+      disputation. Plato held that those souls which in a previous state of
+      existence (antedating Athens) had obtained the clearest glimpses of
+      eternal truth entered into the bodies of persons who became philosophers.
+      Plato himself was a philosopher. The souls that had least contemplated
+      divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and despots. Dionysius I, who
+      had threatened to decapitate the broad-browed philosopher, was a usurper
+      and a despot. Plato, doubtless, was not the first to construct a system of
+      philosophy that could be quoted against his enemies; certainly he was not
+      the last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Concerning the nature of the soul," saith the renowned author of <i>Diversiones
+      Sanctorum</i>, "there hath been hardly more argument than that of its
+      place in the body. Mine own belief is that the soul hath her seat in the
+      abdomen&mdash;in which faith we may discern and interpret a truth hitherto
+      unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men most devout. He is
+      said in the Scripture to 'make a god of his belly' &mdash;why, then,
+      should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him to freshen his
+      faith? Who so well as he can know the might and majesty that he shrines?
+      Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach are one Divine Entity; and
+      such was the belief of Promasius, who nevertheless erred in denying it
+      immortality. He had observed that its visible and material substance
+      failed and decayed with the rest of the body after death, but of its
+      immaterial essence he knew nothing. This is what we call the Appetite, and
+      it survives the wreck and reek of mortality, to be rewarded or punished in
+      another world, according to what it hath demanded in the flesh. The
+      Appetite whose coarse clamoring was for the unwholesome viands of the
+      general market and the public refectory shall be cast into eternal famine,
+      whilst that which firmly though civilly insisted on ortolans, caviare,
+      terrapin, anchovies, <i>pates de foie gras</i> and all such Christian
+      comestibles shall flesh its spiritual tooth in the souls of them forever
+      and ever, and wreak its divine thirst upon the immortal parts of the
+      rarest and richest wines ever quaffed here below. Such is my religious
+      faith, though I grieve to confess that neither His Holiness the Pope nor
+      His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I equally and profoundly
+      revere) will assent to its dissemination."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SPOOKER, n. A writer whose imagination concerns itself with supernatural
+      phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks. One of the most illustrious
+      spookers of our time is Mr. William D. Howells, who introduces a
+      well-credentialed reader to as respectable and mannerly a company of
+      spooks as one could wish to meet. To the terror that invests the chairman
+      of a district school board, the Howells ghost adds something of the
+      mystery enveloping a farmer from another township.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here
+      following has, however, not been successfully impeached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated at dinner
+      alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, <i>The Biography of a Dead Cow</i>, is
+      published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its authorship.
+      Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the Idiot of the
+      Century. Do you think that fair criticism?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did not occur
+      to me that you really might not wish the public to know who wrote it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. W.C. Morrow, who used to live in San Jose, California, was addicted to
+      writing ghost stories which made the reader feel as if a stream of
+      lizards, fresh from the ice, were streaking it up his back and hiding in
+      his hair. San Jose was at that time believed to be haunted by the visible
+      spirit of a noted bandit named Vasquez, who had been hanged there. The
+      town was not very well lighted, and it is putting it mildly to say that
+      San Jose was reluctant to be out o' nights. One particularly dark night
+      two gentlemen were abroad in the loneliest spot within the city limits,
+      talking loudly to keep up their courage, when they came upon Mr. J.J.
+      Owen, a well-known journalist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, Owen," said one, "what brings you here on such a night as this? You
+      told me that this is one of Vasquez' favorite haunts! And you are a
+      believer. Aren't you afraid to be out?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear fellow," the journalist replied with a drear autumnal cadence in
+      his speech, like the moan of a leaf-laden wind, "I am afraid to be in. I
+      have one of Will Morrow's stories in my pocket and I don't dare to go
+      where there is light enough to read it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rear-Admiral Schley and Representative Charles F. Joy were standing near
+      the Peace Monument, in Washington, discussing the question, Is success a
+      failure? Mr. Joy suddenly broke off in the middle of an eloquent sentence,
+      exclaiming: "Hello! I've heard that band before. Santlemann's, I think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't hear any band," said Schley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come to think, I don't either," said Joy; "but I see General Miles coming
+      down the avenue, and that pageant always affects me in the same way as a
+      brass band. One has to scrutinize one's impressions pretty closely, or one
+      will mistake their origin."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the Admiral was digesting this hasty meal of philosophy General
+      Miles passed in review, a spectacle of impressive dignity. When the tail
+      of the seeming procession had passed and the two observers had recovered
+      from the transient blindness caused by its effulgence&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He seems to be enjoying himself," said the Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is nothing," assented Joy, thoughtfully, "that he enjoys one-half
+      so well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The illustrious statesman, Champ Clark, once lived about a mile from the
+      village of Jebigue, in Missouri. One day he rode into town on a favorite
+      mule, and, hitching the beast on the sunny side of a street, in front of a
+      saloon, he went inside in his character of teetotaler, to apprise the
+      barkeeper that wine is a mocker. It was a dreadfully hot day. Pretty soon
+      a neighbor came in and seeing Clark, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Champ, it is not right to leave that mule out there in the sun. He'll
+      roast, sure!&mdash;he was smoking as I passed him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O, he's all right," said Clark, lightly; "he's an inveterate smoker."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The neighbor took a lemonade, but shook his head and repeated that it was
+      not right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a conspirator. There had been a fire the night before: a stable
+      just around the corner had burned and a number of horses had put on their
+      immortality, among them a young colt, which was roasted to a rich
+      nut-brown. Some of the boys had turned Mr. Clark's mule loose and
+      substituted the mortal part of the colt. Presently another man entered the
+      saloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For mercy's sake!" he said, taking it with sugar, "do remove that mule,
+      barkeeper: it smells."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," interposed Clark, "that animal has the best nose in Missouri. But
+      if he doesn't mind, you shouldn't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of human events Mr. Clark went out, and there, apparently,
+      lay the incinerated and shrunken remains of his charger. The boys did not
+      have any fun out of Mr. Clarke, who looked at the body and, with the
+      non-committal expression to which he owes so much of his political
+      preferment, went away. But walking home late that night he saw his mule
+      standing silent and solemn by the wayside in the misty moonlight.
+      Mentioning the name of Helen Blazes with uncommon emphasis, Mr. Clark took
+      the back track as hard as ever he could hook it, and passed the night in
+      town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General H.H. Wotherspoon, president of the Army War College, has a pet
+      rib-nosed baboon, an animal of uncommon intelligence but imperfectly
+      beautiful. Returning to his apartment one evening, the General was
+      surprised and pained to find Adam (for so the creature is named, the
+      general being a Darwinian) sitting up for him and wearing his master's
+      best uniform coat, epaulettes and all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You confounded remote ancestor!" thundered the great strategist, "what do
+      you mean by being out of bed after naps?&mdash;and with my coat on!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Adam rose and with a reproachful look got down on all fours in the manner
+      of his kind and, scuffling across the room to a table, returned with a
+      visiting-card: General Barry had called and, judging by an empty champagne
+      bottle and several cigar-stumps, had been hospitably entertained while
+      waiting. The general apologized to his faithful progenitor and retired.
+      The next day he met General Barry, who said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Spoon, old man, when leaving you last evening I forgot to ask you about
+      those excellent cigars. Where did you get them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Wotherspoon did not deign to reply, but walked away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pardon me, please," said Barry, moving after him; "I was joking of
+      course. Why, I knew it was not you before I had been in the room fifteen
+      minutes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SUCCESS, n. The one unpardonable sin against one's fellows. In literature,
+      and particularly in poetry, the elements of success are exceedingly
+      simple, and are admirably set forth in the following lines by the reverend
+      Father Gassalasca Jape, entitled, for some mysterious reason, "John A.
+      Joyce."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The bard who would prosper must carry a book,
+      Do his thinking in prose and wear
+  A crimson cravat, a far-away look
+      And a head of hexameter hair.
+  Be thin in your thought and your body'll be fat;
+  If you wear your hair long you needn't your hat.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      SUFFRAGE, n. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of
+      suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as
+      commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's
+      choice, and is highly prized. Refusal to do so has the bad name of
+      "incivism." The incivilian, however, cannot be properly arraigned for his
+      crime, for there is no legitimate accuser. If the accuser is himself
+      guilty he has no standing in the court of opinion; if not, he profits by
+      the crime, for A's abstention from voting gives greater weight to the vote
+      of B. By female suffrage is meant the right of a woman to vote as some man
+      tells her to. It is based on female responsibility, which is somewhat
+      limited. The woman most eager to jump out of her petticoat to assert her
+      rights is first to jump back into it when threatened with a switching for
+      misusing them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SYCOPHANT, n. One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not
+      be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  As the lean leech, its victim found, is pleased
+  To fix itself upon a part diseased
+  Till, its black hide distended with bad blood,
+  It drops to die of surfeit in the mud,
+  So the base sycophant with joy descries
+  His neighbor's weak spot and his mouth applies,
+  Gorges and prospers like the leech, although,
+  Unlike that reptile, he will not let go.
+  Gelasma, if it paid you to devote
+  Your talent to the service of a goat,
+  Showing by forceful logic that its beard
+  Is more than Aaron's fit to be revered;
+  If to the task of honoring its smell
+  Profit had prompted you, and love as well,
+  The world would benefit at last by you
+  And wealthy malefactors weep anew&mdash;
+  Your favor for a moment's space denied
+  And to the nobler object turned aside.
+  Is't not enough that thrifty millionaires
+  Who loot in freight and spoliate in fares,
+  Or, cursed with consciences that bid them fly
+  To safer villainies of darker dye,
+  Forswearing robbery and fain, instead,
+  To steal (they call it "cornering") our bread
+  May see you groveling their boots to lick
+  And begging for the favor of a kick?
+  Still must you follow to the bitter end
+  Your sycophantic disposition's trend,
+  And in your eagerness to please the rich
+  Hunt hungry sinners to their final ditch?
+  In Morgan's praise you smite the sounding wire,
+  And sing hosannas to great Havemeyer!
+  What's Satan done that him you should eschew?
+  He too is reeking rich&mdash;deducting <i>you</i>.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      SYLLOGISM, n. A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor
+      assumption and an inconsequent. (See LOGIC.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SYLPH, n. An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the
+      air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke,
+      sewer gas and similar products of civilization. Sylphs were allied to
+      gnomes, nymphs and salamanders, which dwelt, respectively, in earth, water
+      and fire, all now insalubrious. Sylphs, like fowls of the air, were male
+      and female, to no purpose, apparently, for if they had progeny they must
+      have nested in inaccessible places, none of the chicks having ever been
+      seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SYMBOL, n. Something that is supposed to typify or stand for something
+      else. Many symbols are mere "survivals"&mdash;things which having no
+      longer any utility continue to exist because we have inherited the
+      tendency to make them; as funereal urns carved on memorial monuments. They
+      were once real urns holding the ashes of the dead. We cannot stop making
+      them, but we can give them a name that conceals our helplessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SYMBOLIC, adj. Pertaining to symbols and the use and interpretation of
+      symbols.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  They say 'tis conscience feels compunction;
+  I hold that that's the stomach's function,
+  For of the sinner I have noted
+  That when he's sinned he's somewhat bloated,
+  Or ill some other ghastly fashion
+  Within that bowel of compassion.
+  True, I believe the only sinner
+  Is he that eats a shabby dinner.
+  You know how Adam with good reason,
+  For eating apples out of season,
+  Was "cursed."  But that is all symbolic:
+  The truth is, Adam had the colic.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      G.J. 
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"></a>
+      T
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      T, the twentieth letter of the English alphabet, was by the Greeks
+      absurdly called <i>tau</i>. In the alphabet whence ours comes it had the
+      form of the rude corkscrew of the period, and when it stood alone (which
+      was more than the Phoenicians could always do) signified <i>Tallegal</i>,
+      translated by the learned Dr. Brownrigg, "tanglefoot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TABLE D'HOTE, n. A caterer's thrifty concession to the universal passion
+      for irresponsibility.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Old Paunchinello, freshly wed,
+      Took Madam P. to table,
+  And there deliriously fed
+      As fast as he was able.
+
+  "I dote upon good grub," he cried,
+      Intent upon its throatage.
+  "Ah, yes," said the neglected bride,
+      "You're in your <i>table d'hotage</i>."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Associated Poets
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural
+      limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.
+      Excepting in its foetal state, Man is without a tail, a privation of which
+      he attests an hereditary and uneasy consciousness by the coat-skirt of the
+      male and the train of the female, and by a marked tendency to ornament
+      that part of his attire where the tail should be, and indubitably once
+      was. This tendency is most observable in the female of the species, in
+      whom the ancestral sense is strong and persistent. The tailed men
+      described by Lord Monboddo are now generally regarded as a product of an
+      imagination unusually susceptible to influences generated in the golden
+      age of our pithecan past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TAKE, v.t. To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TALK, v.t. To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an impulse
+      without purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TARIFF, n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic
+      producer against the greed of his consumer.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The Enemy of Human Souls
+  Sat grieving at the cost of coals;
+  For Hell had been annexed of late,
+  And was a sovereign Southern State.
+
+  "It were no more than right," said he,
+  "That I should get my fuel free.
+  The duty, neither just nor wise,
+  Compels me to economize&mdash;
+  Whereby my broilers, every one,
+  Are execrably underdone.
+  What would they have?&mdash;although I yearn
+  To do them nicely to a turn,
+  I can't afford an honest heat.
+  This tariff makes even devils cheat!
+  I'm ruined, and my humble trade
+  All rascals may at will invade:
+  Beneath my nose the public press
+  Outdoes me in sulphureousness;
+  The bar ingeniously applies
+  To my undoing my own lies;
+  My medicines the doctors use
+  (Albeit vainly) to refuse
+  To me my fair and rightful prey
+  And keep their own in shape to pay;
+  The preachers by example teach
+  What, scorning to perform, I teach;
+  And statesmen, aping me, all make
+  More promises than they can break.
+  Against such competition I
+  Lift up a disregarded cry.
+  Since all ignore my just complaint,
+  By Hokey-Pokey!  I'll turn saint!"
+  Now, the Republicans, who all
+  Are saints, began at once to bawl
+  Against <i>his</i> competition; so
+  There was a devil of a go!
+  They locked horns with him, tete-a-tete
+  In acrimonious debate,
+  Till Democrats, forlorn and lone,
+  Had hopes of coming by their own.
+  That evil to avert, in haste
+  The two belligerents embraced;
+  But since 'twere wicked to relax
+  A tittle of the Sacred Tax,
+  'Twas finally agreed to grant
+  The bold Insurgent-protestant
+  A bounty on each soul that fell
+  Into his ineffectual Hell.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Edam Smith
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TECHNICALITY, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for
+      slander in having accused his neighbor of murder. His exact words were:
+      "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head,
+      so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side
+      upon the other shoulder." The defendant was acquitted by instruction of
+      the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge
+      murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an
+      inference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many
+      fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an
+      authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source&mdash;the
+      first words of the ancient Latin hymn <i>Te Deum Laudamus</i>. In this
+      apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TEETOTALER, n. One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally,
+      sometimes tolerably totally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TELEPHONE, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
+      advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the
+      telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a
+      multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell
+      summoning us to the sacrifice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TENACITY, n. A certain quality of the human hand in its relation to the
+      coin of the realm. It attains its highest development in the hand of
+      authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in
+      politics. The following illustrative lines were written of a Californian
+      gentleman in high political preferment, who has passed to his accounting:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Of such tenacity his grip
+  That nothing from his hand can slip.
+  Well-buttered eels you may o'erwhelm
+  In tubs of liquid slippery-elm
+  In vain&mdash;from his detaining pinch
+  They cannot struggle half an inch!
+  'Tis lucky that he so is planned
+  That breath he draws not with his hand,
+  For if he did, so great his greed
+  He'd draw his last with eager speed.
+  Nay, that were well, you say.  Not so
+  He'd draw but never let it go!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and
+      all the mystery of science. The modern Theosophist holds, with the
+      Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this earth, in
+      as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough for our
+      complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime does not
+      suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to wish to become.
+      To be absolutely wise and good&mdash;that is perfection; and the
+      Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that everything
+      desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection. Less competent
+      observers are disposed to except cats, which seem neither wiser nor better
+      than they were last year. The greatest and fattest of recent Theosophists
+      was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had no cat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TIGHTS, n. An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the general
+      acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity. Public
+      attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss Lillian
+      Russell's refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as to her
+      motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of ingenuity
+      and sustained reflection. It was Miss Hall's belief that nature had not
+      endowed Miss Russell with beautiful legs. This theory was impossible of
+      acceptance by the male understanding, but the conception of a faulty
+      female leg was of so prodigious originality as to rank among the most
+      brilliant feats of philosophical speculation! It is strange that in all
+      the controversy regarding Miss Russell's aversion to tights no one seems
+      to have thought to ascribe it to what was known among the ancients as
+      "modesty." The nature of that sentiment is now imperfectly understood, and
+      possibly incapable of exposition with the vocabulary that remains to us.
+      The study of lost arts has, however, been recently revived and some of the
+      arts themselves recovered. This is an epoch of <i>renaissances</i>, and
+      there is ground for hope that the primitive "blush" may be dragged from
+      its hiding-place amongst the tombs of antiquity and hissed on to the
+      stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TOMB, n. The House of Indifference. Tombs are now by common consent
+      invested with a certain sanctity, but when they have been long tenanted it
+      is considered no sin to break them open and rifle them, the famous
+      Egyptologist, Dr. Huggyns, explaining that a tomb may be innocently
+      "glened" as soon as its occupant is done "smellynge," the soul being then
+      all exhaled. This reasonable view is now generally accepted by
+      archaeologists, whereby the noble science of Curiosity has been greatly
+      dignified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TOPE, v. To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig. In the
+      individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping nations are in
+      the forefront of civilization and power. When pitted against the
+      hard-drinking Christians the abstemious Mahometans go down like grass
+      before the scythe. In India one hundred thousand beef-eating and
+      brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two hundred and fifty
+      million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race. With what an easy
+      grace the whisky-loving American pushed the temperate Spaniard out of his
+      possessions! From the time when the Berserkers ravaged all the coasts of
+      western Europe and lay drunk in every conquered port it has been the same
+      way: everywhere the nations that drink too much are observed to fight
+      rather well and not too righteously. Wherefore the estimable old ladies
+      who abolished the canteen from the American army may justly boast of
+      having materially augmented the nation's military power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TORTOISE, n. A creature thoughtfully created to supply occasion for the
+      following lines by the illustrious Ambat Delaso:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TO MY PET TORTOISE
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  My friend, you are not graceful&mdash;not at all;
+  Your gait's between a stagger and a sprawl.
+
+  Nor are you beautiful:  your head's a snake's
+  To look at, and I do not doubt it aches.
+
+  As to your feet, they'd make an angel weep.
+  'Tis true you take them in whene'er you sleep.
+
+  No, you're not pretty, but you have, I own,
+  A certain firmness&mdash;mostly you're [sic] backbone.
+
+  Firmness and strength (you have a giant's thews)
+  Are virtues that the great know how to use&mdash;
+
+  I wish that they did not; yet, on the whole,
+  You lack&mdash;excuse my mentioning it&mdash;Soul.
+
+  So, to be candid, unreserved and true,
+  I'd rather you were I than I were you.
+
+  Perhaps, however, in a time to be,
+  When Man's extinct, a better world may see
+
+  Your progeny in power and control,
+  Due to the genesis and growth of Soul.
+
+  So I salute you as a reptile grand
+  Predestined to regenerate the land.
+
+  Father of Possibilities, O deign
+  To accept the homage of a dying reign!
+
+  In the far region of the unforeknown
+  I dream a tortoise upon every throne.
+
+  I see an Emperor his head withdraw
+  Into his carapace for fear of Law;
+
+  A King who carries something else than fat,
+  Howe'er acceptably he carries that;
+
+  A President not strenuously bent
+  On punishment of audible dissent&mdash;
+
+  Who never shot (it were a vain attack)
+  An armed or unarmed tortoise in the back;
+
+  Subject and citizens that feel no need
+  To make the March of Mind a wild stampede;
+
+  All progress slow, contemplative, sedate,
+  And "Take your time" the word, in Church and State.
+
+  O Tortoise, 'tis a happy, happy dream,
+  My glorious testudinous regime!
+
+  I wish in Eden you'd brought this about
+  By slouching in and chasing Adam out.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      TREE, n. A tall vegetable intended by nature to serve as a penal
+      apparatus, though through a miscarriage of justice most trees bear only a
+      negligible fruit, or none at all. When naturally fruited, the tree is a
+      beneficient agency of civilization and an important factor in public
+      morals. In the stern West and the sensitive South its fruit (white and
+      black respectively) though not eaten, is agreeable to the public taste
+      and, though not exported, profitable to the general welfare. That the
+      legitimate relation of the tree to justice was no discovery of Judge Lynch
+      (who, indeed, conceded it no primacy over the lamp-post and the
+      bridge-girder) is made plain by the following passage from Morryster, who
+      antedated him by two centuries:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      While in yt londe I was carried to see ye Ghogo tree, whereof
+  I had hearde moch talk; but sayynge yt I saw naught remarkabyll in
+  it, ye hed manne of ye villayge where it grewe made answer as
+  followeth:
+      "Ye tree is not nowe in fruite, but in his seasonne you shall
+  see dependynge fr. his braunches all soch as have affroynted ye
+  King his Majesty."
+      And I was furder tolde yt ye worde "Ghogo" sygnifyeth in yr
+  tong ye same as "rapscal" in our owne.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <i>Trauvells in ye Easte</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TRIAL, n. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the
+      blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors. In order to effect
+      this purpose it is necessary to supply a contrast in the person of one who
+      is called the defendant, the prisoner, or the accused. If the contrast is
+      made sufficiently clear this person is made to undergo such an affliction
+      as will give the virtuous gentlemen a comfortable sense of their immunity,
+      added to that of their worth. In our day the accused is usually a human
+      being, or a socialist, but in mediaeval times, animals, fishes, reptiles
+      and insects were brought to trial. A beast that had taken human life, or
+      practiced sorcery, was duly arrested, tried and, if condemned, put to
+      death by the public executioner. Insects ravaging grain fields, orchards
+      or vineyards were cited to appeal by counsel before a civil tribunal, and
+      after testimony, argument and condemnation, if they continued <i>in
+      contumaciam</i> the matter was taken to a high ecclesiastical court, where
+      they were solemnly excommunicated and anathematized. In a street of
+      Toledo, some pigs that had wickedly run between the viceroy's legs,
+      upsetting him, were arrested on a warrant, tried and punished. In Naples
+      an ass was condemned to be burned at the stake, but the sentence appears
+      not to have been executed. D'Addosio relates from the court records many
+      trials of pigs, bulls, horses, cocks, dogs, goats, etc., greatly, it is
+      believed, to the betterment of their conduct and morals. In 1451 a suit
+      was brought against the leeches infesting some ponds about Berne, and the
+      Bishop of Lausanne, instructed by the faculty of Heidelberg University,
+      directed that some of "the aquatic worms" be brought before the local
+      magistracy. This was done and the leeches, both present and absent, were
+      ordered to leave the places that they had infested within three days on
+      pain of incurring "the malediction of God." In the voluminous records of
+      this <i>cause celebre</i> nothing is found to show whether the offenders
+      braved the punishment, or departed forthwith out of that inhospitable
+      jurisdiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TRICHINOSIS, n. The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moses Mendlessohn having fallen ill sent for a Christian physician, who at
+      once diagnosed the philosopher's disorder as trichinosis, but tactfully
+      gave it another name. "You need an immediate change of diet," he said;
+      "you must eat six ounces of pork every other day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pork?" shrieked the patient&mdash;"pork? Nothing shall induce me to touch
+      it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you mean that?" the doctor gravely asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I swear it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good!&mdash;then I will undertake to cure you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TRINITY, n. In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches, three
+      entirely distinct deities consistent with only one. Subordinate deities of
+      the polytheistic faith, such as devils and angels, are not dowered with
+      the power of combination, and must urge individually their claims to
+      adoration and propitiation. The Trinity is one of the most sublime
+      mysteries of our holy religion. In rejecting it because it is
+      incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of theological
+      fundamentals. In religion we believe only what we do not understand,
+      except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an
+      incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as a part of the
+      latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TROGLODYTE, n. Specifically, a cave-dweller of the paleolithic period,
+      after the Tree and before the Flat. A famous community of troglodytes
+      dwelt with David in the Cave of Adullam. The colony consisted of "every
+      one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one
+      that was discontented"&mdash;in brief, all the Socialists of Judah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TRUCE, n. Friendship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TRUTH, n. An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery
+      of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient
+      occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with
+      increasing activity to the end of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TRUTHFUL, adj. Dumb and illiterate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TRUST, n. In American politics, a large corporation composed in greater
+      part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of
+      guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public
+      enemies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TURKEY, n. A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious
+      anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude.
+      Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TWICE, adv. Once too often.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TYPE, n. Pestilent bits of metal suspected of destroying civilization and
+      enlightenment, despite their obvious agency in this incomparable
+      dictionary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n. An African insect (<i>Glossina morsitans</i>)
+      whose bite is commonly regarded as nature's most efficacious remedy for
+      insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American novelist (<i>Mendax
+      interminabilis</i>).
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"></a>
+      U
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      UBIQUITY, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not
+      in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and
+      the luminiferous ether only. This important distinction between ubiquity
+      and omnipresence was not clear to the mediaeval Church and there was much
+      bloodshed about it. Certain Lutherans, who affirmed the presence
+      everywhere of Christ's body were known as Ubiquitarians. For this error
+      they were doubtless damned, for Christ's body is present only in the
+      eucharist, though that sacrament may be performed in more than one place
+      simultaneously. In recent times ubiquity has not always been understood&mdash;not
+      even by Sir Boyle Roche, for example, who held that a man cannot be in two
+      places at once unless he is a bird.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without
+      humility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ULTIMATUM, n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having received an ultimatum from Austria, the Turkish Ministry met to
+      consider it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O servant of the Prophet," said the Sheik of the Imperial Chibouk to the
+      Mamoosh of the Invincible Army, "how many unconquerable soldiers have we
+      in arms?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Upholder of the Faith," that dignitary replied after examining his
+      memoranda, "they are in numbers as the leaves of the forest!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how many impenetrable battleships strike terror to the hearts of all
+      Christian swine?" he asked the Imaum of the Ever Victorious Navy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Uncle of the Full Moon," was the reply, "deign to know that they are as
+      the waves of the ocean, the sands of the desert and the stars of Heaven!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For eight hours the broad brow of the Sheik of the Imperial Chibouk was
+      corrugated with evidences of deep thought: he was calculating the chances
+      of war. Then, "Sons of angels," he said, "the die is cast! I shall suggest
+      to the Ulema of the Imperial Ear that he advise inaction. In the name of
+      Allah, the council is adjourned."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      UN-AMERICAN, adj. Wicked, intolerable, heathenish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      UNCTION, n. An oiling, or greasing. The rite of extreme unction consists
+      in touching with oil consecrated by a bishop several parts of the body of
+      one engaged in dying. Marbury relates that after the rite had been
+      administered to a certain wicked English nobleman it was discovered that
+      the oil had not been properly consecrated and no other could be obtained.
+      When informed of this the sick man said in anger: "Then I'll be damned if
+      I die!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My son," said the priest, "this is what we fear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know
+      a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have
+      been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who
+      lived in a horse.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  His understanding was so keen
+  That all things which he'd felt, heard, seen,
+  He could interpret without fail
+  If he was in or out of jail.
+  He wrote at Inspiration's call
+  Deep disquisitions on them all,
+  Then, pent at last in an asylum,
+  Performed the service to compile 'em.
+  So great a writer, all men swore,
+  They never had not read before.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jorrock Wormley
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      UNITARIAN, n. One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      UNIVERSALIST, n. One who forgoes the advantage of a Hell for persons of
+      another faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      URBANITY, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers
+      in all cities but New York. Its commonest expression is heard in the
+      words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not inconsistent with disregard of the
+      rights of others.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  The owner of a powder mill
+  Was musing on a distant hill&mdash;
+      Something his mind foreboded&mdash;
+  When from the cloudless sky there fell
+  A deviled human kidney!  Well,
+      The man's mill had exploded.
+  His hat he lifted from his head;
+  "I beg your pardon, sir," he said;
+      "I didn't know 'twas loaded."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Swatkin
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third
+      being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this
+      Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live
+      as long as the fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      UXORIOUSNESS, n. A perverted affection that has strayed to one's own wife.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"></a>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      VALOR, n. A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler's hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why have you halted?" roared the commander of a division and Chickamauga,
+      who had ordered a charge; "move forward, sir, at once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "General," said the commander of the delinquent brigade, "I am persuaded
+      that any further display of valor by my troops will bring them into
+      collision with the enemy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VANITY, n. The tribute of a fool to the worth of the nearest ass.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  They say that hens do cackle loudest when
+      There's nothing vital in the eggs they've laid;
+      And there are hens, professing to have made
+  A study of mankind, who say that men
+  Whose business 'tis to drive the tongue or pen
+      Make the most clamorous fanfaronade
+      O'er their most worthless work; and I'm afraid
+  They're not entirely different from the hen.
+  Lo! the drum-major in his coat of gold,
+      His blazing breeches and high-towering cap&mdash;
+  Imperiously pompous, grandly bold,
+      Grim, resolute, an awe-inspiring chap!
+  Who'd think this gorgeous creature's only virtue
+  Is that in battle he will never hurt you?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Hannibal Hunsiker
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIRTUES, n.pl. Certain abstentions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VITUPERATION, n. Satire, as understood by dunces and all such as suffer
+      from an impediment in their wit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of
+      himself and a wreck of his country.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"></a>
+      W
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      W (double U) has, of all the letters in our alphabet, the only cumbrous
+      name, the names of the others being monosyllabic. This advantage of the
+      Roman alphabet over the Grecian is the more valued after audibly spelling
+      out some simple Greek word, like <i>epixoriambikos</i>. Still, it is now
+      thought by the learned that other agencies than the difference of the two
+      alphabets may have been concerned in the decline of "the glory that was
+      Greece" and the rise of "the grandeur that was Rome." There can be no
+      doubt, however, that by simplifying the name of W (calling it "wow," for
+      example) our civilization could be, if not promoted, at least better
+      endured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WALL STREET, n. A symbol of sin for every devil to rebuke. That Wall
+      Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful
+      thief in place of a hope in Heaven. Even the great and good Andrew
+      Carnegie has made his profession of faith in the matter.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Carnegie the dauntless has uttered his call
+  To battle:  "The brokers are parasites all!"
+  Carnegie, Carnegie, you'll never prevail;
+  Keep the wind of your slogan to belly your sail,
+  Go back to your isle of perpetual brume,
+  Silence your pibroch, doff tartan and plume:
+  Ben Lomond is calling his son from the fray&mdash;
+  Fly, fly from the region of Wall Street away!
+  While still you're possessed of a single baubee
+  (I wish it were pledged to endowment of me)
+  'Twere wise to retreat from the wars of finance
+  Lest its value decline ere your credit advance.
+  For a man 'twixt a king of finance and the sea,
+  Carnegie, Carnegie, your tongue is too free!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Anonymus Bink
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WAR, n. A by-product of the arts of peace. The most menacing political
+      condition is a period of international amity. The student of history who
+      has not been taught to expect the unexpected may justly boast himself
+      inaccessible to the light. "In time of peace prepare for war" has a deeper
+      meaning than is commonly discerned; it means, not merely that all things
+      earthly have an end&mdash;that change is the one immutable and eternal law&mdash;but
+      that the soil of peace is thickly sown with the seeds of war and
+      singularly suited to their germination and growth. It was when Kubla Khan
+      had decreed his "stately pleasure dome"&mdash;when, that is to say, there
+      were peace and fat feasting in Xanadu&mdash;that he
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                      heard from afar
+  Ancestral voices prophesying war.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and
+      it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little
+      less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of that elemental
+      distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief
+      in the night; professions of eternal amity provide the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of
+      governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him
+      it should be said that he did not want to.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  They took away his vote and gave instead
+  The right, when he had earned, to <i>eat</i> his bread.
+  In vain&mdash;he clamors for his "boss," pour soul,
+  To come again and part him from his roll.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Offenbach Stutz
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WEAKNESSES, n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she
+      holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the service of
+      her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WEATHER, n. The climate of the hour. A permanent topic of conversation
+      among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the
+      tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly
+      concerned. The setting up official weather bureaus and their maintenance
+      in mendacity prove that even governments are accessible to suasion by the
+      rude forefathers of the jungle.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
+  And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be&mdash;
+  Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
+  With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
+  While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
+  From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
+  He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
+  On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote&mdash;
+  For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
+  "Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Halcyon Jones
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WEDDING, n. A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one
+      undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become
+      supportable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WEREWOLF, n. A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man. All werewolves
+      are of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to gratify a
+      beastial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are as humane as is
+      consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some Bavarian peasants having caught a wolf one evening, tied it to a post
+      by the tail and went to bed. The next morning nothing was there! Greatly
+      perplexed, they consulted the local priest, who told them that their
+      captive was undoubtedly a werewolf and had resumed its human form during
+      the night. "The next time that you take a wolf," the good man said, "see
+      that you chain it by the leg, and in the morning you will find a
+      Lutheran."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected
+      affliction that strikes hard.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Should you ask me whence this laughter,
+  Whence this audible big-smiling,
+  With its labial extension,
+  With its maxillar distortion
+  And its diaphragmic rhythmus
+  Like the billowing of an ocean,
+  Like the shaking of a carpet,
+  I should answer, I should tell you:
+  From the great deeps of the spirit,
+  From the unplummeted abysmus
+  Of the soul this laughter welleth
+  As the fountain, the gug-guggle,
+  Like the river from the canon [sic],
+  To entoken and give warning
+  That my present mood is sunny.
+  Should you ask me further question&mdash;
+  Why the great deeps of the spirit,
+  Why the unplummeted abysmus
+  Of the soule extrudes this laughter,
+  This all audible big-smiling,
+  I should answer, I should tell you
+  With a white heart, tumpitumpy,
+  With a true tongue, honest Injun:
+  William Bryan, he has Caught It,
+  Caught the Whangdepootenawah!
+
+  Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank,
+  Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,
+  Standing silent in the kneedeep
+  With his wing-tips crossed behind him
+  And his neck close-reefed before him,
+  With his bill, his william, buried
+  In the down upon his bosom,
+  With his head retracted inly,
+  While his shoulders overlook it?
+  Does the sandhill crane, the shankank,
+  Shiver grayly in the north wind,
+  Wishing he had died when little,
+  As the sparrow, the chipchip, does?
+  No 'tis not the Shankank standing,
+  Standing in the gray and dismal
+  Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep.
+  No, 'tis peerless William Bryan
+  Realizing that he's Caught It,
+  Caught the Whangdepootenawah!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      WHEAT, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some
+      difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread. The French are said
+      to eat more bread <i>per capita</i> of population than any other people,
+      which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WHITE, adj. and n. Black.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WIDOW, n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take
+      humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one of the
+      most marked features of his character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WINE, n. Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union as
+      "liquor," sometimes as "rum." Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WIT, n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual
+      cookery by leaving it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WITCH, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with
+      the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a
+      league beyond the devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WITTICISM, n. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldom noted;
+      what the Philistine is pleased to call a "joke."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WOMAN, n.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a
+  rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.  It is credited by
+  many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility
+  acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the
+  postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion,
+  deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld,
+  it roareth now.  The species is the most widely distributed of all
+  beasts of prey, infesting all habitable parts of the globe, from
+  Greenland's spicy mountains to India's moral strand.  The popular
+  name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind.
+  The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the
+  American variety (<i>felis pugnans</i>), is omnivorous and can be
+  taught not to talk.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Balthasar Pober
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WORMS'-MEAT, n. The finished product of which we are the raw material. The
+      contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the Grantarium.
+      Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that houses it, but
+      "this too must pass away." Probably the silliest work in which a human
+      being can engage is construction of a tomb for himself. The solemn purpose
+      cannot dignify, but only accentuates by contrast the foreknown futility.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Ambitious fool! so mad to be a show!
+  How profitless the labor you bestow
+      Upon a dwelling whose magnificence
+  The tenant neither can admire nor know.
+
+  Build deep, build high, build massive as you can,
+  The wanton grass-roots will defeat the plan
+      By shouldering asunder all the stones
+  In what to you would be a moment's span.
+
+  Time to the dead so all unreckoned flies
+  That when your marble is all dust, arise,
+      If wakened, stretch your limbs and yawn&mdash;
+  You'll think you scarcely can have closed your eyes.
+
+  What though of all man's works your tomb alone
+  Should stand till Time himself be overthrown?
+      Would it advantage you to dwell therein
+  Forever as a stain upon a stone?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Joel Huck
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WORSHIP, n. Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and fine
+      finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an element of
+      pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WRATH, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted
+      characters and momentous occasions; as, "the wrath of God," "the day of
+      wrath," etc. Amongst the ancients the wrath of kings was deemed sacred,
+      for it could usually command the agency of some god for its fit
+      manifestation, as could also that of a priest. The Greeks before Troy were
+      so harried by Apollo that they jumped out of the frying-pan of the wrath
+      of Chryses into the fire of the wrath of Achilles, though Agamemnon, the
+      sole offender, was neither fried nor roasted. A similar noted immunity was
+      that of David when he incurred the wrath of Yahveh by numbering his
+      people, seventy thousand of whom paid the penalty with their lives. God is
+      now Love, and a director of the census performs his work without
+      apprehension of disaster.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"></a>
+      X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      X in our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to
+      the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last
+      as long as the language. X is the sacred symbol of ten dollars, and in
+      such words as Xmas, Xn, etc., stands for Christ, not, as is popular
+      supposed, because it represents a cross, but because the corresponding
+      letter in the Greek alphabet is the initial of his name &mdash;<i>Xristos</i>.
+      If it represented a cross it would stand for St. Andrew, who "testified"
+      upon one of that shape. In the algebra of psychology x stands for Woman's
+      mind. Words beginning with X are Grecian and will not be defined in this
+      standard English dictionary.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027"></a>
+      Y
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a
+      New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMNYANK.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      YEAR, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      YESTERDAY, n. The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past
+      of age.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  But yesterday I should have thought me blest
+      To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak
+      Of middle life and look adown the bleak
+  And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,
+  Where solemn shadows all the land invest
+      And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak
+      Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak
+  The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest.
+  Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame
+      To stay the shadow on the dial's face
+  At manhood's noonmark!  Now, in God His name
+      I chide aloud the little interspace
+  Disparting me from Certitude, and fain
+  Would know the dream and vision ne'er again.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Baruch Arnegriff
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is said that in his last illness the poet Arnegriff was attended at
+      different times by seven doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      YOKE, n. An implement, madam, to whose Latin name, <i>jugum</i>, we owe
+      one of the most illuminating words in our language&mdash;a word that
+      defines the matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy. A
+      thousand apologies for withholding it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      YOUTH, n. The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum,
+      Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of
+      endowing a living Homer.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth
+  again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with
+  whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and
+  cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice never
+  is heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and,
+  howling, is cast into Baltimost!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Polydore Smith
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+    <h2><a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028"></a>
+      Z
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      ZANY, n. A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with
+      ludicrous incompetence the <i>buffone</i>, or clown, and was therefore the
+      ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of
+      the play. The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as we to-day
+      have the unhappiness to know him. In the zany we see an example of
+      creation; in the humorist, of transmission. Another excellent specimen of
+      the modern zany is the curate, who apes the rector, who apes the bishop,
+      who apes the archbishop, who apes the devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZANZIBARI, n. An inhabitant of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, off the eastern
+      coast of Africa. The Zanzibaris, a warlike people, are best known in this
+      country through a threatening diplomatic incident that occurred a few
+      years ago. The American consul at the capital occupied a dwelling that
+      faced the sea, with a sandy beach between. Greatly to the scandal of this
+      official's family, and against repeated remonstrances of the official
+      himself, the people of the city persisted in using the beach for bathing.
+      One day a woman came down to the edge of the water and was stooping to
+      remove her attire (a pair of sandals) when the consul, incensed beyond
+      restraint, fired a charge of bird-shot into the most conspicuous part of
+      her person. Unfortunately for the existing <i>entente cordiale</i> between
+      two great nations, she was the Sultana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZEAL, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and
+      inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  When Zeal sought Gratitude for his reward
+  He went away exclaiming:  "O my Lord!"
+  "What do you want?" the Lord asked, bending down.
+  "An ointment for my cracked and bleeding crown."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jum Coople
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or
+      a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered
+      as having a zenith, though from this view of the matter there was once a
+      considerably dissent among the learned, some holding that the posture of
+      the body was immaterial. These were called Horizontalists, their
+      opponents, Verticalists. The Horizontalist heresy was finally extinguished
+      by Xanobus, the philosopher-king of Abara, a zealous Verticalist. Entering
+      an assembly of philosophers who were debating the matter, he cast a
+      severed human head at the feet of his opponents and asked them to
+      determine its zenith, explaining that its body was hanging by the heels
+      outside. Observing that it was the head of their leader, the
+      Horizontalists hastened to profess themselves converted to whatever
+      opinion the Crown might be pleased to hold, and Horizontalism took its
+      place among <i>fides defuncti</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZEUS, n. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by
+      the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have
+      touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have
+      penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that
+      these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental
+      work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists,
+      each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred
+      names.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZIGZAG, v.t. To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one
+      carrying the white man's burden. (From <i>zed</i>, <i>z</i>, and <i>jag</i>,
+      an Icelandic word of unknown meaning.)
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  He zedjagged so uncomen wyde
+  Thet non coude pas on eyder syde;
+  So, to com saufly thruh, I been
+  Constreynet for to doodge betwene.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Munwele
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its
+      king, the House Fly (<i>Musca maledicta</i>). The father of Zoology was
+      Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother has not
+      come down to us. Two of the science's most illustrious expounders were
+      Buffon and Oliver Goldsmith, from both of whom we learn (<i>L'Histoire
+      generale des animaux</i> and <i>A History of Animated Nature</i>) that the
+      domestic cow sheds its horn every two years.
+    </p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 05:16:13 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 05:16:13 -0700
commit	c15d51ce2d52244ee80b5e0a4f9cb5ff56e38b5a (patch)
tree	e97c3705454035c2967f4a078e4e25d93174aa42 /old