Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

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...

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.

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...

ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.

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...

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...

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.

LOGANIMITY, n. The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance while maturing a plan of revenge.

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...

FELON, n. A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.

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,...

The plague today…is merely Nature’s fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.

INFLUENCE, n. In politics, a visionary _quo_ given in exchange for a substantial _quid_.

COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor’s uneasiness.

HARBOR, n. A place where ships taking shelter from stores are exposed to the fury of the customs.

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...

Laughter is an interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.

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...

HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.

LUMINARY, n. One who throws light upon a subject; as an editor by not writing about it.

JEWS-HARP, n. An unmusical instrument, played by holding it fast with the teeth and trying to brush it away with the finger.

RECOUNT, n. In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded to the player against whom they are loaded.

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.

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!”...

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.

CONFIDANT, CONFIDANTE, n. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B, confided by “”him”” to C.

Backbite. To ”speak of a man as you find him” when he can’t find you.

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...

LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.

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

Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

Brain, v. [as in ‘to brain’]: To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of error in an opponent.

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...

MYRMIDON, n. A follower of Achilles –particularly when he didn’t lead.

DISSEMBLE, v.i. To put a clean shirt upon the character.Let us dissemble. –Adam

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.

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.

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...

DICTATOR, n. The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of despotism to the plague of anarchy.

Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

PREDICAMENT, n. The wage of consistency.

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...

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...

ADVICE, n. The smallest current coin.

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.

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...

CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.

POVERTY, n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a...

OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury.