The Cynic's Word Book, by Ambrose Bierce

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 of mired mules, gaspipes, 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.

     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 spectre 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 extraordinary gift 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 grasp 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 give it anything good in their place, but nobody now seriously denies it. In 1640 Father Seechi saw one in a cemetery near Florence and frightened it away with the sign of the cross. He describes it as gifted with several 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 rose-water.) 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 last 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 probably became extinct about 1640.

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.

     The Gorgon was a maiden bold
     Who turned to stone the Greeks of old
     Who looked upon her awful brow.
     We dig them out of ruins now,
     And swear that workmanship so bad
     Proves all the ancient sculptors mad.

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 of the self-made man, along the path by which he advances upon our understanding.

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

     The lyre 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 bare 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 't was encumbered;
     The winds were moaning in the wood,
     Unheard by him who slumbered.

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

     "Too true," I said; "alas, too true—
     No sounds 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 did n't know him."

     Pobeter Dunk.

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

     "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 caudal 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 Braywell 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 and ingenious 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 awful 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 kill 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, some years ago, some rogue, imperfectly reverent of his profound attainments and personal character, presented him with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the seed of the Flashawful flabbergastor, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial value, admirably adapted to this climate. The good Secretary was instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with soil. This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point. Contact with the earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke in fierce evolution. He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless, then he recollected an engagement, and, dropping all, absented himself thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak of farmer 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 centring his attention upon his instrument, "is the Meridian of Washington."

HABEAS CORPUS. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail and asked how he likes it.

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 "Hades" as "Hell"; but a conscientious minority member secretly possessed himself of the record and struck out the objectionable word wherever he could find it. At the next meeting, the Bishop of Winchester, looking over the work, suddenly sprang to his feet and said with considerable excitement: "Gentlemen, somebody has been razing 'Hell' here!" Years afterwards 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 pleasure is reserved for 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 the 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: Desdamona dried her nose with her coat-tails as Dr. Mary Walker and other reformers have done 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 Jersey men.

HAPPINESS, n. An agreeble sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

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

HARMONISTS, n. A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.

     "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. The sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's success or superiority.

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

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 caviare sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a pungent epigram; the marvellous 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 on "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 Hotten, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a striking illustration and support in the author's account of an experiment made with a view to testing it. The stomach of a man who had died of a surfeit of turkey on Thanksgiving Day was removed and kept tightly closed until it was greatly distended with the gases produced by digestion. The compression on the neck of it being then relaxed, the words, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow!" were heard with distinct articulation, as the swollen organ collapsed. It is nonsense to ignore, belittle, pervert or deny the significance of a fact like that. For further light upon this subject, consult Professor Dam's famous treatise on "Love as a product of Alimentary Maceration."

     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.
     Trust an eye-witness—I've been there, my 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 rhyme.

     Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree
     On a modus vivendi—not they!—
     Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,
     And I have n't been built 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,
     An 'ite, an 'ic, and 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, particular 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.

     "Now, why is yer wife called a helpmate, Pat?"
     Says the priest. "Since the time o' yer wooin'
     She 's niver assisted in what ye were at—
     For it 's naught ye are ever doin'."
     "That 's true of yer Riverence," Patrick replies,
     And no sign of contrition evinces;
     "But, bedad, it 's a fact which the word implies,
     For she helps to mate the expinses!"

     Marley Wottel.

HEMP, n. A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.

HIBERNATE, v. 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 has 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 bottoms of the 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 Escobius discovered in Central Asia a whole nation of people who hibernated. 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 is strenuously opposed by that eminent authority, Bishop Kip, who does 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 therefore one quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of natural history is full of surprises.

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
     'T is nine-tenths lying. Faith, I wish 't were
     known,
     Ere we accept great Niebuhr as a guide,
     Wherein he blundered and how much he lied.

     Solder 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 of its habits, the beauty of its plumage, and the melody of its voice. It is chiefly as a songster that the fowl is esteemed; a 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.

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 homicide: 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 moral 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."

     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 lodge and feed certain persons who are not in want of food and lodging.

HOSTILITY, n. A peculiarly sharp and specially applied sense of the earth's overpopulation. Hostility is classed 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 musselman, 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 appropriations and offenders. 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.

     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 chimney 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 thine himself
     a model.

     G.J.

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
     Sees 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 oldfashioned 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.

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 observant medical student loathes the creature, for he knows why it goes to the graveyard. He has met it there.

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

     Bogul S, Purvy.

HYPOCRITE, n. One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.

I is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language, the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection. In grammar it is a pronoun of the first person and singular number. Its plural is said to be We, but how there can be more than one myself is doubtless clearer to the grammarians than it is to the author of this incomparable dictionary. Conception of two myselves is difficult, but fine. The frank yet graceful use of "I" distinguishes a good writer from a bad; the latter carries it with the demeanor of the Impenitent Thief packing his cross up Calvary.

     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 worshippers whereof are imperfectly gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest that he unbuildeth but doth not reëdify, that he teareth 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 of opinion and taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a deadline.

IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of untried 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 outside."

     Borellu

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.

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 a minaret.

     There was n'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 men'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.

     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 to 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.

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.