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 of 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 my hand has never swept,
The song I cannot offer:
My humbler service pray accept—
I’ll help to kill the scoffer.
The water-drinkers and the cranks
Who load their skins with liquor—
I’ll gladly bear their belly-tanks
And tap them with my sticker.
Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools
When e’er we let the wine rest.
Here’s death to Prohibition’s fools,
And every kind of vine-pest!
Jamrach Holobom.
GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.
GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.
Beside a lonely grave I stood—
With brambles ’twas encumbered;
The winds were moaning in the wood,
Unheard by him who slumbered.
A rustic standing near, I said:
“He cannot hear it blowing!”
“ ’Course not,” said he: “the feller’s dead—
He can’t hear nowt that’s going.”
“Too true,” I said; “alas, too true—
No sound his sense can quicken!”
“Well, mister, wot is that to you?—
The deadster ain’t a-kickin’.”
I knelt and prayed: “O Father, smile
On him, and mercy show him!”
That countryman looked on the while,
And said: “Ye didn’t know him.”
Pobeter 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.
GREAT, adj.
“I’m great,” the Lion said—“I reign
The monarch of the wood and plain!”
The Elephant replied: “I’m great—
No quadruped can match my weight!”
“I’m great—no animal has half
So long a neck!” said the Giraffe.
“I’m great,” the Kangaroo said—“see
My femoral muscularity!”
The ’Possum said: “I’m great—behold,
My tail is lithe and bald and cold!”
An Oyster fried was understood
To say: “I’m great because I’m good!”
Each reckons greatness to consist
In that in which he heads the list,
And Vierick thinks he tops his class
Because he is the greatest ass.
Arion Spurl Doke.
GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.
In his great work on Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution, the learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture—the shrug—among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracting the head inside the shell. It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an authority, but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth and enforced in my work entitled Hereditary Emotions—lib. II, c. XI) the shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important a theory, for previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown. I have not a doubt that it is directly referable to the terror inspired by the guillotine during the period of that instrument’s activity.
GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels. Moreover, it has the hearty concurrence of the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture.
Secretary Wilson became interested in gunpowder through an event that occurred on the Government experimental farm in the District of Columbia. One day, several years ago, a rogue imperfectly reverent of the Secretary’s profound attainments and personal character presented him with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the seed of the Flashawful flabbergastor, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial value, admirably adapted to this climate. The good Secretary was instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with soil. This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point. Contact with the earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke in fierce evolution. He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless, then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himself thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages, and audibly refusing to be comforted. “Great Scott! what is that?” cried a surveyor’s chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fading line of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon. “That,” said the surveyor, carelessly gla
ncing at the phenomenon and again centering his attention upon his instrument, “is the Meridian of Washington.”
H
HABEAS CORPUS, n. 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 “Άδης” 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 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 headdress by divinities and saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by moisture in the air, in the manner of a rainbow; but the aureola is conferred as a sign of superior sanctity, in the same way as a bishop’s mitre, or the Pope’s tiara. In the painting of the Nativity, by Szedgkin, a pious artist of Pesth, not only do the Virgin and the Child wear the nimbus, but an ass nibbling hay from the sacred manger is similarly decorated and, to his lasting honor be it said, appears to bear his unaccustomed dignity with a truly saintly grace.
HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.
HANDKERCHIEF, n. A small square of silk or linen, used in various ignoble offices about the face and especially serviceable at funerals to conceal the lack of tears. The handkerchief is of recent invention; our ancestors knew nothing of it and intrusted its duties to the sleeve. Shakespeare’s introducing it into the play of “Othello” is an anachronism: Desdemona dried her nose with her skirt, as Dr. Mary Walker and other reformers have done with their coattails in our own day—an evidence that revolutions sometimes go backward.
HANGMAN, n. An officer of the law charged with duties of the highest dignity and utmost gravity, and held in hereditary disesteem by a populace having a criminal ancestry. In some of the American States his functions are now performed by an electrician, as in New Jersey, where executions by electricity have recently been ordered—the first instance known to this lexicographer of anybody questioning the expediency of hanging Jerseymen.
HAPPINESS, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
HARANGUE, n. A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harangue-outang.
HARBOR, n. A place where ships taking shelter from storms are exposed to the fury of the customs.
HARMONISTS, n. A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.
HASH, x. There is no definition for this word—nobody knows what hash is.
HATCHET, n. A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.
“O bury the hatchet, irascible Red,
For peace is a blessing,” the White Man said.
The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred,
With imposing rites, in the White Man’s head.
John Lukkus.
HATRED, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another’s superiority.
HEAD-MONEY, n. A capitation tax, or poll-tax.
In ancient times there lived a king
Whose tax-collectors could not wring
From all his subjects gold enough
To make the royal way less rough.
For pleasure’s highway, like the dames
Whose premises adjoin it, claims
Perpetual repairing. So
The tax-collectors in a row
Appeared before the throne to pray
Their master to devise some way
To swell the revenue. “So great,”
Said they, “are the demands of state
A tithe of all that we collect
Will scarcely meet them. Pray reflect:
How, if one-tenth we must resign,
Can we exist on t’other nine?”
The monarch asked them in reply:
“Has it occurred to you to try
The advantage of economy?”
“It has,” the spokesman said: “we sold
All of our gray garrotes of gold;
With plated-ware we now compress
The necks of those whom we assess.
Plain iron forceps we employ
To mitigate the miser’s joy
Who hoards, with greed that never tires,
That which your Majesty requires.”
Deep lines of thought were seen to plow
Their way across the royal brow.
“Your state is desperate, no question;
Pray favor me with a suggestion.”
“O King of Men,” the spokesman said,
“If you’ll impose upon each head
A tax, the augmented revenue
We’ll cheerfully divide with you.”
As flashes of the sun illume
The parted storm-cloud’s sullen gloom,
The king smiled grimly. “I decree
That it be so—and, not to be
In generosity outdone,
Declare you, each and every one,
Exempted from the operation
Of this new law of capitation.
But lest the people censure me
Because they’re bound and you are free,
’Twere well some clever scheme were laid
By you this poll-tax to evade.
I’ll leave you now while you confer
With my most trusted minister.”
The monarch from the throne-room walked
And straightway in among them stalked
A silent man, with brow concealed,
Bare-armed—his gleaming axe revealed!
G. J.
HEARSE, n. Death’s baby-carriage.
HEART, n. An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments—a very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments
and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of the gastric fluid. The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a feeling—tender or not, according to the age of the animal from which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh of sensibility—these things have been patiently ascertained by M. Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity. (See, also, my monograph, The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion—4to, 687 pp.) In a scientific work entitled, I believe, Delectatio Demonorum (John Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a striking illustration; and for further light consult Professor Dam’s famous treatise on Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration.
HEAT, n.
Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode
Of motion, but I know now how he’s proving
His point; but this I know—hot words bestowed
With skill will set the human fist a-moving,
And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
Crede expertum—I have seen them, child.
Gorton Swope.
HEATHEN, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel. According to Professor Howison, of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.
“The Hebrews are heathens!” says Howison. He’s
A Christian philosopher. I’m
A scurril agnostical chap, if you please,
Addicted too much to the crime
Of religious discussion in my rhyme.
Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree
On a modus vivendi—not they!—
Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,
And I haven’t been reared in a way
To joy in the thick of the fray.
For this of my creed is the soul and the gist,
And the truth of it I aver:
Who differs from me in his faith is an ’ist,
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