GEOGRAPHER, n. A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between
the outside of the world and the inside.
Habeam, geographer of wide renown,
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 travellers 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 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.
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 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.
GORGON, n.
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.
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 upon our
understanding.
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 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.
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 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."
H
HABEAS CORPUS. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail and asked
how he likes it.
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 "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.
HARANGUE, n. A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harangoutang.
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. The sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
success or superiority.
HEAD-MONEY, n. A capitation or polltax.
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!