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.