TECHNICALITY, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for
slander in having accused his neighbor of murder. His exact words
were: "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook
upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and
the other side upon the other shoulder." The defendant was acquitted
by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words
did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook,
that being only an inference.
TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many
fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an
authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious
source--the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum
Laudamus_. In this apparently natural derivation there is something
that saddens.
TEETOTALER, n. One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally,
sometimes tolerably totally.
TELEPHONE, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
TELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that
of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us
with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a
bell summoning us to the sacrifice.
TENACITY, n. A certain quality of the human hand in its relation to
the coin of the realm. It attains its highest development in the hand
of authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in
politics. The following illustrative lines were written of a
Californian gentleman in high political preferment, who has passed to
his accounting:
Of such tenacity his grip
That nothing from his hand can slip.
Well-buttered eels you may o'erwhelm
In tubs of liquid slippery-elm
In vain--from his detaining pinch
They cannot struggle half an inch!
'Tis lucky that he so is planned
That breath he draws not with his hand,
For if he did, so great his greed
He'd draw his last with eager speed.
Nay, that were well, you say. Not so
He'd draw but never let it go!
THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion
and all the mystery of science. The modern Theosophist holds, with
the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this
earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough
for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime
does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to
wish to become. To be absolutely wise and good--that is perfection;
and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that
everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection.
Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem
neither wiser nor better than they were last year. The greatest and
fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had
no cat.
TIGHTS, n. An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the
general acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity.
Public attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss
Lillian Russell's refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as
to her motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of
ingenuity and sustained reflection. It was Miss Hall's belief that
nature had not endowed Miss Russell with beautiful legs. This theory
was impossible of acceptance by the male understanding, but the
conception of a faulty female leg was of so prodigious originality as
to rank among the most brilliant feats of philosophical speculation!
It is strange that in all the controversy regarding Miss Russell's
aversion to tights no one seems to have thought to ascribe it to what
was known among the ancients as "modesty." The nature of that
sentiment is now imperfectly understood, and possibly incapable of
exposition with the vocabulary that remains to us. The study of lost
arts has, however, been recently revived and some of the arts
themselves recovered. This is an epoch of _renaissances_, and there
is ground for hope that the primitive "blush" may be dragged from its
hiding-place amongst the tombs of antiquity and hissed on to the
stage.
TOMB, n. The House of Indifference. Tombs are now by common consent
invested with a certain sanctity, but when they have been long
tenanted it is considered no sin to break them open and rifle them,
the famous Egyptologist, Dr. Huggyns, explaining that a tomb may be
innocently "glened" as soon as its occupant is done "smellynge," the
soul being then all exhaled. This reasonable view is now generally
accepted by archaeologists, whereby the noble science of Curiosity has
been greatly dignified.
TOPE, v. To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig.
In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping
nations are in the forefront of civilization and power. When pitted
against the hard-drinking Christians the abstemious Mahometans go down
like grass before the scythe. In India one hundred thousand
beef-eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two
hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race.
With what an easy grace the whisky-loving American pushed the temperate
Spaniard out of his possessions! From the time when the Berserkers
ravaged all the coasts of western Europe and lay drunk in every
conquered port it has been the same way: everywhere the nations that
drink too much are observed to fight rather well and not too
righteously. Wherefore the estimable old ladies who abolished the
canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially
augmented the nation's military power.
TORTOISE, n. A creature thoughtfully created to supply occasion for
the following lines by the illustrious Ambat Delaso: