HUSBAND, n. One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate.
PRESENTABLE, adj. Hideously appareled after the manner of the time and place.
EXECUTIVE, n. An officer of the Government, whose duty it is to enforce the wishes of the legislative power until such time as the judicial department shall be pleased to pronounce them invalid and of no effect.
IMPENITENCE, n. A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin and punishment.
OLD, adj. In that stage of usefulness which is not inconsistent with general inefficiency, as an “old man”. Discredited by lapse of time and offensive to the popular taste, as an “old” book.
UBIQUITY, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.
A man is known by the company he organizes.
FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
PROJECTILE, n. The final arbiter in international disputes. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous.
PRIVATE, n. A military gentleman with a field-marshal’s baton in his knapsack and an impediment in his hope.
REAR, n. In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress.
REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.
HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.
PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. A desiccated epigram.
REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.
STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.
GENEROUS, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.
MERCY, n. An attribute beloved of detected offenders.
SPOOKER, n. A writer whose imagination concerns itself with supernatural phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks.
RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.