LIVER, n. A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. The liver is heaven’s best gift to the goose; without it that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg “pate”.
ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered as having a zenith, though Horizontalists hold that the posture of the body was immaterial.
MONSIGNOR- A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder of our religion overlooked the advantages.
MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.
CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal.
DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.
INTENTION, n. The mind’s sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.
OYSTER, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.
RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.
Truth – An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.
READING, n. The general body of what one reads. In our country it consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in “dialect” and humor in slang.
CONGRESS, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.
JOSS-STICKS- Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.
PALACE, n. A fine and costly residence, particularly that of a great official. The residence of a high dignitary of the Christian Church is called a palace; that of the Founder of his religion was known as a field, or wayside. There is progress.
MAJESTY, n. The state and title of a king. Regarded with a just contempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, Great Incohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable orders of republican America.
REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience.
INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both – as Walt Whitman’s poetry and God’s mercy to man.
MATERIAL, adj. Having an actual existence, as distinguished from an imaginary one. Important.
NOUMENON, n. That which exists, as distinguished from that which merely seems to exist, the latter being a phenomenon. The noumenon is a bit difficult to locate; it can be apprehended only by a process of reasoning – which is a phenomenon.