Poor Isabella’s Dead, whose abdication
—G. J.
Set all tongues wagging in the Spanish nation.
For that performance ’twere unfair to scold her:
She wisely left a throne too hot to hold her.
To History she’ll be no royal riddle—
Merely a plain parched pea that jumped the griddle.
A shrine enclosing the object of man’s sincerest devotion; the temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a halfhearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore they know not. If woman had a free hand in the world’s marketing the race would become graminivorous.
In law, a crime; in morals, a punishment.
A religious sect of Africa who practiced the virtues of Abel. They were unfortunate in flourishing contemporaneously with the Cainians, and are now extinct.
Any deviation in another from one’s own habit of thought, not sufficient in itself to constitute insanity.
To encourage in crime, as to aid poverty with pennies.
One of the degrees of disapproval due to what is imperfectly understood.
To treat with merited indifference the landlord’s notification that he has let his house to a party willin’ to pay.
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That rare quality of mind to which monuments are erected by posterity above the bones of paupers.
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The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones. In the last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity. Perhaps, however, this impressive quality is rightly appraised; it is no easy task to be solemn.
Innocent of income; without estate; devoid of good clothing.
In the manner of a poor but honest person.
To take the preliminary step toward resumption.
A certain case of Latin nouns. The ablative absolute is an ancient form of grammatical error much admired by modern scholars.
Renunciation of unprofitable pleasures or painful gains.
Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.
The quality of another’s opinions.
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Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
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Considerate persons who will not trouble the lexicographer of the future to describe them.
By Abracadabra we signify
An infinite number of things.
’Tis the answer to What? and How? and Why?
And Whence? and Whither?—a word whereby
The Truth (with the comfort it brings)
Is open to all who grope in night,
Crying for Wisdom’s holy light.Whether the word is a verb or a noun
Is knowledge beyond my reach.
I only know that ’tis handed down.
From sage to sage,
From age to age—
An immortal part of speech!Of an ancient man the tale is told
That he lived to be ten centuries old,
In a cave on a mountain side.
(True, he finally died.)
The fame of his wisdom filled the land,
For his head was bald, and you’ll understand
His beard was long and white
And his eyes uncommonly bright.Philosophers gathered from far and near
To sit at his feet and hear and hear,
Though he never was heard
To utter a word
But “Abracadabra, abracadab,
Abracada, abracad,
Abraca, abrac, abra, ab!”
’Twas all he had,
’Twas all they wanted to hear, and each
Made copious notes of the mystical speech,
Which they published next—
A trickle of text
In a meadow of commentary.
Mighty big books were these,
In number, as leaves of trees;
In learning, remarkable—very!He’s dead,
—Jamrach Holobom
As I said,
And the books of the sages have perished,
But his wisdom is sacredly cherished.
In Abracadabra it solemnly rings,
Like an ancient bell that forever swings.
O, I love to hear
That word make clear
Humanity’s General Sense of Things.
To shorten.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
—Oliver Cromwell
A brief summary of some person’s literary work, in which those parts that tell against the convictions of the abridger are omitted for want of space.
At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to be miserable; to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.
Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon-shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most affected by it. Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another author’s ideas that they were “concatenated without abruption.”
Dr. Johnson said of a certain work that the ideas were “concatenated without abruption.” In deference to that great authority we have given the word a place.
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To be unexpectedly called away to the bedside of a dying relative and miss the return train.
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To “move in a mysterious way,” commonly with the property of another.
Spring beckons! All things to the call respond;
—Phela Orm
The trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
That which “makes the heart grow fonder”—of absence. Absence of mind is the cerebral condition essential to success in popular preaching. It is sometimes termed lack of sense.
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Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed; slandered.
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Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed; hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection of another.
To men a man is but a mind. Who cares
—Jogo Tyree
What face he carries or what form he wears?
But woman’s body is the woman. O,
Stay thou, my sweetheart, and do never go,
But heed the warning words the sage hath said:
A woman absent is a woman dead.
A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove