M

MACE, n.A staff of office signifying authority.Its form, that of aheavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading fromdissent.

MACHINATION, n.The method employed by one's opponents in bafflingone's open and honorable efforts to do the right thing.

So plain the advantages of machination It constitutes a moral obligation, And honest wolves who think upon't with loathing Feel bound to don the sheep's deceptive clothing. So prospers still the diplomatic art, And Satan bows, with hand upon his heart.

R.S.K.

MACROBIAN, n.One forgotten of the gods and living to a great age. History is abundantly supplied with examples, from Methuselah to OldParr, but some notable instances of longevity are less well known.ACalabrian peasant named Coloni, born in 1753, lived so long that hehad what he considered a glimpse of the dawn of universal peace. Scanavius relates that he knew an archbishop who was so old that hecould remember a time when he did not deserve hanging.In 1566 alinen draper of Bristol, England, declared that he had lived fivehundred years, and that in all that time he had never told a lie. There are instances of longevity (_macrobiosis_) in our own country. Senator Chauncey Depew is old enough to know better.The editor of_The American_, a newspaper in New York City, has a memory that goesback to the time when he was a rascal, but not to the fact.ThePresident of the United States was born so long ago that many of thefriends of his youth have risen to high political and militarypreferment without the assistance of personal merit.The versesfollowing were written by a macrobian:

When I was young the world was fair And amiable and sunny. A brightness was in all the air, In all the waters, honey. The jokes were fine and funny, The statesmen honest in their views, And in their lives, as well, And when you heard a bit of news 'Twas true enough to tell. Men were not ranting, shouting, reeking, Nor women "generally speaking."

The Summer then was long indeed: It lasted one whole season! The

sparkling Winter gave no heed When ordered by Unreason To bring the early peas on. Now, where the dickens is the sense In calling that a year Which does no more than just commence Before the end is near? When I was young the year extended From month to month until it ended. I know not why the world has changed To something dark and dreary, And everything is now arranged To make a fellow weary. The Weather Man -- I fear he Has much to do with it, for, sure, The air is not the same: It chokes you when it is impure, When pure it makes you lame. With windows closed you are asthmatic; Open, neuralgic or sciatic.

Well, I suppose this new regime Of dun degeneration Seems eviler than it would seem To a better observation, And has for compensation Some blessings in a deep disguise Which mortal sight has failed To pierce, although to angels' eyes They're visible unveiled. If Age is such a boon, good land! He's costumed by a master hand!

Venable Strigg

MAD, adj.Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence;not conforming to standards of thought, speech and action derived bythe conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority;in short, unusual.It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced madby officials destitute of evidence that themselves are sane.Forillustration, this present (and illustrious) lexicographer is nofirmer in the faith of his own sanity than is any inmate of anymadhouse in the land; yet for aught he knows to the contrary, insteadof the lofty occupation that seems to him to be engaging his powers hemay really be beating his hands against the window bars of an asylumand declaring himself Noah Webster, to the innocent delight of manythoughtless spectators.

MAGDALENE, n.An inhabitant of Magdala.Popularly, a woman foundout.This definition of the word has the authority of ignorance, Maryof Magdala being another person than the penitent woman mentioned bySt. Luke.It has also the official sanction of the governments ofGreat Britain and the United States.In England the word ispronounced Maudlin, whence maudlin, adjective, unpleasantlysentimental.With their Maudlin for Magdalene, and their Bedlam forBethlehem, the English may justly boast themselves the greatest ofrevisers.

MAGIC, n.An art of converting superstition into coin.There areother arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreetlexicographer does not name them.

MAGNET, n.Something acted upon by magnetism.

MAGNETISM, n.Something acting upon a magnet. The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from theworks of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated thesubject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement ofhuman knowledge.

MAGNIFICENT, adj.Having a grandeur or splendor superior to that towhich the spectator is accustomed, as the ears of an ass, to a rabbit,or the glory of a glowworm, to a maggot.

MAGNITUDE, n.Size.Magnitude being purely relative, nothing islarge and nothing small.If everything in the universe were increasedin bulk one thousand diameters nothing would be any larger than it wasbefore, but if one thing remain unchanged all the others would belarger than they had been.To an understanding familiar with therelativity of magnitude and distance the spaces and masses of theastronomer would be no more impressive than those of the microscopist. For anything we know to the contrary, the visible universe may be asmall part of an atom, with its component ions, floating in the life-fluid (luminiferous ether) of some animal.Possibly the wee creaturespeopling the corpuscles of our own blood are overcome with the properemotion when contemplating the unthinkable distance from one of theseto another.

MAGPIE, n.A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someonethat it might be taught to talk.

MAIDEN, n.A young person of the unfair sex addicted to clewlessconduct and views that madden to crime.The genus has a widegeographical distribution, being found wherever sought and deploredwherever found.The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye,nor (without her piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, thoughin respect to comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, withregard to the part of her that is audible, bleating out of the fieldby the canary -- which, also, is more portable.

A lovelorn maiden she sat and sang -- This quaint, sweet song sang she;

"It's O for a youth with a football bang And a muscle fair to see! The Captain he Of a team to be! On the gridiron he shall shine, A monarch by right divine, And never to roast on it -- me!"

Opoline Jones

MAJESTY, n.The state and title of a king.Regarded with a justcontempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, GreatIncohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable ordersof republican America.

MALE, n.A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex.The maleof the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man.Thegenus has two varieties:good providers and bad providers.

MALEFACTOR, n.The chief factor in the progress of the human race.

MALTHUSIAN, adj.Pertaining to Malthus and his doctrines.Malthusbelieved in artificially limiting population, but found that it couldnot be done by talking.One of the most practical exponents of theMalthusian idea was Herod of Judea, though all the famous soldiershave been of the same way of thinking.

MAMMALIA, n.pl.A family of vertebrate animals whose females in astate of nature suckle their young, but when civilized and enlightenedput them out to nurse, or use the bottle.

MAMMON, n.The god of the world's leading religion.The chief templeis in the holy city of New York.

He swore that all other religions were gammon, And wore out his knees in the worship of Mammon.

Jared Oopf

MAN, n.An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what hethinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.Hischief occupation is extermination of other animals and his ownspecies, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as toinfest the whole habitable earh and Canada.

When the world was young and Man was new, And everything was pleasant, Distinctions Nature never drew 'Mongst kings and priest and peasant. We're not that way at present, Save here in this Republic, where We have that old regime, For all are kings, however bare Their backs,

howe'er extreme Their hunger.And, indeed, each has a voice To accept the tyrant of his party's choice.

A citizen who would not vote, And, therefore, was detested, Was one day with a tarry coat (With feathers backed and breasted) By patriots invested. "It is your duty," cried the crowd, "Your ballot true to cast For the man o' your choice."He humbly bowed, And explained his wicked past: "That's what I very gladly would have done, Dear patriots, but he has never run."

Apperton Duke

MANES, n.The immortal parts of dead Greeks and Romans.They were ina state of dull discomfort until the bodies from which they hadexhaled were buried and burned; and they seem not to have beenparticularly happy afterward.

MANICHEISM, n.The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfarebetween Good and Evil.When Good gave up the fight the Persiansjoined the victorious Opposition.

MANNA, n.A food miraculously given to the Israelites in thewilderness.When it was no longer supplied to them they settleddown and tilled the soil, fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodiesof the original occupants.

MARRIAGE, n.The state or condition of a community consisting of amaster, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.

MARTYR, n.One who moves along the line of least reluctance to adesired death.

MATERIAL, adj.Having an actual existence, as distinguished from animaginary one.Important.

Material things I know, or fell, or see; All else is immaterial to me. Jamrach Holobom

MAUSOLEUM, n.The final and funniest folly of the rich.

MAYONNAISE, n.One of the sauces which serve the French in place of astate religion.

ME, pro.The objectionable case of I.The personal pronoun inEnglish has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and theoppressive.Each is all three.

MEANDER, n.To proceed sinuously and aimlessly.The word is theancient name of a river about one hundred and fifty miles south ofTroy, which turned and twisted in the effort to get out of hearingwhen the Greeks and Trojans boasted of their prowess.

MEDAL, n.A small metal disk given as a reward for virtues,attainments or services more or less authentic. It is related of Bismark, who had been awarded a medal forgallantly rescuing a drowning person, that, being asked the meaning ofthe medal, he replied:"I save lives sometimes."And sometimes hedidn't.

MEDICINE, n.A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway.

MEEKNESS, n.Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worthwhile.

M is for Moses, Who slew the Egyptian. As sweet as a rose is The meekness of Moses. No monument shows his Post-mortem inscription, But M is for Moses Who slew the Egyptian.

_The Biographical Alphabet_

MEERSCHAUM, n.(Literally, seafoam, and by many erroneously supposedto be made of it.)A fine white clay, which for convenience incoloring it brown is made into tobacco pipes and smoked by the workmenengaged in that industry.The purpose of coloring it has not beendisclosed by the manufacturers.

There was a youth (you've heard before, This woeful tale, may be), Who bought a meerschaum pipe and swore That color it would he!

He shut himself from the world away, Nor any soul he saw. He smoke by night, he smoked by day, As hard as he could draw.

His dog died moaning in the wrath Of winds that blew aloof; The weeds were in the gravel path, The owl was on the roof.

"He's gone afar, he'll come no more," The neighbors sadly say. And so they batter in the door To take his goods away.

Dead, pipe in mouth, the youngster lay, Nut-brown in face and limb. "That pipe's a lovely white," they say, "But it has colored him!"

The moral there's small need to sing -- 'Tis plain as day to you: Don't play your game on any thing That is a gamester too.

Martin Bulstrode

MENDACIOUS, adj.Addicted to rhetoric.

MERCHANT, n.One engaged in a commercial pursuit.A commercialpursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.

MERCY, n.An attribute beloved of detected offenders.

MESMERISM, n.Hypnotism before it wore good clothes, kept a carriageand asked Incredulity to dinner.

METROPOLIS, n.A stronghold of provincialism.

MILLENNIUM, n.The period of a thousand years when the lid is to bescrewed down, with all reformers on the under side.

MIND, n.A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain.Itschief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature,the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothingbut itself to know itself with.From the Latin _mens_, a fact unknownto that honest shoe-seller, who, observing that his learned competitorover the way had displayed the motto "_Mens conscia recti_,"emblazoned his own front with the words "Men's, women's and children'sconscia recti."

MINE, adj.Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.

MINISTER, n.An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility. In diplomacy and officer sent into a foreign country as the visibleembodiment of his sovereign's hostility.His principal qualificationis a degree of plausible inveracity next below that of an ambassador.

MINOR, adj.Less objectionable.

MINSTREL, adj.Formerly a poet, singer or musician; now a nigger witha color less than skin deep and a humor more than flesh and blood canbear.

MIRACLE, n.An act or event out of the order of nature andunaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace withfour aces and a king.

MISCREANT, n.A person of the highest degree of unworth. Etymologically, the word means unbeliever, and its presentsignification may be regarded as theology's noblest contribution tothe development of our language.

MISDEMEANOR, n.An infraction of the law having less dignity than

afelony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminalsociety.

By misdemeanors he essays to climb Into the aristocracy of crime. O, woe was him! -- with manner chill and grand "Captains of industry" refused his hand, "Kings of finance" denied him recognition And "railway magnates" jeered his low condition. He robbed a bank to make himself respected. They still rebuffed him, for he was detected.

S.V. Hanipur

MISERICORDE, n.A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by thefoot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.

MISFORTUNE, n.The kind of fortune that never misses.

MISS, n.The title with which we brand unmarried women to indicatethat they are in the market.Miss, Missis (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) arethe three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in soundand sense.Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master.Inthe general abolition of social titles in this our country theymiraculously escaped to plague us.If we must have them let us beconsistent and give one to the unmarried man.I venture to suggestMush, abbreviated to Mh.

MOLECULE, n.The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter.It isdistinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unitof matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate,indivisible unit of matter.Three great scientific theories of thestructure of the universe are the molecular, the corpuscular and theatomic.A fourth affirms, with Haeckel, the condensation ofprecipitation of matter from ether -- whose existence is proved by thecondensation of precipitation.The present trend of scientificthought is toward the theory of ions.The ion differs from themolecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion.A fifththeory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any moreabout the matter than the others.

MONAD, n.The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter.(See_Molecule_.)According to Leibnitz, as nearly as he seems willing tobe understood, the monad has body without bulk, and mind withoutmanifestation -- Leibnitz knows him by the innate power ofconsidering.He has founded upon him a theory of the universe, whichthe

creature bears without resentment, for the monad is a gentlmean. Small as he is, the monad contains all the powers and possibilitiesneedful to his evolution into a German philosopher of the first class-- altogether a very capable little fellow.He is not to beconfounded with the microbe, or bacillus; by its inability to discernhim, a good microscope shows him to be of an entirely distinctspecies.

MONARCH, n.A person engaged in reigning.Formerly the monarchruled, as the derivation of the word attests, and as many subjectshave had occasion to learn.In Russia and the Orient the monarch hasstill a considerable influence in public affairs and in thedisposition of the human head, but in western Europe politicaladministration is mostly entrusted to his ministers, he beingsomewhat preoccupied with reflections relating to the status of hisown head.

MONARCHICAL GOVERNMENT, n.Government.

MONDAY, n.In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.

MONEY, n.A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when wepart with it.An evidence of culture and a passport to politesociety.Supportable property.

MONKEY, n.An arboreal animal which makes itself at home ingenealogical trees.

MONOSYLLABIC, adj.Composed of words of one syllable, for literarybabes who never tire of testifying their delight in the vapid compoundby appropriate googoogling.The words are commonly Saxon -- that isto say, words of a barbarous people destitute of ideas and incapableof any but the most elementary sentiments and emotions.

The man who writes in Saxon Is the man to use an ax on Judibras

MONSIGNOR, n.A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder ofour religion overlooked the advantages.

MONUMENT, n.A structure intended to commemorate something whicheither needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.

The bones of Agammemnon are a show, And ruined is his royal monument,

but Agammemnon's fame suffers no diminution in

consequence.Themonument custom has its _reductiones ad absurdum_ in monuments "to theunknown dead" -- that is to say, monuments to perpetuate the memory ofthose who have left no memory.

MORAL, adj.Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right.

Having the quality of general expediency.

It is sayd there be a raunge of mountaynes in the Easte, onone syde of the which certayn conducts are immorall, yet on the othersyde they are holden in good esteeme; wherebye the mountayneer is muchconveenyenced, for it is given to him to goe downe eyther way and actas it shall suite his moode, withouten offence.

_Gooke's Meditations_

MORE, adj.The comparative degree of too much.

MOUSE, n.An animal which strews its path with fainting women.As inRome Christians were thrown to the lions, so centuries earlier inOtumwee, the most ancient and famous city of the world, femaleheretics were thrown to the mice.Jakak-Zotp, the historian, the onlyOtumwump whose writings have descended to us, says that these martyrsmet their death with little dignity and much exertion.He evenattempts to exculpate the mice (such is the malice of bigotry) bydeclaring that the unfortunate women perished, some from exhaustion,some of broken necks from falling over their own feet, and some fromlack of restoratives.The mice, he avers, enjoyed the pleasures ofthe chase with composure.But if "Roman history is nine-tenthslying," we can hardly expect a smaller proportion of that rhetoricalfigure in the annals of a people capable of so incredible cruelty to alovely women; for a hard heart has a false tongue.

MOUSQUETAIRE, n.A long glove covering a part of the arm.Worn inNew Jersey.But "mousquetaire" is a might poor way to spellmuskeeter.

MOUTH, n.In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet ofthe heart.

MUGWUMP, n.In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addictedto the vice of independence.A term of contempt.

MULATTO, n.A child of two races, ashamed of both.

MULTITUDE, n.A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue.Ina republic, the object of the statesman's adoration."In a

multitudeof consellors there is wisdom," saith the proverb.If many men ofequal individual wisdom are wiser than any one of them, it must bethat they acquire the excess of wisdom by the mere act of gettingtogether.Whence comes it?Obviously from nowhere -- as well saythat a range of mountains is higher than the single mountainscomposing it.A multitude is as wise as its wisest member if it obeyhim; if not, it is no wiser than its most foolish.

MUMMY, n.An ancient Egyptian, formerly in universal use among moderncivilized nations as medicine, and now engaged in supplying art withan excellent pigment.He is handy, too, in museums in gratifying thevulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the loweranimals.

By means of the Mummy, mankind, it is said, Attests to the gods its respect for the dead. We plunder his tomb, be he sinner or saint, Distil him for physic and grind him for paint, Exhibit for money his poor, shrunken frame, And with levity flock to the scene of the shame. O, tell me, ye gods, for the use of my rhyme: For respecting the dead what's the limit of time?

Scopas Brune

MUSTANG, n.An indocile horse of the western plains.In Englishsociety, the American wife of an English nobleman.

MYRMIDON, n.A follower of Achilles -- particularly when he didn'tlead.

MYTHOLOGY, n.The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning itsorigin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguishedfrom the true accounts which it invents later.