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GALLOWS, n.A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in whichthe leading actor is translated to heaven.In this country thegallows is chiefly remarkable for the number of persons who escape it.

Whether on the gallows high Or where blood flows the reddest, The noblest place for man to die -- Is where he died the deadest.

(Old play)

GARGOYLE, n.A rain-spout projecting from the eaves of mediaevalbuildings, commonly fashioned into a grotesque caricature of somepersonal enemy of the architect or owner of the building.This wasespecially the case in churches and ecclesiastical structuresgenerally, in which the gargoyles presented a perfect rogues' galleryof local heretics and controversialists.Sometimes when a new deanand chapter were installed the old gargoyles were removed and otherssubstituted having a closer relation to the private animosities of thenew incumbents.

GARTHER, n.An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming outof her stockings and desolating the country.

GENEROUS, adj.Originally this word meant noble by birth and wasrightly applied to a great multitude of persons.It now means nobleby nature and is taking a bit of a rest.

GENEALOGY, n.An account of one's descent from an ancestor who didnot particularly care to trace his own.

GENTEEL, adj.Refined, after the fashion of a gent.

Observe with care, my son, the distinction I reveal: A gentleman is gentle and a gent genteel. Heed not the definitions your "Unabridged" presents, For dictionary makers are generally gents.

GEOGRAPHER, n.A chap who can tell you offhand the difference betweenthe outside of the world and the inside.

Habeam, geographer of wide reknown, Native of Abu-Keber's ancient town, In passing thence along the river Zam To the adjacent village of Xelam, Bewildered by the multitude of roads, Got lost, lived long on migratory toads, Then from exposure miserably died, And grateful travelers bewailed their guide.

Henry Haukhorn

GEOLOGY, n.The science of the earth's crust -- to which, doubtless,will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come upgarrulous out of a well.The geological formations of the globealready noted are catalogued thus:The Primary, or lower one,consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners' tools,antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors.TheSecondary is largely made up of red worms and moles.The Tertiarycomprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldyboots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage,anarchists, snap-dogs and fools.

GHOST, n.The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.

He saw a ghost. It occupied -- that dismal thing! -- The path that he was following. Before he'd time to stop and fly, An earthquake trifled with the eye That saw a ghost. He fell as fall the early good; Unmoved that awful vision stood. The stars that danced before his ken He wildly brushed away, and then He saw a post.

Jared Macphester

Accounting for the uncommon behavior of ghosts, Heine mentionssomebody's ingenious theory to the effect that they are as muchafraid of us as we of them.Not quite, if I may judge from suchtables of comparative speed as I am able to compile from memories ofmy own experience. There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts.A ghostnever comes naked:he appears either in a winding-sheet or "in

hishabit as he lived."To believe in him, then, is to believe that notonly have the dead the power to make themselves visible after there isnothing left of them, but that the same power inheres in textilefabrics.Supposing the products of the loom to have this ability,what object would they have in exercising it?And why does not theapparition of a suit of clothes sometimes walk abroad without a ghostin it?These be riddles of significance.They reach away down andget a convulsive grip on the very tap-root of this flourishing faith.

GHOUL, n.A demon addicted to the reprehensible habit of devouringthe dead.The existence of ghouls has been disputed by that class ofcontroversialists who are more concerned to deprive the world ofcomforting beliefs than to give it anything good in their place.In1640 Father Secchi saw one in a cemetery near Florence and frightenedit away with the sign of the cross.He describes it as gifted withmany heads an an uncommon allowance of limbs, and he saw it in morethan one place at a time.The good man was coming away from dinner atthe time and explains that if he had not been "heavy with eating" hewould have seized the demon at all hazards.Atholston relates that aghoul was caught by some sturdy peasants in a churchyard at Sudburyand ducked in a horsepond.(He appears to think that so distinguisheda criminal should have been ducked in a tank of rosewater.)The waterturned at once to blood "and so contynues unto ys daye."The pond hassince been bled with a ditch.As late as the beginning of thefourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the crypt of the cathedralat Amiens and the whole population surrounded the place.Twenty armedmen with a priest at their head, bearing a crucifix, entered andcaptured the ghoul, which, thinking to escape by the stratagem, hadtransformed itself to the semblance of a well known citizen, but wasnevertheless hanged, drawn and quartered in the midst of hideouspopular orgies.The citizen whose shape the demon had assumed was soaffected by the sinister occurrence that he never again showed himselfin Amiens and his fate remains a mystery.

GLUTTON, n.A person who escapes the evils of moderation bycommitting dyspepsia.

GNOME, n.In North-European mythology, a dwarfish imp inhabiting

theinterior parts of the earth and having special custody of mineraltreasures.Bjorsen, who died in 1765, says gnomes were common enoughin the southern parts of Sweden in his boyhood, and he frequently sawthem scampering on the hills in the evening twilight.LudwigBinkerhoof saw three as recently as 1792, in the Black Forest, andSneddeker avers that in 1803 they drove a party of miners out of aSilesian mine.Basing our computations upon data supplied by thesestatements, we find that the gnomes were probably extinct as early as1764.

GNOSTICS, n.A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusionbetween the early Christians and the Platonists.The former would notgo into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrinof the fusion managers.

GNU, n.An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated stateresembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag.In its wild condition it issomething like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.

A hunter from Kew caught a distant view Of a peacefully meditative gnu, And he said:"I'll pursue, and my hands imbrue In its blood at a closer interview." But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw O'er the top of a palm that adjacent grew; And he said as he flew:"It is well I withdrew Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew That really meritorious gnu."

Jarn Leffer

GOOD, adj.Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer.

Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.

GOOSE, n.A bird that supplies quills for writing.These, by someoccult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with variousdegrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character,so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a personcalled an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcriptof the fowl's thought and feeling.The difference in geese, asdiscovered by this ingenious method, is considerable:many are foundto have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to bevery great geese indeed.

GORGON, n.

The Gorgon was a maiden bold Who turned to stone the Greeks of old

That looked upon her awful brow. We dig them out of ruins now, And swear that workmanship so bad Proves all the ancient sculptors mad.

GOUT, n.A physician's name for the rheumatism of a rich patient. GRACES, n.Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and

Euphrosyne,who attended upon Venus, serving without salary.They were at noexpense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of anddressed according to the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened tobe blowing.

GRAMMAR, n.A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feetfor the self-made man, along the path by which he advances todistinction.

GRAPE, n.

Hail noble fruit! -- by Homer sung, Anacreon and Khayyam; Thy praise is ever on the tongue Of better men than I am.

The lyre in my hand has never swept, The song I cannot offer: My humbler service pray accept -- I'll help to kill the scoffer. The water- drinkers and the cranks Who load their skins with liquor -- I'll gladly bear their belly-tanks And tap them with my sticker.

Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools When e'er we let the wine rest. Here's death to Prohibition's fools, And every kind of vine-pest!

Jamrach Holobom

GRAPESHOT, n.An argument which the future is preparing in answer tothe demands of American Socialism.

GRAVE, n.A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming ofthe medical student.

Beside a lonely grave I stood -- With brambles 'twas encumbered; The winds were moaning in the wood, Unheard by him who slumbered,

A rustic standing near, I said: "He cannot hear it blowing!" "'Course not," said he:"the feller's dead -- He can't hear nowt [sic] that's going."

"Too true," I said; "alas, too true -- No sound his sense can quicken!" "Well, mister, wot is that to you? -- The deadster ain't a-kickin'."

I knelt and prayed:"O Father, smile On him, and mercy show him!" That countryman looked on the while, And said:"Ye didn't know him."

Pobeter Dunko

GRAVITATION, n.The tendency of all bodies to approach one anotherwith a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain -- the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strengthof their tendency to approach one another.This is a lovely andedifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B,makes B the proof of A.

GREAT, adj.

"I'm great," the Lion said -- "I reign The monarch of the wood and plain!"

The Elephant replied:"I'm great -- No quadruped can match my weight!"

"I'm great -- no animal has half So long a neck!" said the Giraffe. "I'm great," the Kangaroo said -- "see My femoral muscularity!"

The 'Possum said:"I'm great -- behold, My tail is lithe and bald and cold!"

An Oyster fried was understood To say:"I'm great because I'm good!" Each reckons greatness to consist In that in which he heads the list, And Vierick thinks he tops his class Because he is the greatest ass.

Arion Spurl Doke

GUILLOTINE, n.A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulderswith good reason. In his great work on _Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution_, thelearned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture-- the shrug -- among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtlesand it is simply a survival of the habit of retracing the head insidethe shell.It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent anauthority, but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth andenforced in my work entitled _Hereditary Emotions_ -- lib. II, c. XI)the shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important atheory, for previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown.Ihave not a doubt that it is directly referable to the terror inspiredby the guillotine during the period of that instrument's activity.

GUNPOWDER, n.An agency employed by civilized nations for thesettlement of disputes which might become troublesome if leftunadjusted.By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed

tothe Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence.Milton says itwas invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinionseems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels.Moreover,it has the hearty concurrence of the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary ofAgriculture. Secretary Wilson became interested in gunpowder through an eventthat occurred on the Government experimental farm in the District ofColumbia.One day, several years ago, a rogue imperfectly reverent ofthe Secretary's profound attainments and personal character presentedhim with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the sed of the_Flashawful flabbergastor_, a Patagonian cereal of great commercialvalue, admirably adapted to this climate.The good Secretary wasinstructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it withsoil.This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous lineof it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to lookbackward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped alighted match into the furrow at the starting-point.Contact with theearth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionarysaw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke andfierce evolution.He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless,then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himselfthence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectatorsalong the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streakprolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages,and audibly refusing to be comforted."Great Scott! what is that?"cried a surveyor's chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fadingline of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon."That,"said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and againcentering his attention upon his instrument, "is the Meridian ofWashington."