continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906.  In that

year a large part of it was published in covers with the title _The

Cynic's Word Book_, a name which the author had not the power to

reject or happiness to approve.  To quote the publishers of the

present work:

    "This more reverent title had previously been forced upon him by

the religious scruples of the last newspaper in which a part of the

work had appeared, with the natural consequence that when it came out

in covers the country already had been flooded by its imitators with a

score of 'cynic' books -- _The Cynic's This_, _The Cynic's That_, and

_The Cynic's t'Other_.  Most of these books were merely stupid, though

some of them added the distinction of silliness.  Among them, they

brought the word 'cynic' into disfavor so deep that any book bearing

it was discredited in advance of publication."

    Meantime, too, some of the enterprising humorists of the country

had helped themselves to such parts of the work as served their needs,

and many of its definitions, anecdotes, phrases and so forth, had

become more or less current in popular speech.  This explanation is

made, not with any pride of priority in trifles, but in simple denial

of possible charges of plagiarism, which is no trifle.  In merely

resuming his own the author hopes to be held guiltless by those to

whom the work is addressed -- enlightened souls who prefer dry wines

to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humor and clean English to slang.

    A conspicuous, and it is hope not unpleasant, feature of the book

is its abundant illustrative quotations from eminent poets, chief of

whom is that learned and ingenius cleric, Father Gassalasca Jape,

S.J., whose lines bear his initials.  To Father Jape's kindly

encouragement and assistance the author of the prose text is greatly

indebted.

                                                                  A.B.

of wealth of power.  Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when

    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.

sacrificial rights, all true men engage.  From women this ancient

faith commands but a stammering assent.  They sometimes minister at

the altar in a half-hearted 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

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

conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be

detested.  Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the

straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself.

Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and

        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,

        Is knowledge beyond my reach.

    I only know that 'tis handed down.

            From sage to sage,

            From age to age --

    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

    To sit at his feat 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 the meadow of commentary.

        Mighty big books were these,

        In a number, as leaves of trees;

            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.

    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.

shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most

affected by it.  Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another

    The trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.

hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection

    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.

one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases

the assassins.  Not many absolute monarchies are left, most of them

having been replaced by limited monarchies, where the sovereign's

power for evil (and for good) is greatly curtailed, and by republics,

himself a pleasure.  A total abstainer is one who abstains from

everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the

        You a total abstainer, my son."

    "So I am, so I am," said the scrapgrace caught --

        "But not, sir, a bigoted one."

knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal,

knowing him guilty.  This view of the attorney's position in the

matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one

        Said the Grand Vizier:  "Yes, yes,"

    Said the Shah:  "I do -- 'tis the only kind

        Of ability you possess."

absently pulled at his forelock some hours after a Saracen scimitar

had, unconsciously to him, passed through his neck, as related by de

but not well enough to lend to.  A degree of friendship called slight

when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or

receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president.  A man of

    His soul forever to perdition.

    Said Tom, "that I could do no less

    Than give him good advice."  Said Jim:

    "If less could have been done for him

    I know you well enough, my son,

    To know that's what you would have done."

we still cherish by reviling those that we have no longer the

        She tenderly inquired.

    "An aim?  Well, no, I haven't, wife;

        The fact is -- I have fired."

    And ever for the sins of man have wept;

        And sometimes kneeling in the temple I

    Have reverently crossed my hands and slept.

    Is a ring fitted in the subject's nose,

    Whereby that organ is kept rightly pointed

    To smell the sweetness of the Lord's anointed.

have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they

the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World.  Herodotus

says the Indus is, with one exception, the only river that produces

crocodiles, but they appear to have gone West and grown up with the

other rivers.  From the notches on his back the alligator is called a

    By spark and flame, the thought reveal

    That he the metal, she the stone,

    Had cherished secretly alone.

small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination

and cooked its flesh for the gods.  The word is now seldom used,

except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a

    The fire themselves in which their fat was fried.

    In vain the sacrifice! -- no god will claim

    An offering burnt with an unholy flame.

    So pigs to lead the populace are greased good.

    Yields to some pathologic strain,

    And voids from its unstored abysm

    The driblet of an aphorism.

only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient

    And Mercury conveyed them in a jar,

    That friend of tricksters introduced by stealth

    Disease for the apothecary's health,

    Whose gratitude impelled him to proclaim:

    "My deadliest drug shall bear my patron's name!"

    On Fridays I'd eat all the fish up --

    Salmon and flounders and smelts;

    On other days everything else.

is obsolete; so is that kind of government.)  Fellows that wear downy

hats and clean shirts -- guilty of education and suspected of bank

        Consenting, he did speak up;

    "'Tis better you should eat it, pet,

        Than put it in my teacup."

    Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT,

    And said it was a god's name!  Straight arose

    Fantastic priests and postulants (with shows,

    And mysteries, and mummeries, and hymns,

    And disputations dire that lamed their limbs)

    To serve his temple and maintain the fires,

    Expound the law, manipulate the wires.

    Amazed, the populace that rites attend,

    Believe whate'er they cannot comprehend,

    And, inly edified to learn that two

    Half-hairs joined so and so (as Art can do)

    Have sweeter values and a grace more fit

    Than Nature's hairs that never have been split,

    Bring cates and wines for sacrificial feasts,

long study and severe practice upon the admiring male, who is pleased

City, Nevada, he is called the Washoe Canary, in Dakota, the Senator,

and everywhere the Donkey.  The animal is widely and variously

celebrated in the literature, art and religion of every age and

country; no other so engages and fires the human imagination as this

noble vertebrate.  Indeed, it is doubted by some (Ramasilus, _lib.

II., De Clem._, and C. Stantatus, _De Temperamente_) if it is not a

god; and as such we know it was worshiped by the Etruscans, and, if we

may believe Macrobious, by the Cupasians also.  Of the only two

animals admitted into the Mahometan Paradise along with the souls of

men, the ass that carried Balaam is one, the dog of the Seven Sleepers

the other.  This is no small distinction.  From what has been written

about this beast might be compiled a library of great splendor and

magnitude, rivalling that of the Shakespearean cult, and that which

clusters about the Bible.  It may be said, generally, that all

    "Priest of Unreason, and of Discords King!"

    Great co-Creator, let Thy glory shine:

    God made all else, the Mule, the Mule is thine!"

commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate

dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an

regions.  The fact that access to the infernal regions was obtained by

a lake is believed by the learned Marcus Ansello Scrutator to have

suggested the Christian rite of baptism by immersion.  This, however,

        The poet remarks; and the sense

    Of it is that when down-hill I turn I

        Will get more of punches than pence.

                                                        Jehal Dai Lupe

As Baal he was popular with the Phoenicians; as Belus or Bel he had

the honor to be served by the priest Berosus, who wrote the famous

account of the Deluge; as Babel he had a tower partly erected to his

glory on the Plain of Shinar.  From Babel comes our English word

"babble."  Under whatever name worshiped, Baal is the Sun-god.  As

Beelzebub he is the god of flies, which are begotten of the sun's rays

on the stagnant water.  In Physicia Baal is still worshiped as Bolus,

and as Belly he is adored and served with abundant sacrifice by the

condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and

antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion.

There have been famous babes; for example, little Moses, from whose

adventure in the bulrushes the Egyptian hierophants of seven centuries

before doubtless derived their idle tale of the child Osiris being

            The girls were contended.

            Now man is tormented

    Until to buy babes he has squandered

    His money.  And so I have pondered

            This thing, and thought may be

            'T were better that Baby

    The First had been eagled or condored.

        That for devotions paid to Bacchus

    The lictors dare to run us in,

        And resolutely thump and whack us?

in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever.  It is

performed with water in two ways -- by immersion, or plunging, and by

    Is better than simple aspersion

        Let those immersed

        And those aspersed

    Decide by the Authorized Version,

    And by matching their agues tertian.

of a cock.  The basilisk had a bad eye, and its glance was fatal.

Many infidels deny this creature's existence, but Semprello Aurator

saw and handled one that had been blinded by lightning as a punishment

for having fatally gazed on a lady of rank whom Jupiter loved.  Juno

afterward restored the reptile's sight and hid it in a cave.  Nothing

is so well attested by the ancients as the existence of the basilisk,

    He loseth all the skin he hath,

    And, for he's boiled a brilliant red,

    Thinketh to cleanliness he's wed,

    Forgetting that his lungs he's soiling

    With dirty vapors of the boiling.

    Haggard, morose, and unaffable -- wild!

    See how he glares through the bars of his cell!

    A state in which, doubtless, there's little of joy.

    No bite had he eaten for days, and his cry

    But men said:  "Get out!" and the State remarked:  "Scat!"

    I mention these incidents merely to show

    That the vengeance he took was uncommonly low.

    Revenge, at the best, is the act of a Siou,

    They sent him to jail, and they'll send him to -- well,

    The company's better than here we can boast,

breeding.  The word seems to be somewhat loosely used in Dr. Jamrach

        Quod sum causa tuae viae.

    Whose the thoughtless hand that gave your

poison.  A striking example of the essential identity of the two

        A monk of St. Benedict croaking a text.

    "Here's one of an order of cooks," said she --

        "Black friars in this world, fried black in the next."

however, materially affecting the price, which is still within the

    Her loving husband's life to save;

    And men -- they honored so the dame --

    Who'd give their lords to save their hair,

    No stellar recognition's given.

    There are not stars enough in heaven.

it there appears to be no uniformity.  Castor and Pollux were born

from the egg.  Pallas came out of a skull.  Galatea was once a block

of stone.  Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he

grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water.  It

is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a

stroke of lightning.  Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount

of berries in a market -- the fine ones on top -- have been opened on

kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much

young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied

    I and my comrades, four in all,

        When visiting a graveyard stood

    We saw a wild hyena slink

        About a new-made grave, and then

    A sally from our ambuscade,

        And, falling on the unholy beast,

    Dispatched him with a pick and spade."

become responsible for that entrusted to another to a third.

    Philippe of Orleans wishing to appoint one of his favorites, a

dissolute nobleman, to a high office, asked him what security he would

be able to give.  "I need no bondsmen," he replied, "for I can give

you my word of honor."  "And pray what may be the value of that?"

inquired the amused Regent.  "Monsieur, it is worth its weight in

eat, as well as those that are.  It deals largely with their flowers,

which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-

nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary

    every year.  The supplying of these insects I take to be a signal

    instance of the Creator's bounty in providing for the lives of His

    creatures.

and destroyed by Siva -- a rather neater division of labor than is

found among the deities of some other nations.  The Abracadabranese,

for example, are created by Sin, maintained by Theft and destroyed by

Folly.  The priests of Brahma, like those of Abracadabranese, are holy

    First Person of the Hindoo Trinity,

    You sit there so calm and securely,

    With feet folded up so demurely --

    You're the First Person Singular, surely.

distinguishes the man who is content to _be_ something from the man

who wishes to _do_ something.  A man of great wealth, or one who has

been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of

brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on.  In our

civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so

highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of

part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-

grave and four parts clarified Satan.  Dose, a headful all the time.

Brandy is said by Dr. Johnson to be the drink of heroes.  Only a hero

patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca.  The patriarch had perhaps

wise as a man's head.

    The cabbage is so called from Cabagius, a prince who on ascending

the throne issued a decree appointing a High Council of Empire

consisting of the members of his predecessor's Ministry and the

cabbages in the royal garden.  When any of his Majesty's measures of

state policy miscarried conspicuously it was gravely announced that

several members of the High Council had been beheaded, and his

that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering.  Calamities

are of two kinds:  misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to

afflicting another.

    When Zeno was told that one of his enemies was no more he was

observed to be deeply moved.  "What!" said one of his disciples, "you

weep at the death of an enemy?"  "Ah, 'tis true," replied the great

the show business.  There are two kinds of camels -- the camel proper

the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the

anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the

disgrace before meat.  _Capital Punishment_, a penalty regarding the

justice and expediency of which many worthy persons -- including all

    Across Mount Camel he took his way,

        Where he met a mendicant monk,

        Some three or four quarters drunk,

    With a holy leer and a pious grin,

    Ragged and fat and as saucy as sin,

        Who held out his hands and cried:

    "Give, give in Charity's name, I pray.

    Give in the name of the Church.  O give,

    Give that her holy sons may live!"

        And Death replied,

        Smiling long and wide:

        Of his bones, he sprang

    From his famous Pale Horse, with his spear;

        By the neck and the foot

        Seized the fellow, and put

    Like clods on the coffin's sounding shell:

    "Ho, ho!  A beggar on horseback, they say,

        Will ride to the devil!" -- and _thump_

        Fell the flat of his dart on the rump

    Till the rocks and the flocks and the trees that grew

    By the road were dim and blended and blue

        To the wild, wild eyes

        Of the rider -- in size

        Resembling a couple of blackberry pies.

    Death laughed again, as a tomb might laugh

        At a burial service spoiled,

        And the mourners' intentions foiled

        By the body erecting

        Its head and objecting

    Have passed since these events away.

    The monk has long been a dusty corse,

    And Death has never recovered his horse.

        For the friar got hold of its tail,

        And steered it within the pale

    Of the monastery gray,

    Where the beast was stabled and fed

    With barley and oil and bread

    Till fatter it grew than the fattest friar,

    And so in due course was appointed Prior.

of the celebrated dictum, _Cogito ergo sum_ -- whereby he was pleased

to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence.  The dictum

might be improved, however, thus:  _Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum_ --

"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an

        This is a cat.

    This is a frog,

        This is a rat.

    Run, dog, mew, cat.

    Jump, frog, gnaw, rat.

poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager.  The

inscriptions following will serve to illustrate the success attained

    overlook them, denied them, and his friends, to whose loose lives

    they were a rebuke, represented them as vices.  They are here

        Place to lay our little Clara.

                                             Thomas M. and Mary Frazer

labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who

followed the primitive economic maxim, "Every man his own horse."  The

best of the lot was Chiron, who to the wisdom and virtues of the horse

added the fleetness of man.  The scripture story of the head of John

the Baptist on a charger shows that pagan myths have somewhat

entrance -- against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody,

sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the

entrance.  Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the

poets have credited him with as many as a hundred.  Professor

Graybill, whose clerky erudition and profound knowledge of Greek give

his opinion great weight, has averaged all the estimates, and makes

the number twenty-seven -- a judgment that would be entirely

conclusive is Professor Graybill had known (a) something about dogs,

idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth -- two removes from the sin

inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.

One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not

    The godly multitudes walked to and fro

    Beneath, in Sabbath garments fitly clad,

    With pious mien, appropriately sad,

    While all the church bells made a solemn din --

    A fire-alarm to those who lived in sin.

    Then saw I gazing thoughtfully below,

    With tranquil face, upon that holy show

    A tall, spare figure in a robe of white,

    Whose eyes diffused a melancholy light.

    "God keep you, strange," I exclaimed.  "You are

    No doubt (your habit shows it) from afar;

    And yet I entertain the hope that you,

    Like these good people, are a Christian too."

    He raised his eyes and with a look so stern

    It made me with a thousand blushes burn

    Replied -- his manner with disdain was spiced:

    "What!  I a Christian?  No, indeed!  I'm Christ."

seeing that which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is a

cotton in his ears.  There are two instruments that are worse than a

history -- which she did with great dignity, many of the prominent

citizens of Athens occupying seats on the platform, the meetings being

    "I get no time!"  "What's that you say?"

    Cried out his friend, a lazy quiz;

    "You have, sir, all the time there is.

    There's plenty, too, and don't you doubt it --

    We're never for an hour without it."

        To thrifty J. Macpherson;

    "See me -- I'm ready to divide

        With any worthy person."

    Sad Jamie:  "That is very true --

        The boast requires no backing;

    And all are worthy, sir, to you,

        Who have what you are lacking."

sin of wickedness; and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a

        Monastical gregarian,

    You differ from the anchorite,

        That solitudinarian:

    With vollied prayers you wound Old Nick;

    With dropping shots he makes him sick.

goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money

multitude of political parasites, logically active but fortuitously

    So thronged with a hungry and indolent crew

    Of clerks, pages, porters and all attaches

    Whom rascals appoint and the populace pays

    That a cat cannot slip through the thicket of shins

    Nor hear its own shriek for the noise of their chins.

    On clerks and on pages, and porters, and all,

    Misfortune attend and disaster befall!

    May life be to them a succession of hurts;

    May fleas by the bushel inhabit their shirts;

    May aches and diseases encamp in their bones,

    Their lungs full of tubercles, bladders of stones;

    May microbes, bacilli, their tissues infest,

    And tapeworms securely their bowels digest;

    May corn-cobs be snared without hope in their hair,

    And frequent impalement their pleasure impair.

    Disturbed be their dreams by the awful discourse

    Of audible sofas sepulchrally hoarse,

    By chairs acrobatic and wavering floors --

    The mattress that kicks and the pillow that snores!

    Sons of cupidity, cradled in sin!

    Your criminal ranks may the death angel thin,

    Avenging the friend whom I couldn't work in.

each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought

not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his

nothing about anything else.

    An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision,

some wine was pouted on his lips to revive him.  "Pauillac, 1873," he

distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with

and office from the people is given one by the Administration on

    That bloodless warfare of the old and young --

    So seek your adversary to engage

    That on himself he shall exhaust his rage,

    And, like a snake that's fastened to the ground,

    With his own fangs inflict the fatal wound.

    You ask me how this miracle is done?

    Adopt his own opinions, one by one,

    And taunt him to refute them; in his wrath

    He'll sweep them pitilessly from his path.

    Advance then gently all you wish to prove,

    Each proposition prefaced with, "As you've

    So well remarked," or, "As you wisely say,

    And I cannot dispute," or, "By the way,

    This view of it which, better far expressed,

    Runs through your argument."  Then leave the rest

    To him, secure that he'll perform his trust

    And prove your views intelligent and just.

commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of

and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a

    Our corporal heroically fell!

    Fame from her height looked down upon the brawl

    And said:  "He hadn't very far to fall."

    figured and symbolized; for whereas the crayfish doth move only

    backward, and can have only retrospection, seeing naught but the

    perils already passed, so the wisdom of man doth not enable him to

    avoid the follies that beset his course, but only to apprehend

    their nature afterward.

        Beyond the Jordan's flood,

    Where saints, apparelled all in white,

        His pelt a sable hue,

    He sorrows sore to recognize

        The missiles that he threw.

significance to the most solemn event in the history of Christianity,

but really antedating it by thousands of years.  By many it has been

believed to be identical with the _crux ansata_ of the ancient phallic

worship, but it has been traced even beyond all that we know of that,

to the rites of primitive peoples.  We have to-day the White Cross as

a symbol of chastity, and the Red Cross as a badge of benevolent

neutrality in war.  Having in mind the former, the reverend Father

        Cry out in holy chorus,

    And, to dissuade from sin, parade

        Seen her of winsome manner

    And youthful grace and pretty face

        To better our behaving?

    A simpler plan for saving man

        From bad thoughts that beset him,

    Ignores the Law as 't were a straw,

from a strong one.  It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction

and great material adversity.  An Italian proverb says:  "The furrier

barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of

its deities.  Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is

the most reasonless and offensive.  The notion of symbolizing sexual

love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the

wounds of an arrow -- of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art

grossly to materialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work --

this is eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on

desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one

is an operation which in literature, particularly in the drama, is

not as they ought to be.  Hence the custom among the Scythians of

plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.