The winds were moaning in the wood,
Unheard by him who slumbered,

A rusticstanding 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 another

with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain --
the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength

of their tendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and
edifying 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 shoulders

with good reason.
In his great work on _Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution_, the

learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture
-- the shrug -- among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles

and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracing the head inside
the shell. It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an

authority, but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth and
enforced in my work entitled _Hereditary Emotions_ -- lib. II, c. XI)

the shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important a
theory, for previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown. I

have not a doubt that it is directly referable to the terror inspired
by the guillotine during the period of that instrument's activity.

GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the
settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left

unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to
the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it

was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion
seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels. Moreover,

it has the hearty concurrence of the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of
Agriculture.

Secretary Wilson became interested in gunpowder through an event
that occurred on the Government experimental farm in the District of

Columbia. One day, several years ago, a rogue imperfectly reverent of
the Secretary's profound attainments and personal character presented

him with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the sed of the
_Flashawful flabbergastor_, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial

value, admirably adapted to this climate. The good Secretary was
instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with

soil. This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line
of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look

backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a
lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point. Contact with the

earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary
saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke and

fierce evolution. He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless,
then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himself

thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators
along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak

prolonging 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 fading
line of agriculturist which bisected his visiblehorizon. "That,"

said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again
centering his attention upon his instrument, "is the Meridian of

Washington."
H

HABEAS CORPUS. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when
confined for the wrong crime.

HABIT, n. A shackle for the free.
HADES, n. The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the

place where the dead live.
Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our

Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in
a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves

were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris.
When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of

evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a
majority vote on translating the Greek word "Aides" as "Hell"; but a

conscientious minority member secretly possessed himself of the record
and struck out the objectional word wherever he could find it. At the

next meeting, the Bishop of Salisbury, looking over the work, suddenly
sprang to his feet and said with considerableexcitement: "Gentlemen,

somebody has been razing 'Hell' here!" Years afterward the good
prelate's death was made sweet by the reflection that he had been the

means (under Providence) of making an important, serviceable and
immortal addition to the phraseology of the English tongue.

HAG, n. An elderly lady whom you do not happen to like; sometimes
called, also, a hen, or cat. Old witches, sorceresses, etc., were

called hags from the belief that their heads were surrounded by a kind
of baleful lumination or nimbus -- hag being the popular name of that

peculiar electrical light sometimes observed in the hair. At one time
hag was not a word of reproach: Drayton speaks of a "beautiful hag,

all smiles," much as Shakespeare said, "sweet wench." It would not
now be proper to call your sweetheart a hag -- that compliment is

reserved for the use of her grandchildren.
HALF, n. One of two equal parts into which a thing may be divided, or

considered as divided. In the fourteenth century a heated discussion
arose among theologists and philosophers as to whether Omniscience

could part an object into three halves; and the pious Father
Aldrovinus publicly prayed in the cathedral at Rouen that God would

demonstrate the affirmative of the proposition in some signal and
unmistakable way, and particularly (if it should please Him) upon the

body of that hardy blasphemer, Manutius Procinus, who maintained the
negative. Procinus, however, was spared to die of the bite of a

viper.
HALO, n. Properly, a luminous ring encircling an astronomical body,

but not infrequently confounded with "aureola," or "nimbus," a
somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a head-dress by divinities and

saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by moisture
in the air, in the manner of a rainbow; but the aureola is conferred

as a sign of superior sanctity, in the same way as a bishop's mitre,
or the Pope's tiara. In the painting of the Nativity, by Szedgkin, a

pious artist of Pesth, not only do the Virgin and the Child wear the
nimbus, but an ass nibbling hay from the sacredmanger is similarly

decorated and, to his lasting honor be it said, appears to bear his
unaccustomed dignity with a truly saintly grace.

HAND, n. A singularinstrument worn at the end of the human arm and
commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.

HANDKERCHIEF, n. A small square of silk or linen, used in various
ignoble offices about the face and especially serviceable at funerals

to conceal the lack of tears. The handkerchief is of recent
invention; our ancestors knew nothing of it and intrusted its duties

to the sleeve. Shakespeare's introducing it into the play of
"Othello" is an anachronism: Desdemona dried her nose with her skirt,