Insurance - an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

RATTLESNAKE, n. Our prostrate brother, "Homo ventrambulans".

Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.

The sum of religion, says Pythagoras, is to be like him thou worshipest. Had Pythagoras lived in our day he would have seen his mistake. The sum of modern religion is to make him thou worshipest like unto thyself.

RUIN, v. To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the virtue of maids.

New York is too strenuous for me; it gets on my nerves.

I keep a conscience uncorrupted by religion, a judgment undimmed by politics and patriotism, a heart untainted by friendships and sentiments unsoured by animosities.