Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

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

A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.

Cat: a soft indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.

Male, A member of the unconsidered or negligible gender. The male of the human race is commonly known to the female as Mere Man. The Genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.

APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. "The Mad Philosopher," 1697