PERORATION, n. The explosion of an oratorical rocket. It dazzles, but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in preparing it.

It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.

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.

Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.

Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.

COMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.

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