Part 25 (1/2)

LOVE-AT-FIRST-SIGHT. A labor-saving device.

LOVER. An apprentice second husband; victim No. 2 in the larval stage.

MISOGYNIST. A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.

MARTYR. The husband of a woman with the martyr complex.

MORALITY. The theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are wrong.

MUSIC-LOVER. One who can tell you offhand how many sharps are in the key of C major.

OPTIMIST. The sort of man who marries his sister's best friend.

OSTEOPATH. One who argues that all human ills are caused by the pressure of hard bone upon soft tissue. The proof of his theory is to be found in the heads of those who believe it.

PASTOR. One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay.

PATRIOTISM. A variety of hallucination which, if it seized a bacteriologist in his laboratory, would cause him to report the streptococcus pyogenes to be as large as a Newfoundland dog, as intelligent as Socrates, as beautiful as Mont Blanc and as respectable as a Yale professor.

PENSIONER. A kept patriot.

PLAt.i.tUDE. An idea (_a_) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (_b_) that is not true.

POLITICIAN. Any citizen with influence enough to get his old mother a job as charwoman in the City Hall.

POPULARITY. The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.

POSTERITY. The penalty of a faulty technique.

PROGRESS. The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and G.o.d.

PROHIBITIONIST. The sort of man one wouldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.

PSYCHOLOGIST. One who sticks pins into babies, and then makes a chart showing the ebb and flow of their yells.

PSYCHOTHERAPY. The theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow, and is certainly a d.a.m.ned fool.

QUACK. A physician who has decided to admit it.

REFORMER. A hangman signing a pet.i.tion against vivisection.

REMORSE. Regret that one waited so long to do it.

SELF-RESPECT. The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

SOB. A sound made by women, babies, tenors, fas.h.i.+onable clergymen, actors and drunken men.

SOCIALISM. The theory that John Smith is better than his superiors.