Part 3 (2/2)
EXISTENCE: 1. A metaphysical term which originally meant joy, but which since the beginning of the Christian era has come to mean pain. 2. To be (used only in the phrase ”to be d.a.m.ned”). 3. Merely to live, without eating or drinking. (In London, Paris and New York, this phenomenon is quite common.)
EXPERIENCE: 1. The germ of power. 2. The name every one gives his mistakes. 3. Stinging and getting stung.
EXPRESSION: 1. That mode of creation by which we coin things out of our hearts. (Nothing is of any value except that which you create for yourself, and no joy is joy save as it is the joy of self-expression.) 2. Mind speaking through its highest instrument, Man.
EYE: 1. An organ of the human body which sees the universe as it is not, and transmits the same to the brain. 2. The soul's feelers and pickers.
EYEBALL: 1. A small, miraculous globe that has the power to fabulize the external universe. 2. The spectacles of the brain; the peephole of consciousness.
EPITAPH: 1. Postponed compliments. 2. Postmortem bull-con. 3. Qualifying for the Ananias Club.
EUROPEAN: An inhabitant of New York City.
EXECUTIVE: A man who can make quick decisions and is sometimes right.
FARMER: 1. A man who raises early feed for potato-bugs. 2. One who supplies raw stock for vaudeville jokes. 3. A man who makes his money in the country and blows it in when he comes to town. (Farms were first devised as an excuse for the Agricultural Department at Was.h.i.+ngton.)
FAILURE: 1. The man who can tell others what to do and how to do it, but never does it himself. 2. A man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.
FAs.h.i.+ON: A barricade behind which men hide their nothingness.
FAME: To have your name paged by the ”b.u.t.tons” of a fas.h.i.+onable hotel.
FAITH: 1. The effort to believe that which your commonsense tells you is not true. 2. The first requisite in success.
FAKE: An event that occurs every four years in the United States; hence, by extension, anything popular.
FAMILY LINE: The clothes-line.
FAST TRAIN: One that has no diner.
FEAR: 1. A club used by priests, presidents, kings and policemen to keep the people from recovering stolen goods. 2. The thought of admitted inferiority. 3. The rock on which we split.
FEATHERS: Secondary s.e.x advertis.e.m.e.nts made of fiber and horsetails, and used on ladies' lids as eye-gougers and such.
FEUD: A fool idea fanned into flame by a fool friend.
FEMINIST MOVEMENT: 1. A hot desire to step on the male tumble-bug. 2. An uneasy, eccentric, patho-psychio gyration, caused by disappointment or thwarted ambition. 3. A loose cam or a cosmic monkeywrench in the convolutions.
FIFTH AVENUE: 1. The widow's chance. 2. A rabbit-warren. 3. The underworld of the upper world. (Fifth Avenue begins at the Was.h.i.+ngton Arch and really ends at Fifty-ninth Street. Above Fifty-ninth Street one goes into the sacred precincts of monasteries and nunneries. In this district the inhabitants are divided into two cla.s.ses: those who barely live and those who live barely.)
FLY: A sententious, epigrammatic stylist who puts a period after each utterance.
FOLDEROL: Talk or conversation of any kind between a man and a woman that does not contain an invitation or a promise.
FORBEARANCE: 1. To forgive an enemy who has been shorn of power. 2. To buy golden opinions of one's self. 3. To slay with irony or pity.
FORECAST: To observe that which has pa.s.sed, and guess it will happen again; to antic.i.p.ate the future by guessing at the past; to predict that an event will happen, if it does, by basing calculations on events that have already happened, if they did. (One may forecast and be right, wrong, or neither. It depends.)
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