Part 5 (1/2)

HUSBAND: A b.o.o.by prize in life's lottery.

HELTA-SKELTA: The new subst.i.tute for Strenuosity. Puts you to sleep while you work. Helta-Skelta is a prepossessing product made from posthole polyglot piecrust, and is warranted free from teddine, swaboda, korona, kabo and karezza. Served face to face with cream or without, it is spit out as soon as chewed, and can not be swallowed. Locate the lavatory and try a free sample.

HEN: The only animal in Nature that can lay around and make money.

HIGHBROW: 1. A person who has grown so wise that the obvious escapes him. 2. One who reveres knowledge with superst.i.tious awe, and whose wors.h.i.+p of observation approaches the ecstatic. 3. One who believes that an atom is a monstrance that conceals the Holy Ghost of Force.

HIGHFLYER: Any man who rides on the running-board, when he might just as well be inside the limousine.

HISTORY: 1. A collection of epitaphs. 2. Gossip well told.

HOME: 1. A place where we go to change our clothes so as to go somewhere else. 2. The abode of the heart.

HUMOR: The tabasco sauce that gives life a flavor.

HUMILITY: 1. The slippered patience of the disinherited. 2. The grogginess of the Ego. 3. To recede to the very bottom of one's own littleness. 4. The Ma.r.s.eillaise of the disappointed. 5. The odor of sanct.i.ty. 6. An Iago in plush and lavender. 7. Pride getting ready for a Pounce.

HONEYMOON: 1. A happiness not quite worn out. 2. A postlude to a wedding-march and a prelude to a funeral ditto. _E. g._, ”I did not drive Adam and Eve out of Eden because they ate my pet pippin, but because they insisted on carrying on their honeymoon before the modest animals.”--From _The Private Journal of Demiurge_.

HOPE: 1. A subst.i.tute for yesterday. 2. A mask that dying persons wear.

3. A system of metaphysics founded by Ananias. Antonyms: Reason, imagination, experience.

HOUSE: 1. A building with four walls and a roof. 2. A rendezvous for burglars. 3. A dormitory for servants. 4. The Mecca of bedbugs. (The difference between a house and a home is this: A house may fall down, but a home is broken up.)

HUMAN LOVE: The one indestructible thing in Nature.

HUMAN DYNAMO: Any man who gets everything charged.

IDEAL: 1. The dreams of a sin to come. 2. The mirage of failure. 3. The venom of the lost. 4. An excuse for murder, tyranny or for self-aggrandizement. 5. Any theory that justifies our secret itch.

IDEALIST: 1. A gla.s.sblower. 2. A somnambulist who insists on stepping out of a solid window into the air. 3. A person who lives in a tower of porcelain and dines on pumpernickel and lobscouse. 4. A man who fills his gasoline-tank with attar of roses and expects the motor to run.

INTELLIGENCE: The grand inquisitor that tortures from every truth the confession that it lies, and from every lie a confession of its divine necessity.

IDEAL LIFE: Man's normal life, as we shall some day know it.

IF: 1. A tightrope that stretches from But to But. 2. A small, magical, automatic hinge that can swing the doors of Chance in any direction. 3.

A fatality endowed with free will. 4. The verbal sword of Damocles. 5. A dizzy precipice at the end of every declarative sentence. 6. A pole around which the future and the past play hide-and-seek. 7. The vorspiel to the piker's threnody. _E. g._ (Scene: a narrow bridge.): ”Let me pa.s.s, fellow! my name is Must, and I desire to cross.” If (standing in the middle of the bridge): ”You d.a.m.n fool, don't you see I am the end of the bridge? There is no Must nor Might that can go beyond me.”

IMITATION: The sincerest form of insult.

IGNORAMUS: Any man who flatters himself that he is educated.

IMAGINATION: 1. A marvelous little multicolored drugget that covers the rough and splintered floor of reality. 2. A haunted chateau. 3. A vestibule between Time and Eternity. 4. The giant enemy of reality. 5.

The red Pantheon of Lucifer. 6. The candle-gleam of science; the flambeau of the lover; the constellated nebulae of the poet. 7. The glittering west-dust of a hidden innominate sun. 8. The seigniory of untrammeled instincts; the fief of unsanctified dreams; the palfrey that carries us toward nebulous spiritual hills. 9. The plasma of G.o.ds. 10.

Puck strapped to the back of Balaam's a.s.s. 11. The Shakespeare of mental faculties. 12. The avatar of the emotions. 13. A golden key that unlocks the bastile of logic. 14. A ladder to the fourth dimension. 15. A sublime liar. 16. Taking the halter off your thoughts and giving them a good kick behind. 17. Sympathy illumined by brains.