TERRESTRIAN: Not yet -- at least not in their character of

constables. Generally speaking, though, all laws require the
approval of those whom they are intended to restrain.

LUNARIAN: I see. The death warrant is not valid until signed by
the murderer.

TERRESTRIAN: My friend, you put it too strongly; we are not so
consistent.

LUNARIAN: But this system of maintaining an expensive judicial
machinery to pass upon the validity of laws only after they

have long been executed, and then only when brought before the
court by some private person -- does it not cause great

confusion?
TERRESTRIAN: It does.

LUNARIAN: Why then should not your laws, previously to being
executed, be validated, not by the signature of your

President, but by that of the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court?

TERRESTRIAN: There is no precedent for any such course.
LUNARIAN: Precedent. What is that?

TERRESTRIAN: It has been defined by five hundred lawyers in three
volumes each. So how can any one know?

EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another
upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.

EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not
an ambassador.

An English sea-captain being asked if he had read "The Exile of
Erin," replied: "No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it." Years

afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of
unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the

ship's log that he had kept at the time of his reply:
Aug. 3d, 1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly

received. War with the whole world!
EXISTENCE, n.

A transient, horrible, fantastic dream,
Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem:

From which we're wakened by a friendly nudge
Of our bedfellow Death, and cry: "O fudge!"

EXPERIENCE, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an
undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

To one who, journeying through night and fog,
Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog,

Experience, like the rising of the dawn,
Reveals the path that he should not have gone.

Joel Frad Bink
EXPOSTULATION, n. One of the many methods by which fools prefer to

lose their friends.
EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the

future state.
F

FAIRY, n. A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, that formerly
inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits,

and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children. The
fairies are now believed by naturalist to be extinct, though a

clergyman of the Church of England saw three near Colchester as lately
as 1855, while passing through a park after dining with the lord of

the manor. The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected
that his account of it was incoherent. In the year 1807 a troop of

fairies visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a
peasant, who had been seen to enter it with a bundle of clothing. The

son of a wealthy _bourgeois_ disappeared about the same time, but
afterward returned. He had seen the abduction been in pursuit of the

fairies. Justinian Gaux, a writer of the fourteenth century, avers
that so great is the fairies' power of transformation that he saw one

change itself into two opposing armies and fight a battle with great
slaughter, and that the next day, after it had resumed its original

shape and gone away, there were seven hundred bodies of the slain
which the villagers had to bury. He does not say if any of the

wounded recovered. In the time of Henry III, of England, a law was
made which prescribed the death penalty for "Kyllynge, wowndynge, or

mamynge" a fairy, and it was universally respected.
FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks

without knowledge, of things without parallel.
FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

Done to a turn on the iron, behold
Him who to be famous aspired.

Content? Well, his grill has a plating of gold,
And his twistings are greatly admired.

Hassan Brubuddy
FASHION, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.

A king there was who lost an eye
In some excess of passion;

And straight his courtiers all did try
To follow the new fashion.

Each dropped one eyelid when before
The throne he ventured, thinking

'Twould please the king. That monarch swore
He'd slay them all for winking.

What should they do? They were not hot
To hazard such disaster;

They dared not close an eye -- dared not
See better than their master.

Seeing them lacrymose and glum,
A leech consoled the weepers:

He spread small rags with liquid gum
And covered half their peepers.

The court all wore the stuff, the flame
Of royal anger dying.

That's how court-plaster got its name
Unless I'm greatly lying.

Naramy Oof
FEAST, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by

gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person
distinguished for abstemiousness. In the Roman Catholic Church

feasts are "movable" and "immovable," but the celebrants are uniformly
immovable until they are full. In their earliest development these

entertainments took the form of feasts for the dead; such were held by
the Greeks, under the name _Nemeseia_, by the Aztecs and Peruvians,

as in modern times they are popular with the Chinese; though it is
believed that the ancient dead, like the modern, were light eaters.

Among the many feasts of the Romans was the _Novemdiale_, which was
held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven.

FELON, n. A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in
embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.

FEMALE, n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.
The Maker, at Creation's birth,

With living things had stocked the earth.
From elephants to bats and snails,

They all were good, for all were males.
But when the Devil came and saw

He said: "By Thine eternal law
Of growth, maturity, decay,

These all must quickly pass away
And leave untenanted the earth

Unless Thou dost establish birth" --
Then tucked his head beneath his wing

To laugh -- he had no sleeve -- the thing
With deviltry did so accord,

That he'd suggested to the Lord.
The Master pondered this advice,