Of torment, but I hear it

Reported that the frying-pan
Sears best the wicked spirit.

"Go get one -- fill it up with fat --
Fry sinners brown and good in't."

"I know a trick worth two o' that,"
Said Nick -- "I'll cook their food in't."

FUNERAL, n. A pageantwhereby we attest our respect for the dead by
enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure

that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.
The savage dies -- they sacrifice a horse

To bear to happy hunting-grounds the corse.
Our friends expire -- we make the money fly

In hope their souls will chase it to the sky.
Jex Wopley

FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our
friends are true and our happiness is assured.

G
GALLOWS, n. A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which

the leading actor is translated to heaven. In this country the
gallows is chieflyremarkable for the number of persons who escape it.

Whether on the gallows high
Or where blood flows the reddest,

The noblest place for man to die --
Is where he died the deadest.

(Old play)
GARGOYLE, n. A rain-spout projecting from the eaves of mediaeval

buildings, commonly fashioned into a grotesque caricature of some
personal enemy of the architect or owner of the building. This was

especially the case in churches and ecclesiastical structures
generally, in which the gargoyles presented a perfect rogues' gallery

of local heretics and controversialists. Sometimes when a new dean
and chapter were installed the old gargoyles were removed and others

substituted having a closer relation to the private animosities of the
new incumbents.

GARTHER, n. An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out
of her stockings and desolating the country.

GENEROUS, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was
rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble

by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.
GENEALOGY, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did

not particularly care to trace his own.
GENTEEL, adj. Refined, after the fashion of a gent.

Observe with care, my son, the distinction I reveal:
A gentleman is gentle and a gent genteel.

Heed not the definitions your "Unabridged" presents,
For dictionary makers are generally gents.

G.J.
GEOGRAPHER, n. A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between

the outside of the world and the inside.
Habeam, geographer of wide reknown,

Native of Abu-Keber's ancient town,
In passing thence along the river Zam

To the adjacent village of Xelam,
Bewildered by the multitude of roads,

Got lost, lived long on migratory toads,
Then from exposuremiserably died,

And grateful travelers bewailed their guide.
Henry Haukhorn

GEOLOGY, n. The science of the earth's crust -- to which, doubtless,
will be added that of its interiorwhenever a man shall come up

garrulous out of a well. The geological formations of the globe
already noted are catalogued thus: The Primary, or lower one,

consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners' tools,
antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors. The

Secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles. The Tertiary
comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy

boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage,
anarchists, snap-dogs and fools.

GHOST, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.
He saw a ghost.

It occupied -- that dismal thing! --
The path that he was following.

Before he'd time to stop and fly,
An earthquake trifled with the eye

That saw a ghost.
He fell as fall the early good;

Unmoved that awful vision stood.
The stars that danced before his ken

He wildly brushed away, and then
He saw a post.

Jared Macphester
Accounting for the uncommonbehavior of ghosts, Heine mentions

somebody's ingenious theory to the effect that they are as much
afraid of us as we of them. Not quite, if I may judge from such

tables of comparative speed as I am able to compile from memories of
my own experience.

There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts. A ghost
never comes naked: he appears either in a winding-sheet or "in his

habit as he lived." To believe in him, then, is to believe that not
only have the dead the power to make themselves visible after there is

nothing left of them, but that the same power inheres in textile
fabrics. Supposing the products of the loom to have this ability,

what object would they have in exercising it? And why does not the
apparition of a suit of clothes sometimes walk abroad without a ghost

in it? These be riddles of significance. They reach away down and
get a convulsive grip on the very tap-root of this flourishing faith.

GHOUL, n. A demon addicted to the reprehensible habit of devouring
the dead. The existence of ghouls has been disputed by that class of

controversialists who are more concerned to deprive the world of
comforting beliefs than to give it anything good in their place. In

1640 Father Secchi saw one in a cemetery near Florence and frightened
it away with the sign of the cross. He describes it as gifted with

many heads an an uncommonallowance of limbs, and he saw it in more
than one place at a time. The good man was coming away from dinner at

the time and explains that if he had not been "heavy with eating" he
would have seized the demon at all hazards. Atholston relates that a

ghoul was caught by some sturdy peasants in a churchyard at Sudbury
and ducked in a horsepond. (He appears to think that so distinguished

a criminal should have been ducked in a tank of rosewater.) The water
turned at once to blood "and so contynues unto ys daye." The pond has

since been bled with a ditch. As late as the beginning of the
fourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the crypt of the cathedral

at Amiens and the whole population surrounded the place. Twenty armed
men with a priest at their head, bearing a crucifix, entered and

captured the ghoul, which, thinking to escape by the stratagem, had
transformed itself to the semblance of a well known citizen, but was

nevertheless hanged, drawn and quartered in the midst of hideous
popular orgies. The citizen whose shape the demon had assumed was so

affected by the sinisteroccurrence that he never again showed himself
in Amiens and his fate remains a mystery.

GLUTTON, n. A person who escapes the evils of moderation by
committing dyspepsia.

GNOME, n. In North-European mythology, a dwarfish imp inhabiting the
interior parts of the earth and having special custody of mineral

treasures. Bjorsen, who died in 1765, says gnomes were common enough
in the southern parts of Sweden in his boyhood, and he frequently saw

them scampering on the hills in the evening twilight. Ludwig
Binkerhoof saw three as recently as 1792, in the Black Forest, and

Sneddeker avers that in 1803 they drove a party of miners out of a
Silesian mine. Basing our computations upon data supplied by these

statements, we find that the gnomes were probably extinct as early as
1764.

GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion
between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not

go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin
of the fusion managers.