werewolves are of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to

gratify a beastial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are as
humane and is consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.

Some Bavarian peasants having caught a wolf one evening, tied it
to a post by the tail and went to bed. The next morning nothing was

there! Greatly perplexed, they consulted the local priest, who told
them that their captive was undoubtedly a werewolf and had resumed its

human for during the night. "The next time that you take a wolf," the
good man said, "see that you chain it by the leg, and in the morning

you will find a Lutheran."
WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected

affliction that strikes hard.
Should you ask me whence this laughter,

Whence this audible big-smiling,
With its labial extension,

With its maxillar distortion
And its diaphragmic rhythmus

Like the billowing of an ocean,
Like the shaking of a carpet,

I should answer, I should tell you:
From the great deeps of the spirit,

From the unplummeted abysmus
Of the soul this laughter welleth

As the fountain, the gug-guggle,
Like the river from the canon [sic],

To entoken and give warning
That my present mood is sunny.

Should you ask me further question --
Why the great deeps of the spirit,

Why the unplummeted abysmus
Of the soule extrudes this laughter,

This all audible big-smiling,
I should answer, I should tell you

With a white heart, tumpitumpy,
With a true tongue, honest Injun:

William Bryan, he has Caught It,
Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank,
Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,

Standing silent in the kneedeep
With his wing-tips crossed behind him

And his neck close-reefed before him,
With his bill, his william, buried

In the down upon his bosom,
With his head retracted inly,

While his shoulders overlook it?
Does the sandhill crane, the shankank,

Shiver grayly in the north wind,
Wishing he had died when little,

As the sparrow, the chipchip, does?
No 'tis not the Shankank standing,

Standing in the gray and dismal
Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep.

No, 'tis peerless William Bryan
Realizing that he's Caught It,

Caught the Whangdepootenawah!
WHEAT, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some

difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread. The French are
said to eat more bread _per capita_ of population than any other

people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff
palatable.

WHITE, adj. and n. Black.
WIDOW, n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to

take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one
of the most marked features of his character.

WINE, n. Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union
as "liquor," sometimes as "rum." Wine, madam, is God's next best gift

to man.
WIT, n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his

intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
WITCH, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wickedleague

with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in
wickedness a league beyond the devil.

WITTICISM, n. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldom
noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a "joke."

WOMAN, n.
An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a

rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. It is credited by
many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility

acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the
postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion,

deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld,
it roareth now. The species is the most widely distributed of all

beasts of prey, infesting all habitable parts of the globe, from
Greeland's spicy mountains to India's moral strand. The popular

name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind.
The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the

American variety (_felis pugnans_), is omnivorous and can be
taught not to talk.

Balthasar Pober
WORMS'-MEAT, n. The finished product of which we are the raw

material. The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the
Granitarium. Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that

houses it, but "this too must pass away." Probably the silliest work
in which a human being can engage is construction of a tomb for

himself. The solemn purpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by
contrast the foreknown futility.

Ambitious fool! so mad to be a show!
How profitless the labor you bestow

Upon a dwelling whose magnificence
The tenant neither can admire nor know.

Build deep, build high, build massive as you can,
The wanton grass-roots will defeat the plan

By shouldering asunder all the stones
In what to you would be a moment's span.

Time to the dead so all unreckoned flies
That when your marble is all dust, arise,

If wakened, stretch your limbs and yawn --
You'll think you scarcely can have closed your eyes.

What though of all man's works your tomb alone
Should stand till Time himself be overthrown?

Would it advantage you to dwell therein
Forever as a stain upon a stone?

Joel Huck
WORSHIP, n. Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and

fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an
element of pride.

WRATH, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to
exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, "the wrath of God,"

"the day of wrath," etc. Amongst the ancients the wrath of kings was
deemed sacred, for it could usually command the agency of some god for

its fit manifestation, as could also that of a priest. The Greeks
before Troy were so harried by Apollo that they jumped out of the

frying-pan of the wrath of Cryses into the fire of the wrath of
Achilles, though Agamemnon, the sole offender, was neither fried nor

roasted. A similar noted immunity was that of David when he incurred
the wrath of Yahveh by numbering his people, seventy thousand of whom

paid the penalty with their lives. God is now Love, and a director of
the census performs his work without apprehension of disaster.

X
X in our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility

to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will
doubtless last as long as the language. X is the sacredsymbol of ten

dollars, and in such words as Xmas, Xn, etc., stands for Christ, not,
as is popular supposed, because it represents a cross, but because the