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by Ambrose Bierce

　　GALLOWS,n. A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which the leading actoris translated to heaven. In this country the gallows is chiefly remarkablefor 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 mediaevalbuildings, commonly fashioned into a grotesque caricature of some personalenemy of the architect or owner of the building. This was especially thecase in churches and ecclesiastical structures generally, in which thegargoyles presented a perfect rogues' gallery of local heretics and controversialists.Sometimes when a new dean and chapter were installed the old gargoyleswere removed and others substituted having a closer relation to the privateanimosities of the new incumbents.

　　GARTER, n. An elastic band intended to keep a woman from comingout of her stockings and desolating the country.

　　GENEROUS, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and wasrightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble bynature and is taking a bit of a rest.

　　GENEALOGY, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor whodid 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 differencebetween 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 exposure miserably 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 interior whenever a man shall come up garrulousout of a well. The geological formations of the globe already noted arecatalogued thus: The Primary, or lower one, consists of rocks, bones ormired mules, gas-pipes, miners' tools, antique statues minus the nose,Spanish doubloons and ancestors. The Secondary is largely made up of redworms 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 uncommon behavior of ghosts, Heine mentions somebody'singenious theory to the effect that they are as much afraid of us as weof them. Not quite, if I may judge from such tables of comparative speedas I am able to compile from memories of my own experience.There is oneinsuperable 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 thepower to make themselves visible after there is nothing left of them,but that the same power inheres in textile fabrics. Supposing the productsof the loom to have this ability, what object would they have in exercisingit? And why does not the apparition of a suit of clothes sometimes walkabroad without a ghost in it? These be riddles of significance. They reachaway down and get a convulsive grip on the very tap-root of this flourishingfaith.

　　GHOUL, n. A demon addicted to the reprehensible habit of devouringthe dead. The existence of ghouls has been disputed by that class of controversialistswho are more concerned to deprive the world of comforting beliefs thanto give it anything good in their place. In 1640 Father Secchi saw onein a cemetery near Florence and frightened it away with the sign of thecross. He describes it as gifted with many heads an an uncommon allowanceof limbs, and he saw it in more than one place at a time. The good manwas coming away from dinner at the time and explains that if he had notbeen "heavy with eating" he would have seized the demon at allhazards. Atholston relates that a ghoul was caught by some sturdy peasantsin a churchyard at Sudbury and ducked in a horsepond. (He appears to thinkthat so distinguished a criminal should have been ducked in a tank ofrosewater.) The water turned at once to blood "and so contynues untoys daye." The pond has since been bled with a ditch. As late as thebeginning of the fourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the cryptof the cathedral at Amiens and the whole population surrounded the place.Twenty armed men with a priest at their head, bearing a crucifix, enteredand captured the ghoul, which, thinking to escape by the stratagem, hadtransformed itself to the semblance of a well known citizen, but was neverthelesshanged, drawn and quartered in the midst of hideous popular orgies. Thecitizen whose shape the demon had assumed was so affected by the sinisteroccurrence that he never again showed himself in Amiens and his fate remainsa mystery.

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

　　GNOME, n. In North-European mythology, a dwarfish imp inhabitingthe interior parts of the earth and having special custody of mineraltreasures. Bjorsen, who died in 1765, says gnomes were common enough inthe southern parts of Sweden in his boyhood, and he frequently saw themscampering on the hills in the evening twilight. Ludwig Binkerhoof sawthree as recently as 1792, in the Black Forest, and Sneddeker avers thatin 1803 they drove a party of miners out of a Silesian mine. Basing ourcomputations upon data supplied by these statements, we find that thegnomes were probably extinct as early as 1764.

　　GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusionbetween the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would notgo into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrinof the fusion managers.

　　GNU, n. An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated stateresembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag. In its wild condition it is somethinglike a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.

　　A hunter from Kew caught a distant view

　　Of a peacefully meditative gnu,

　　And he said: "I'll pursue, and my hands imbrue

　　In its blood at a closer interview."

　　But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw

　　O'er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;

　　And he said as he flew: "It is well I withdrew

　　Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew

　　That really meritorious gnu."

　　Jarn Leffer

　　GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer.Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.

　　GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by someoccult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degreesof the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that wheninked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author,"there results a very fair and accurate transcript

　　of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discoveredby this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have onlytrivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geeseindeed.

　　GORGON, n.

　　The Gorgon was a maiden bold

　　Who turned to stone the Greeks of old

　　That looked upon her awful brow.

　　We dig them out of ruins now,

　　And swear that workmanship so bad

　　Proves all the ancient sculptors mad.

　　GOUT, n. A physician's name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.

　　GRACES, n. Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne,who attended upon Venus, serving without salary. They were at no expensefor board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and dressed accordingto the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened to be blowing.

　　GRAMMAR, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for thefeet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.

　　GRAPE, n.

　　Hail noble fruit! -- by Homer sung,

　　Anacreon and Khayyam;

　　Thy praise is ever on the tongue

　　Of better men than I am.

　　The lyre in my hand has never swept,

　　The song I cannot offer:

　　My humbler service pray accept --

　　I'll help to kill the scoffer.

　　The water-drinkers and the cranks

　　Who load their skins with liquor --

　　I'll gladly bear their belly-tanks

　　And tap them with my sticker.

　　Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools

　　When e'er we let the wine rest.

　　Here's death to Prohibition's fools,

　　And every kind of vine-pest!

　　Jamrach Holobom

　　GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answerto the demands of American Socialism.

　　GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the comingof the medical student.

　　Beside a lonely grave I stood --

　　With brambles 'twas encumbered;

　　The winds were moaning in the wood,

　　Unheard by him who slumbered,

　　A rustic standing near, I said:

　　"He cannot hear it blowing!"

　　"'Course not," said he: "the feller's dead --

　　He can't hear nowt [sic] that's going."

　　"Too true," I said; "alas, too true --

　　No sound his sense can quicken!"

　　"Well, mister, wot is that to you? --

　　The deadster ain't a-kickin'."

　　I knelt and prayed: "O Father, smile

　　On him, and mercy show him!"

　　That countryman looked on the while,

　　And said: "Ye didn't know him."

　　Pobeter Dunko

　　GRAVITATION, n. The tendency of all bodies to approach one anotherwith a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain -- thequantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength of theirtendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and edifying illustrationof how science, having made A the proof of B, makes B the proof of A.

　　GREAT, adj.

　　"I'm great," the Lion said -- "I reign

　　The monarch of the wood and plain!"

　　The Elephant replied: "I'm great --

　　No quadruped can match my weight!"

　　"I'm great -- no animal has half

　　So long a neck!" said the Giraffe.

　　"I'm great," the Kangaroo said -- "see

　　My femoral muscularity!"

　　The 'Possum said: "I'm great -- behold,

　　My tail is lithe and bald and cold!"

　　An Oyster fried was understood

　　To say: "I'm great because I'm good!"

　　Each reckons greatness to consist

　　In that in which he heads the list,

　　And Vierick thinks he tops his class

　　Because he is the greatest ass.

　　Arion Spurl Doke

　　GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulderswith good reason.In his great work on _Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution_,the learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture-- the shrug -- among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtlesand it is simply a survival of the habit of retracing the head insidethe shell. It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an authority,but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth and enforced in my workentitled _Hereditary Emotions_ -- lib. II, c. XI) the shrug is a poorfoundation upon which to build so important a theory, for previously tothe Revolution the gesture was unknown. I have not a doubt that it isdirectly referable to the terror inspired by the guillotine during theperiod of that instrument's activity.

　　GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for thesettlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted.By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese,but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it was invented bythe devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems to derive somesupport from the scarcity of angels. Moreover, it has the hearty concurrenceof the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture.Secretary Wilson becameinterested in gunpowder through an event that occurred on the Governmentexperimental farm in the District of Columbia. One day, several yearsago, a rogue imperfectly reverent of the Secretary's profound attainmentsand personal character presented him with a sack of gunpowder, representingit as the sead of the Flashawful flabbergastor, a Patagonian cerealof great commercial

　　value, admirably adapted to this climate. The good Secretary was instructedto spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with soil. Thishe at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line of it all theway across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look backward by a shoutfrom the generous donor, who at once dropped a lighted match into thefurrow at the starting-point. Contact with the earth had somewhat dampenedthe powder, but the startled functionary saw himself pursued by a tallmoving pillar of fire and smoke and fierce evolution. He stood for a momentparalyzed and speechless, then he recollected an engagement and, droppingall, absented himself thence with such surprising celerity that to theeyes of spectators along the route selected he appeared like a long, dimstreak prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages,and audibly refusing to be comforted. "Great Scott! what is that?"cried a surveyor's chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fadingline of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon. "That,"said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again centeringhis attention upon his instrument, "is the Meridian of Washington."