SENATE, n. A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
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SABBATH, n. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh. Among the Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this is the Christian version Remember the seventh day to make thy neighbor keep it wholly. To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early Fathers of the Church held other views. So great is the sanctity of the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water version of the Fourth CommandmentSix days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able, And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine ordinance.Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
DEAD, adj.Done with the work of breathing done With all the world the mad race run Though to the end the golden goal Attained and found to be a hole --Squatol Johnes
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
DAMN, v. A word formerly much used by the Paphlagonians, the meaning of which is lost. By the learned Dr. Dolabelly Gak it is believed to have been a term of satisfaction, implying the highest possible degree of mental tranquillity. Professor Groke, on the contrary, thinks it expressed an emotion of tumultuous delight, because it so frequently occurs in combination with the word jod or god, meaning joy. It would be with great diffidence that I should advance an opinion conflicting with that of either of these formidable authorities.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
ENVELOPE, n. The coffin of a document the scabbard of a bill the husk of a remittance the bed-gown of a love-letter.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
EVERLASTING, adj. Lasting forever. It is with no small diffidence that I venture to offer this brief and elementary definition, for I am not unaware of the existence of a bulky volume by a sometime Bishop of Worcester, entitled, A Partial Definition of the Word Everlasting, as Used in the Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures. His book was once esteemed of great authority in the Anglican Church, and is still, I understand, studied with pleasure to the mind and profit of the soul.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
BAPTISM, n. A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever. It is performed with water in two ways --by immersion, or plunging, and by aspersion, or sprinkling.But whether the plan of immersion Is better than simple aspersion Let those immersed And those aspersed Decide by the Authorized Version, And by matching their agues tertian. --G.J.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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