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Page 89
ROPE, n. An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they
too are mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place one's
whole life long. It has been largely superseded by a more complex
electrical device worn upon another part of the person; and this is
rapidly giving place to an apparatus known as the preachment.
ROSTRUM, n. In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship. In
America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically
expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.
ROUNDHEAD, n. A member of the Parliamentarian party in the English
civil war -- so called from his habit of wearing his hair short,
whereas his enemy, the Cavalier, wore his long. There were other
points of difference between them, but the fashion in hair was the
fundamental cause of quarrel. The Cavaliers were royalists because
the king, an indolent fellow, found it more convenient to let his hair
grow than to wash his neck. This the Roundheads, who were mostly
barbers and soap-boilers, deemed an injury to trade, and the royal
neck was therefore the object of their particular indignation.
Descendants of the belligerents now wear their hair all alike, but the
fires of animosity enkindled in that ancient strife smoulder to this
day beneath the snows of British civility.
RUBBISH, n. Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies,
literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions
lying due south from Boreaplas.
RUIN, v. To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the
virtue of maids.
RUM, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total
abstainers.
RUMOR, n. A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.
Sharp, irresistible by mail or shield,
By guard unparried as by flight unstayed,
O serviceable Rumor, let me wield
Against my enemy no other blade.
His be the terror of a foe unseen,
His the inutile hand upon the hilt,
And mine the deadly tongue, long, slender, keen,
Hinting a rumor of some ancient guilt.
So shall I slay the wretch without a blow,
Spare me to celebrate his overthrow,
And nurse my valor for another foe.
Joel Buxter
RUSSIAN, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A
Tartar Emetic.
S
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 Commandment:
Six 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.
SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a
priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge
that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the
Neo-Dictionarians.
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