The Roycroft Dictionary Part 7

MISTRESS: 1. A female who has rights, as distinguished from a married woman, who has duties. 2. One whose respect and love some married men may hold without the non-transferable license in the bottom of a trunk.

MARTYRDOM: The sweet apotheosis of the things we do not care to avoid.

MINUTE: 1. The crutch on which the Hour leans as it limps into Eternity.

2. A s.p.a.ce of time in which we dream of something that will never come true, or form a resolution that another minute effaces.

MODESTY: 1. A beau-catcher that young ladies wear and women affect. 2.

In a sweetmeat, the souffle through which we dig to reach the plums. 3.

The blush on the face of Desire at the consciousness of its own immodesty. 4. Among men modesty is the will-to-wait and seize. 5. Venom, who sidles into corners and shuns the limelight, so that he may the better see. 6. The att.i.tude of mind that precedes the pounce. 7. The subtlest symptom of paranoia. 8. Egotism turned wrong side out.

MUMMY: 1. An un.o.bjectionable party whose motives are not questioned. 2.

One who is not in business for his health. 3. Any one who does not advertise.

MORALITY: 1. The formaldehyde of theology. 2. The line of conduct that pays.

MORALIST: 1. A beautified eunuch. 2. One self-elected to make the stupid more stupid. 3. Any one skilled in the science of p.o.r.nography. 4. A retired roue. 5. One of the Sacred Legion of Coprolitis.

MORGUE: The pantheon of the unremembered; Death's shop-window.

MUNSEY: 1. Any publisher who does much business on small mental capital.

2. _Verb_: To munsey--to print much and say nothing. 3. A literary laxative. 4. To put up money for a monkey monarchy.

MURDERER: 1. A savior of society. Synonyms: Soldier, hangman, doctor. 2.

A man born ahead of or after his time.

MUSIC: 1. Anything that has charms to soothe a savage beast. 2.

Unnecessary noises heard in restaurants and cheap hotels. 3. The only one of the arts that can not be prost.i.tuted to a base use. 4. An attempt to express the emotions that are beyond speech. 5. A noise less objectionable than any other noise.

MYSTIC: 1. One who guzzles his G.o.d. 2. A person who is puzzled before the obvious, but who understands the non-existent. 3. To stand over the vasty deep to summon monsters and slip in. 4. Sap that has lost its way.

5. A gymnast who turns flip-flops between the Here and the Not-Here.

(Plato was the first mystic. It was he who announced the discovery of the Non-Existent. Hegel was the last mystic, for it was he who proved the Non-Existent was and was not, might have been and never could be, has was, is now, and never shall be.)

NATURE: 1. The Unseen Intelligence which loved us into being, and is disposing of us by the same token. 2. That which every one but a theologian understands, but which no one can define. 3. The Louvre of the Esthetic Eye; the abattoir of the Religious Eye; the charivari of the Ironic Eye. 4. The eternal Kis.h.i.+neff of an implacable G.o.d.

NANCY: A person of neither s.e.x, who yet combines the bad qualities of both.

n.i.g.g.e.r: A colored person who has no money.

NEW THOUGHT: Plain, simple commonsense.

NEWSPAPER OFFICE: A figment factory.

NIETZSCHE (FRIEDRICH): A thunder smith.

NEBULOUS TYPOTHETae: A b.u.m printer who can never be found when wanted.

NEIGHBOR: The man who knows more about you than you know about yourself.

NOTHING: 1. A negative which is the reality behind every ghostly affirmative. 2. Something that has density without weight, like a barber's breath.

NOMINATION: 1. Paradigrammatics, or the art of molding figures in plaster. 2. The call of the vile. 3. In democracies, the divine sacrament administered to ignorance. 3. The election, divination and apotheosis of a paramount parasite.

NEW YORK: The posthumous revenge of the Merchant of Venice.

NESBIT: A plenipotentiary of publicity who takes pretty nothings and makes of them New York Central literary hash.

OBEDIENCE: 1. Expectation on a monument. 2. A dignified retreat from Balaklava. 3. Lex Talionis playing 'possum. 4. The second law of Nature, the first being murder. _E. g._, "After all, it was my brother's Obedience to the Lord that laid the foundation of my glory."--From Cain's _Diary of an Altar-Wrecker_.

OPPORTUNITY: 1. The only Knocker that is welcome. 2. Health and a job.

OBLIVION: 1. The memory of Eternity. 2. A place where the human race and politicians are as one; where immortals are afflicted with aphasia; where G.o.d enjoys a long siesta; where we lose the bores and all those good folks who want to tell us the sad story of their lives.

OLD MAID: A lady of uncertain age and uneasy virtue.

OPERA: 1. Forerunner of the phonograph. 2. A rendezvous for the bored.

OPTIMISM: 1. The instinct to lie. 2. Fatty degeneration of intelligence.

3. A philosophical system that attempts to demonstrate the existence of a pre-established Stupidity. 4. To believe that disease, dirt, earthquakes, fires, wars, politicians, blindness, and burial alive, celebrate and enhance the Glory of G.o.d. 5. To whistle while pa.s.sing a cemetery in the night; to sing a hymn while having a tooth pulled; to smile while being robbed. 6. A tipple invented by Leigh Mitch.e.l.l Hodges, the basis of which is clams and prune juice. 7. A kind of heart stimulant--the digitalis of failure.

ORTHODOXY: 1. In religion, that state of mind which congratulates itself on being absolutely right, and a belief that all who think otherwise are wholly wrong. 2. A faith in the fixed--a wors.h.i.+p of the static. 3. The joy that comes from thinking that most everybody is lined up for Limbus with no return ticket. 4. A condition brought about by the sprites of Humor, according to the rule that whom the G.o.ds would destroy they first make mad. 5. The zenith of selfishness and the nadir of egotism. 6.

Mephisto with a lily in his hand. 7. A corpse that does not know it is dead. 8. Spiritual constipation. 9. That peculiar condition where the patient can neither eliminate an old idea or absorb a new one.

ORGANIZED RELIGION: Antique philosophy, or the rule of the priest.

OBSTINACY: 1. To stick to your favorite lie or truth because you know you are wrong in either case. 2. The ego's peac.o.c.k-plumes.

OPTIMIST: 1. A neurotic person with gooseflesh, and teeth a-chatter, trying hard to be brave. 2. A man who when he falls in the soup thinks of himself as being in the swim. 3. A man who does not care what happens, so long as it doesn't happen to him.

ORATORY: 1. Chin-music with Prince Albert accompaniment. 2. The lullaby of the Intellect. 3. Palaver in a Prince Albert.

ORIENT: 1. The subconscious part of the Occident. 2. The cradle of all infamies and all wisdom. 3. A place where G.o.d and the house have an esoteric meaning.

PAIN: 1. The sacred, immanent music of the Cosmos written in slow triple time. 2. A form of salvation invented by Christianity. 3. A beautiful and ecstatic state wherein one comes to a realization of the benevolence of the Almighty.

PARADISE: 1. A place where one is permitted to continue one's vices, excesses and inanities for an eternity. 2. A postmortem rake-off. 3. Any place from which one can see a friend in h.e.l.l. 4. One good telephone system. (Christians, Mohammedans and Billysundays have promised themselves a cheerful time after death; this they call _Paradise_. The Jews are the only people who have no Paradise beyond the tomb; this is easily explained when it is remembered that they own New York.)

PARODY: A calico cat stuffed with cotton.

PARVENU: One who has risen suddenly from nothing and becomes nothing suddenly.

PEACE: A monotonous interval between fights.

PEDANT: A person with more education than he can use.

PERFORMER: One who has a right to do troglodyte stunts and who can do something else.