CORPORAL, n.  A man who occupies the lowest rung of the military
ladder.

  Fiercely the battle raged and, sad to tell,
  Our corporal heroically fell!
  Fame from her height looked down upon the brawl
  And said:  "He hadn't very far to fall."

Giacomo Smith


CORPORATION, n.  An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit
without individual responsibility.

CORSAIR, n.  A politician of the seas.

COURT FOOL, n.  The plaintiff.

COWARD, n.  One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

CRAYFISH, n.  A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but
less indigestible.

      In this small fish I take it that human wisdom is admirably
  figured and symbolized; for whereas the crayfish doth move only
  backward, and can have only retrospection, seeing naught but the
  perils already passed, so the wisdom of man doth not enable him to
  avoid the follies that beset his course, but only to apprehend
  their nature afterward.

Sir James Merivale


CREDITOR, n.  One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial
Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.

CREMONA, n.  A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.

CRITIC, n.  A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody
tries to please him.

  There is a land of pure delight,
      Beyond the Jordan's flood,
  Where saints, apparelled all in white,
      Fling back the critic's mud.

  And as he legs it through the skies,
      His pelt a sable hue,
  He sorrows sore to recognize
      The missiles that he threw.

Orrin Goof


CROSS, n.  An ancient religious symbol erroneously supposed to owe its
significance to the most solemn event in the history of Christianity,
but really antedating it by thousands of years.  By many it has been
believed to be identical with the _crux ansata_ of the ancient phallic
worship, but it has been traced even beyond all that we know of that,
to the rites of primitive peoples.  We have to-day the White Cross as
a symbol of chastity, and the Red Cross as a badge of benevolent
neutrality in war.  Having in mind the former, the reverend Father
Gassalasca Jape smites the lyre to the effect following:

  "Be good, be good!" the sisterhood
      Cry out in holy chorus,
  And, to dissuade from sin, parade
      Their various charms before us.

  But why, O why, has ne'er an eye
      Seen her of winsome manner
  And youthful grace and pretty face
      Flaunting the White Cross banner?

  Now where's the need of speech and screed
      To better our behaving?
  A simpler plan for saving man
      (But, first, is he worth saving?)

  Is, dears, when he declines to flee
      From bad thoughts that beset him,
  Ignores the Law as 't were a straw,
      And wants to sin -- don't let him.

CUI BONO?  [Latin]  What good would that do _me_?

CUNNING, n.  The faculty that distinguishes a weak animal or person
from a strong one.  It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction
and great material adversity.  An Italian proverb says:  "The furrier
gets the skins of more foxes than asses."

CUPID, n.  The so-called god of love.  This bastard creation of a
barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of
its deities.  Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is
the most reasonless and offensive.  The notion of symbolizing sexual
love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the
wounds of an arrow -- of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art
grossly to materialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work --
this is eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on
the doorstep of prosperity.