glory on the Plain of Shinar.  From Babel comes our English word
"babble."  Under whatever name worshiped, Baal is the Sun-god.  As
Beelzebub he is the god of flies, which are begotten of the sun's rays
on the stagnant water.  In Physicia Baal is still worshiped as Bolus,
and as Belly he is adored and served with abundant sacrifice by the
priests of Guttledom.

BABE or BABY, n.  A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or
condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and
antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion.
There have been famous babes; for example, little Moses, from whose
adventure in the bulrushes the Egyptian hierophants of seven centuries
before doubtless derived their idle tale of the child Osiris being
preserved on a floating lotus leaf.

          Ere babes were invented
          The girls were contended.
          Now man is tormented
  Until to buy babes he has squandered
  His money.  And so I have pondered
          This thing, and thought may be
          'T were better that Baby
  The First had been eagled or condored.

Ro Amil


BACCHUS, n.  A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse
for getting drunk.

  Is public worship, then, a sin,
      That for devotions paid to Bacchus
  The lictors dare to run us in,
      And resolutely thump and whack us?

Jorace


BACK, n.  That part of your friend which it is your privilege to
contemplate in your adversity.

BACKBITE, v.t.  To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find
you.

BAIT, n.  A preparation that renders the hook more palatable.  The
best kind is beauty.

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.


BAROMETER, n.  An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of
weather we are having.

BARRACK, n.  A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of
which it is their business to deprive others.

BASILISK, n.  The cockatrice.  A sort of serpent hatched form the egg
of a cock.  The basilisk had a bad eye, and its glance was fatal.
Many infidels deny this creature's existence, but Semprello Aurator
saw and handled one that had been blinded by lightning as a punishment
for having fatally gazed on a lady of rank whom Jupiter loved.  Juno
afterward restored the reptile's sight and hid it in a cave.  Nothing
is so well attested by the ancients as the existence of the basilisk,
but the cocks have stopped laying.

BASTINADO, n.  The act of walking on wood without exertion.

BATH, n.  A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship,
with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.

  The man who taketh a steam bath
  He loseth all the skin he hath,
  And, for he's boiled a brilliant red,
  Thinketh to cleanliness he's wed,
  Forgetting that his lungs he's soiling
  With dirty vapors of the boiling.

Richard Gwow


BATTLE, n.  A method of untying with the teeth of a political knot
that would not yield to the tongue.

BEARD, n.  The hair that is commonly cut off by those who justly
execrate the absurd Chinese custom of shaving the head.

BEAUTY, n.  The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a
husband.