heard from afar
  Ancestral voices prophesying war.

  One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of
men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable.  Let us
have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of
that elemental distrust that is the security of nations.  War loves to
come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide
the night.

WASHINGTONIAN, n.  A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of
governing himself for the advantage of good government.  In justice to
him it should be said that he did not want to.

  They took away his vote and gave instead
  The right, when he had earned, to _eat_ his bread.
  In vain -- he clamors for his "boss," pour soul,
  To come again and part him from his roll.

Offenbach Stutz


WEAKNESSES, n.pl.  Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she
holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the
service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.

WEATHER, n.  The climate of the hour.  A permanent topic of
conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have
inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal
ancestors whom it keenly concerned.  The setting up official weather
bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments
are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle.

  Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
  And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be --
  Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
  With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
  While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
  From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
  He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
  On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote --
  For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
  "Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."

Halcyon Jones


WEDDING, n.  A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one,
one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become
supportable.

WEREWOLF, n.  A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man.  All
werewolves are of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to
gratify a beastial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are as
humane and is consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.
  Some Bavarian peasants having caught a wolf one evening, tied it
to a post by the tail and went to bed.  The next morning nothing was
there!  Greatly perplexed, they consulted the local priest, who told
them that their captive was undoubtedly a werewolf and had resumed its
human for during the night.  "The next time that you take a wolf," the
good man said, "see that you chain it by the leg, and in the morning
you will find a Lutheran."

WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n.  In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected
affliction that strikes hard.

  Should you ask me whence this laughter,
  Whence this audible big-smiling,
  With its labial extension,
  With its maxillar distortion
  And its diaphragmic rhythmus
  Like the billowing of an ocean,
  Like the shaking of a carpet,
  I should answer, I should tell you:
  From the great deeps of the spirit,
  From the unplummeted abysmus
  Of the soul this laughter welleth
  As the fountain, the gug-guggle,
  Like the river from the canon [sic],
  To entoken and give warning
  That my present mood is sunny.
  Should you ask me further question --
  Why the great deeps of the spirit,
  Why the unplummeted abysmus
  Of the soule extrudes this laughter,
  This all audible big-smiling,
  I should answer, I should tell you
  With a white heart, tumpitumpy,
  With a true tongue, honest Injun:
  William Bryan, he has Caught It,
  Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

  Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank,
  Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,
  Standing silent in the kneedeep
  With his wing-tips crossed behind him
  And his neck close-reefed before him,
  With his bill, his william, buried
  In the down upon his bosom,
  With his head retracted inly,