ho 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.

BEFRIEND, v.t. To make an ingrate.

BEG, v. To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the
belief that it will not be given.

Who is that, father?
A mendicant, child,
Haggard, morose, and unaffable--wild!
See how he glares through the bars of his cell!
With Citizen Mendicant all is not well.

Why did they put him there, father?

Because
Obeying his belly he struck at the laws.

His belly?

Oh, well, he was starving, my boy--
A state in which, doubtless, there's little of jo