I would be
righteous I am bound to restrain my neighbor, by force if needful,
in all those injurious enterprises from which, through a better
disposition and by the help of Heaven, I do myself restrain."

RIME, n. Agreeing sounds in the terminals of verse, mostly bad. The
verses themselves, as distinguished from prose, mostly dull. Usually
(and wickedly) spelled "rhyme."

RIMER, n. A poet regarded with indifference or disesteem.

The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,
The sound surceases and the sense expires.
Then the domestic dog, to east and west,
Expounds the passions burning in his breast.
The rising moon o'er that enchanted land
Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.

Mowbray Myles

RIOT, n. A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent
bystanders.

R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of _requiescat in pace_, attesting to
indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge,
however, the letters originally meant nothing more than _reductus in
pulvis_.

RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept
or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out
of it.

RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear
freedom, keeping off the grass.

ROAD, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is
too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.

All roads, howsoe'er they diverge, lead to Rome,
Whence, thank the good Lord, at least one leads back home.

Borey the Bald

ROBBER, n. A candid man of affairs.
It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling
companion lodged at a wayside inn. The surroundings were suggestive,
and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn. "Once
there was a Farmer-General of the Revenues." Saying nothing more, he
was encouraged to continue. "That," he said, "is the story."

ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as
They Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to
probability, as a domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance
it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination--free,
lawless, immune to bit and rein. Your novelist is a poor creature, as
Carlyle might say--a mere reporter. He may invent his characters
and plot, but he must not imagine anything taking place that might not
occur, albeit his entire narrative is candidly a lie. Why he imposes
th