n old
house, attended only by a deaf-mute negro. The secrecy and mystery of
his life excite all sorts of ugly rumors, and he is mobbed by a crowd of
mischievous boys and loafers, receiving injuries that cause his death.
The story that his house is haunted keeps intruders from the doors, but
they venture near enough on the day of his funeral, to see the coffin
brought out by the mute negro, and laid on a cart, and that the solitary
mourner is Poquelin's brother, long supposed to be dead. He is a
_leper_, for whom the elder brother has cared secretly all these years,
not permitting the knowledge of his existence to get abroad, lest the
unfortunate man should be removed forcibly, and sent to what is the only
asylum for him now that his guardian is dead--the abhorrent _Terre aux
Lepreux_.--George W. Cable, _Old Creole Days_ (1879).

=Porch= (_The_). The Stoics were so called, because their founder gave his
lectures in the Athenian _stoa_, or _porch_, called "Poe'cil[^e]."

The successors of Socr[)a]t[^e]s formed ... the Academy, the Porch,
the Garden.--Professor Seeley, _Ecce Homo_.

George Herbert has a poem called _The Church Porch_ (six-line stanzas).
It may be considered introductory to his poem entitled _The Church_
(Sapphic verse and sundry other metres).

=Porcius=, son of Cato, of Ut[)i]ca (in Africa), and brother of Marcus.
Both brothers were in love with Lucia; but the hot-headed, impulsive
Marcus, being slain in battle, the sage and temperate Porcius was
without a rival.--J. Addison, _Cato_ (1713).

When Sheridan reproduced _Cato_, Wignell, who acted "Porcius,"
omitted the prologue, and began at once with the lines, "The dawn
is overcast, the morning lowers...." "The prologue! the prologue!"
shouted the audience; and Wignell went on in the same tone, as if
continuing his speech:

Ladies and gentleman, there has not been
A prologue spoken to this play for years--
And heavily on clouds brings on the day,
The great, th' important day, big with the fate
Of Cato and of Rome.

_History of the Stage._

=Porcupine= (_Peter_). William Cobbett, the politician, published _The
Rushlight_ under this pseudonym in 1860.

=Pornei'us= (3 _syl._), Fornication personified; one of the four sons of
Anag'nus (_inchastity_), his brothers being Mae'chus (_adultery_),
Acath'arus, and Asel'g[^e]s (_lasciviousness_). He began the battle of
Mansoul by encounterin