ESSAYS BEFORE A SONATA by Charles Ives TABLE OF CONTENTS: BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH INTRODUCTORY FOOTNOTE BY CHARLES IVES INTRODUCTION I—PROLOGUE II—EMERSON III—HAWTHORNE IV—"THE ALCOTTS" V—THOREAU VI—EPILOGUE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Charles Ives (_PHONE_) was probably one of the most psycho-intellectually brilliant, imaginative and flexible Americans to ever "walk the land of freedom." A graduate of Yale, he became a multi-millionaire in the American insurance industry, introducing brilliant innovations within that industry. He also, unlike a few composers, found the time and the money (being a shrewd and practical businessman) to get married and have children.
His accomplishments for which he is best known, however, are those in the field of music. At the time of its composition, Ives' music was probably the most radically modern in history, and by itself had enough material to serve as the foundation of modern 20th century music. For example, at the turn of the century, this eccentric composer created band works featuring multiple melodies of multiple time signatures opposing and complimenting each other within the same piece. Ives was also a revolutionary atonal composer, who created, essentially without precedent, many atonal works that not only pre-date those of Schoenberg, but are just as sophisticated, and arguably even more so, than those of the 12-tone serialist.
Among those atonal works was his second, "Concord" piano sonata, one of the finest, and some would say the finest, works of classical music by an American. It reflects the musical innovations of its creator, featuring revolutionary atmospheric effects, unprecedented atonal musical syntax, and surprising technical approaches to playing the piano, such as pressing down on over 10 notes simultaneously using a flat piece of wood.
What a mischievious creative genius!
And yet, despite the musically innovative nature of these works, from a thematic standpoint, they are strictly 19th century. Ives, like American band-composer Sousa, consciously infused patriotic or "blue-blood" themes into his pieces. In the "Concord," he attempted to project, within the music, the 19th century philosophical ideas of the American Transcendentalists, who obviously had a great impact on his world-view.
Thus, while other atonal composers such as Schoenberg or Berg attempted to infuse their music with "20th century" themes of hostility, violence and estrangement within their atonal music, the atonal music of Ives is, from a thematic standpoint, really quite "tonal."
Ives wrote the following essays as a (very big) set of program notes to accompany his second piano sonata. Here, he puts forth his elaborate theory of music and what it represents, and discusses Transcendental philosophy and its relation to music. The essays explain Ives' own philosophy of and understanding of music and art. They also serve as an analysis of music itself as an artform, and provide a critical explanation of the "Concord" and the role that the philosophies of Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau and the Alcotts play in forming its thematic structure.
"ESSAYS BEFORE A SONATA," BY CHARLES IVES INTRODUCTORY FOOTNOTE BY CHARLES IVES "These prefatory essays were written by the composer for those who can't stand his music—and the music for those who can't stand his essays; to those who can't stand either, the whole is respectfully dedicated."
INTRODUCTION The following pages were written primarily as a preface or reason for the [writer's] second Pianoforte Sonata—"Concord, Mass., 1845,"—a group of four pieces, called a sonata for want of a more exact name, as the form, perhaps substance, does not justify it. The music and prefaces were intended to be printed together, but as it was found that this would make a cumbersome volume they are separate. The whole is an attempt to present [one person's] impression of the spirit of transcendentalism that is associated in the minds of many with Concord, Mass., of over a half century ago. This is undertaken in impressionistic pictures of Emerson and Thoreau, a sketch of the Alcotts, and a Scherzo supposed to reflect a lighter quality which is often found in the fantastic side of Hawthorne. The first and last movements do not aim to give any programs of the life or of any particular work of either Emerson or Thoreau but rather composite pictures or impressions. They are, however, so general in outline that, from some viewpoints, they may be as far from accepted impressions (from true conceptions, for that matter) as the valuation which they purport to be of the influence of the life, thought, and character of Emerson and Thoreau is inadequate.
I—Prologue How far is anyone justified, be he an authority or a layman, in expressing or trying to express in terms of music (in sounds, if you like) the value of anything, material, moral, intellectual, or spiritual, which is usually expressed in terms other than music? How far afield can music go and keep honest as well as reasonable or artistic? Is it a matter limited only by the composer's power of expressing what lies in his subjective or objective consciousness? Or is it limited by any limitations of the composer? Can a tune literally represent a stonewall with vines on it or with nothing on it, though it (the tune) be made by a genius whose power of objective contemplation is in the highest state of development? Can it be done by anything short of an act of mesmerism on the part of the composer or an act of kindness on the part of the listener? Does the extreme materializing of music appeal strongly to anyone except to those without a sense of humor—or rather with a sense of humor?—or, except, possibly to those who might excuse it, as Herbert Spencer might by the theory that the sensational element (the sensations we hear so much about in experimental psychology) is the true pleasurable phenomenon in music and that the mind should not be allowed to interfere? Does the success of program music depend more upon the program than upon the music? If it does, what is the use of the music, if it does not, what is the use of the program? Does not its appeal depend to a great extent on the listener's willingness to accept the theory that music is the language of the emotions and ONLY that? Or inversely does not this theory tend to limit music to programs?—a limitation as bad for music itself—for its wholesome progress,—as a diet of program music is bad for the listener's ability to digest anything beyond the sensuous (or physical-emotional). To a great extent this depends on what is meant by emotion or on the assumption that the word as used above refers more to the EXPRESSION, of, rather than to a meaning in a deeper sense—which may be a feeling influenced by some experience perhaps of a spiritual nature in the expression of which the intellect has some part. "The nearer we get to the mere expression of emotion," says Professor Sturt in his "Philosophy of Art and Personality," "as in the antics of boys who have been promised a holiday, the further we get away from art."
On the other hand is not all music, program-music,—is not pure music, so called, representative in its essence? Is it not program-music raised to the nth power or rather reduced to the minus nth power? Where is the line to be drawn between the expression of subjective and objective emotion? It is easier to know what each is than when each becomes what it is. The "Separateness of Art" theory—that art is not life but a reflection of it—"that art is not vital to life but that life is vital to it," does not help us. Nor does Thoreau who says not that "life is art," but that "life is an art," which of course is a different thing than the foregoing. Tolstoi is even more helpless to himself and to us. For he eliminates further. From his definition of art we may learn little more than that a kick in the back is a work of art, and


more perfectly balanced."
In 1863 he married the daughter of Haliday Bruce, Esq., of Dublin and up to the close of his life he lived at the Cambridge Observatory, pursuing his mathematical work and enjoying the society of his friends.
He died, after a long illness, on 21st January, 1892, and was interred in St. Giles's Cemetery, on the Huntingdon Road, Cambridge.


Clubbing.] 1. To beat with a club.

2. (Mil.) To throw, or allow to fall, into confusion.

 To club a battalion implies a temporary inability in the commanding officer to restore any given body of men to their natural front in line or column. Farrow.
3. To unite, or contribute, for the accomplishment of a common end; as, to club exertions.

4. To raise, or defray, by a proportional assesment; as, to club the expense.

To club a musket (Mil.), to turn the breach uppermost, so as to use it as a club.

 Club (?), v. i. 1. To form a club; to combine for the promotion of some common object; to unite.

 Till grosser atoms, tumbling in the stream Of fancy, madly met, and clubbed into a dream. Dryden.
2. To pay on equal or proportionate share of a common charge or expense; to pay for something by contribution.

 The owl, the raven, and the bat, Clubbed for a feather to his hat. Swift.
3. (Naut.) To drift in a current with an anchor out.

 Club"ba*ble (?), a. Suitable for membership in a club; sociable.
 [Humorous.] G. W. Curtis.
 Clubbed (?), a. Shaped like a club; grasped like, or used as, a club. Skelton.
 Club"ber (?), n. 1. One who clubs.

2. A member of a club. [R.] Massinger.
 Club"bish (?), a. 1. Rude; clownish. [Obs.]

2. Disposed to club together; as, a clubbish set.

 Club"bist (?), n. A member of a club; a frequenter of clubs. [R.]
 Burke.
 Club"fist' (?), n. 1. A large, heavy fist.

2. A coarse, brutal fellow. [Obs.] Mir. for Mag.
 Club"fist'ed, a. Having a large fist. Howell.
 Club"foot (?), n. [Club + foot.] (Med.) A short, variously distorted foot; also, the deformity, usually congenital, which such a foot exhibits; talipes.

 Club"foot'ed, a. Having a clubfoot.

 Club"hand' (?), n. (Med.) A short, distorted hand; also, the deformity of having such a hand.

 Club"haul' (?), v. t. (Naut.) To put on the other tack by dropping the lee anchor as soon as the wind is out of the sails (which brings the vessel's head to the wind), and by cutting the cable as soon as she pays off on the other tack. Clubhauling is attempted only in an exigency.

 Club"house' (?), n. A house occupied by a club.

 Club"room' (?), n. The apartment in which a club meets. Addison.
 Club"-rush' (?), n. (Bot.) A rushlike plant, the reed mace or cat-tail, or some species of the genus Scirpus. See Bulrush.

 Club"-shaped (?), a. Enlarged gradually at the end, as the antennæ of certain insects.

 Cluck (?), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Clucked (?); p pr.
 & vb. n. Clucking.] [AS. cloccian; cf. D. klokken, G. glucken, glucksen, LG. klukken, Dan. klukke; all prob. of imitative origin.] To make the noise, or utter the call, of a brooding hen. Ray.
 Cluck, v. t. To call together, or call to follow, as a hen does her chickens.

 She, poor hen, fond of no second brood, Has clucked three to the wars. Shak.
 Cluck, n. 1. The call of a hen to her chickens.

2. A click. See 3d Click, 2.

 Cluck"ing, n. The noise or call of a brooding hen.

 Clue (kl), n. [See Clew, n.] A ball of thread; a thread or other means of guidance. Same as Clew.

 You have wound a goodly clue. Shak.
 This clue once found unravels all the rest. Pope.
 Serve as clues to guide us into further knowledge. Locke.
 Clum (klm), interj. Silence; hush. [Obs.] Chaucer.
 Clum"ber (klm"br), n. [Named from the estate of the Duke of Newcastle.] (Zoöl.) A kind of field spaniel, with short legs and stout body, which, unlike other spaniels, hunts silently.

 Clump (klmp), n. [Cf. D. klomp lump, G. klump, klumpen, Dan. klump, Sw. klump; perh. akin to L. globus, E. globe.
 Cf. Club.] 1. An unshaped piece or mass of wood or other substance.

2. A cluster; a group; a thicket.

 A clump of shrubby trees. Hawthorne.
3. The compressed clay of coal strata. Brande & C. Clump, v. t. To arrange in a clump or clumps; to cluster; to group.
 Blackmore.
 Clump, v. i. To tread clumsily; to clamp. [Prov. Eng.] Halliwell.
 Clump"er (?), v. t. [Cf. G. klümpern to clod. See Clump, n.] To form into clumps or masses. [Obs.]

 Vapors... clumpered in balls of clouds. Dr. H. More.
 Clumps (?), n. A game in which questions are asked for the purpose of enabling the questioners to discover a word or thing previously selected by two persons who answer the questions; -- so called because the players take sides in two "clumps" or groups, the "clump" which guesses the word winning the game.

 Clump"y (?), a. [From Clump, n.] Composed of clumps; massive; shapeless. Leigh Hunt.
 Clum"si*ly (?), adv. In a clumsy manner; awkwardly; as, to walk clumsily.

 Clum"si*ness, n. The quality of being clumsy.

 The drudging part of life is chiefly owing to clumsiness and ignorance. Collier.
 Clum"sy (?), a. [Compar. Clumsier (?); superl.
 Clumsiest.] [OE. clumsed benumbed, fr. clumsen to be benumbed; cf. Icel. klumsa lockjaw, dial. Sw. klummsen benumbed with cold. Cf. 1st Clam, and 1st Clamp.] 1. Stiff or benumbed, as with cold. [Obs.]

2. Without skill or grace; wanting dexterity, nimbleness, or readiness; stiff; awkward, as if benumbed; unwieldy; unhandy; hence; ill-made, misshapen, or inappropriate; as, a clumsy person; a clumsy workman; clumsy fingers; a clumsy gesture; a clumsy excuse.

 But thou in clumsy verse, unlicked, unpointed, Hast shamefully defied the Lord's anointed. Dryden.
Syn. -- See Awkward.

 Clunch (?), n. [Perh. fr. clinch to make fast] 1. (Mining) Indurated clay. See Bind, n., 3.

2. One of the hard beds of the lower chalk. Dana.
 Clung (?), imp. & p. p. of Cling.

 Clung, a. [Prop. p. p. fr. OE. clingen to wither. See Cling, v. i.] Wasted away; shrunken. [Obs.]

 Clu"ni*ac (?), n. (Eccl. Hist.) A monk of


a German physicist.] Parallel lines that are made to appear convergent or divergent by means of oblique intersections.

 Zone, n. 1. (Biogeography) An area or part of a region characterized by uniform or similar animal and plant life; a life zone; as, Littoral zone, Austral zone, etc. The zones, or life zones, commonly recognized for North America are Arctic, Hudsonian, Canadian, Transition, Upper Austral, Lower Austral, and Tropical.

2. (Cryst.) A series of faces whose intersection lines with each other are parallel.

3. (Railroad Econ.) (a) The aggregate of stations, in whatsoever direction or on whatsoever line of railroad, situated between certain maximum and minimum limits from a point at which a shipment of traffic originates. (b) Any circular or ring-shaped area within which the street-car companies make no differences of fare.

4. In the United States parcel-post system, any of the areas about any point of shipment for which but one rate of postage is charged for a parcel post shipment from that point. The rate increases from within outwards. The first zone includes the unit of area "(a quadrangle 30 minutes square)" in which the place of shipment is situated and the 8 contiguous units; the outer limits of the second to the seventh zones, respectively, are approximately 150, 300, 600, 1000, 1400, and 1800 miles from the point of shipment; the eighth zone includes all units of area outside the seventh zone.

 Zo*öl"o*gize (?), v. i. To study zoölogy; esp., to collect animals for study.

 Zu"lu (?), n. [Also Zooloo.] 1. Any member of the tribe of Zulus; a ZuluKaffir. See Zulus.

2. (Philol.) One of the most important members of the South African, or Bantu, family of languages, spoken partly in Natal and partly in Zululand, but understood, and more or less in use, over a wide territory, at least as far north as the Zambezi; -- called also Zulu-Kaffir.

 Zu"lu-Kaf"fir, n. A member of the Bantu race comprising the Zulus and the Kaffirs.

 Zu"ñi*an (?), a. Of or pert. to the Zuñis, or designating their linguistic stock. -- n. A Zuñi.

 ||Zwie"back' (?), n. [G., fr. zwietwo, twice (see Twice) + backen to bake.] A kind of biscuit or rusk first baked in a loaf and afterwards cut and toasted.

 Zwing"li*an (?), a. (Theol.) Of or pertaining to Ulric Zwingli (_PHONE_), the reformer of German Switzerland, who maintained that in the Lord's Supper the true body of Christ is present by the contemplation of faith but not in essence or reality, and that the sacrament is a memorial without mystical elements. -- n. A follower of Zwingli.

 ||Zy*mol"y*sis (?), n. [NL. See Zyme, and Lysis.] (Physiol.
 Chem.) The action of enzymes; also, the changes produced by such action. -- Zy'mo*lyt"ic (#), a. Zy"mo*scope (?), n. [Zyme + - scope.] (Physiol.
 Chem.) An apparatus for determining the fermenting power of yeast by measuring the amount of carbonic acid evolved from a given quantity of sugar.


many small florets and their anthers united in a tube. The daisy, dandelion, and asters, are examples.

 Com*pos"ite (?; 277), a. [L. compositus made up of parts, p. p. of componere. See Compound, v. t., and cf. Compost.] 1.
 Made up of distinct parts or elements; compounded; as, a composite language.

 Happiness, like air and water... is composite. Landor.
2. (Arch.) Belonging to a certain order which is composed of the Ionic order grafted upon the Corinthian. It is called also the Roman or the Italic order, and is one of the five orders recognized by the Italian writers of the sixteenth century. See Capital.


: cf. F. inviter.
 See Vie.]

1. To ask; to request; to bid; to summon; to ask to do some act, or go to some place; esp., to ask to an entertainment or visit; to request the company of; as, to invite to dinner, or a wedding, or an excursion.

 So many guests invite as here are writ.

Shak.
 I invite his Grace of Castle Rackrent to reflect on this.

Carlyle.
2. To allure; to draw to; to tempt to come; to induce by pleasure or hope; to attract.

 To inveigle and invite the unwary sense.

Milton.
 Shady groves, that easy sleep invite.

Dryden.
 There no delusive hope invites despair.

Cowper.
3. To give occasion for; as, to invite criticism.

Syn. -- To solicit; bid; call; ask; summon; allure; attract; entice; persuade.

 In*vite", v. i. To give invitation. Milton.
 In*vite"ment (?), n. Invitation. [Obs.] Chapman.
 In*vit"er (?), n. One who, or that which, invites.

 In*vi"ti*ate (?), a. Not vitiated. Lowell.
 In*vit"ing (?), a. Alluring; tempting; as, an inviting amusement or prospect.

 Nothing is so easy and inviting as the retort of abuse and sarcasm.

W. Irving.
 -- In*vit"ing*ly, adv. -- In*vit"ing*ness, n. Jer.
 Taylor.
 In*vit"ri*fi'a*ble (?), a. Not admitting of being vitrified, or converted into glass. Kirwan.
 In"vo*cate (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Invocated (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Invocating (?).] [L. invocatus, p. p. of invocare.
 See Invoke.] To invoke; to call on, or for, in supplication; to implore.

 If Dagon be thy god, Go to his temple, invocate his aid.

Milton.
 In'vo*ca"tion (?), n. [F. invocation, L. invocatio.]

1. The act or form of calling for the assistance or presence of some superior being; earnest and solemn entreaty; esp., prayer offered to a divine being.

 Sweet invocation of a child; most pretty and pathetical!

Shak.
 The whole poem is a prayer to Fortune, and the invocation is divided between the two deities.

Addison.
2. (Law) A call or summons; especially, a judicial call, demand, or order; as, the invocation of papers or evidence into court.

 In"vo*ca*to*ry (?), a. Making or containing invocation; invoking.

 In"voice' (?), n. [F. envois things sent, goods forwarded, pl. of envoi a sending or things sent, fr. envoyer to send; cf. F. lettre d'envoi letter of advice of goods forwarded. See Envoy.]

1. (Com.) A written account of the particulars of merchandise shipped or sent to a purchaser, consignee, factor, etc., with the value or prices and charges annexed. Wharton.
2. The lot or set of goods as shipped or received; as, the merchant receives a large invoice of goods.

 In"voice', v. t. [imp. & p. p. Invoiced (?); p. pr.
 & vb. n. Invoicing (?).] To make a written list or account of, as goods to be sent to a consignee; to insert in a priced list; to write or enter in an invoice.

 Goods, wares, and merchandise imported from Norway, and invoiced in the current dollar of Norway.

Madison.
 In*voke" (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Invoked (?); p. pr.
 & vb. n. Invoking.] [F. invoquer, L. invocare; pref.
 inin, on + vocare to call, fr. vox voice. See Voice, and cf. Invocate.] To call on for aid or protection; to invite earnestly or solemnly; to summon; to address in prayer; to solicit or demand by invocation; to implore; as, to invoke the Supreme Being, or to invoke His and blessing.

 Go, my dread lord, to your great grandsire's tomb,... Invoke his warlike spirit.

Shak.
 In*vol"u*cel (?; 277), n. [Dim. of involucre, or involucrum: cf. F. involucelle.] (Bot.) A partial, secondary, or small involucre. See Illust. of Involucre.

 In'vo*lu"cel*late (?), a. (Bot.) Furnished with involucels.

 ||In'vo*lu*cel"lum (?), n.; pl. Involucella (#).
 [NL.] See Involucel.

 In'vo*lu"cral (?), a. [Cf. F. involucral.] Pertaining to, possessing, or like, an involucrum.

 { In'vo*lu"crate (?), In'vo*lu"cra*ted (?), } a. (Bot.)
 Having an involucre; involucred.

 In"vo*lu'cre (?; 277), n. [L. involucrum a covering, wrapper, fr. involvere to wrap up, envelop: cf. F. involucre.
 See Involve.] (Bot.) (a) A whorl or set of bracts around a flower, umbel, or head. (b) A continuous marginal covering of sporangia, in certain ferns, as in the common brake, or the cup-shaped processes of the filmy ferns. (c) The peridium or volva of certain fungi. Called also involucrum.

 In"vo*lu'cred (?), a. (Bot.) Having an involucre, as umbels, heads, etc. Martyn.
 In'vo*lu"cret (?), n. (Bot.) An involucel.

 ||In'vo*lu"crum (?), n.; pl. L. Involucra (#), E. Involucrums (#). [L. See Involucre.]

1. (Bot.) See Involucre.

2. (Zoöl.) A sheath which surrounds the base of the lasso cells in the Siphonophora.

 In*vol"un*ta*ri*ly (?), adv. [From Involuntary.] In an involuntary manner; not voluntarily; not intentionally or willingly.

 In*vol"un*ta*ri*ness (?), n. The quality or state of being involuntary; unwillingness; automatism.

 In*vol"un*ta*ry (?), a. [L. involuntarius. See Innot, and Voluntary.]

1. Not having will or the power of choice.

2. Not under the influence or control of the will; not voluntary; as, the involuntary movements of the body; involuntary muscle fibers.

3. Not proceeding from choice; done unwillingly; reluctant; compulsory; as, involuntary submission.

 { In"vo*lute (?), In"vo*lu'ted (?), } a. [L. involutus, p. p. of involvere. See Involve.] 1. (Bot.) Rolled inward from the edges; -- said of leaves in vernation, or of the petals of flowers in æstivation. Gray.
2. (Zoöl.) (a) Turned inward at the margin, as the exterior lip of the Cyprea. (b) Rolled inward spirally.

 In"vo*lute, n. (Geom.) A curve traced by the end of a string wound upon another curve, or unwound


ward.

 East, v. i. To move toward the east; to veer from the north or south toward the east; to orientate.

 Eas"ter (?), n. [AS. eáster, eástran, paschal feast, Easter; akin to G. ostern; fr. AS. Eástre, a goddess of light or spring, in honor of whom a festival was celebrated in April; whence this month was called in AS. Eástermnað.
 From the root of E. east. See East.] 1. An annual church festival commemorating Christ's resurrection, and occurring on Sunday, the second day after Good Friday. It corresponds to the pascha or passover of the Jews, and most nations still give it this name under the various forms of pascha, pasque, pâque, or pask.

2. The day on which the festival is observed; Easter day.

Easter is used either adjectively or as the first element of a compound; as, Easter day or Easter-day, Easter Sunday, Easter week, Easter gifts.

 Sundays by thee more glorious break, An Easter day in every week.

Keble.
Easter day, on which the rest of the movable feasts depend, is always the first Sunday after the fourteenth day of the calendar moon which (fourteenth day) falls on, or next after, the 21st of March, according to the rules laid down for the construction of the calendar; so that if the fourteenth day happen on a Sunday, Easter day is the Sunday after. Eng. Cyc.
Easter dues (Ch. of Eng.), money due to the clergy at Easter, formerly paid in communication of the tithe for personal labor and subject to exaction. For Easter dues, Easter offerings, voluntary gifts, have been substituted. -- Easter egg. (a) A painted or colored egg used as a present at Easter. (b) An imitation of an egg, in sugar or some fine material, sometimes made to serve as a box for jewelry or the like, used as an Easter present.

 East"er (?), v. i. (Naut.) To veer to the east; -- said of the wind. Russell.
 East"er*ling (?), n. [Cf. Sterling.] 1. A native of a country eastward of another; -- used, by the English, of traders or others from the coasts of the Baltic.

 Merchants of Norway, Denmark,... called... Easterlings because they lie east in respect of us.

Holinshed.
2. A piece of money coined in the east by Richard II. of England.
 Crabb.
3. (Zoöl.) The smew.

 East"er*ling, a. Relating to the money of the Easterlings, or Baltic traders. See Sterling.

 East"er*ly, a. 1. Coming from the east; as, it was easterly wind.

2. Situated, directed, or moving toward the east; as, the easterly side of a lake; an easterly course or voyage.

 East"er*ly, adv. Toward, or in the direction of, the east.

 East"ern (?), a. [AS. eástern.] 1. Situated or dwelling in the east; oriental; as, an eastern gate; Eastern countries.

Eastern churches first did Christ embrace.

Stirling.
2. Going toward the east, or in the direction of east; as, an eastern voyage.

Eastern Church. See Greek Church, under Greek.

 East"ern*most' (?), a. Most eastern.

 East" In"di*an (?; see Indian). Belonging to, or relating to, the East Indies. -- n. A native of, or a dweller in, the East Indies.

 East"ing, n. (Naut. & Surv.) The distance measured toward the east between two meridians drawn through the extremities of a course; distance of departure eastward made by a vessel.

 East'-in"su*lar (?), a. Relating to the Eastern Islands; East Indian. [R.] Ogilvie.
 { East"ward (?), East"wards (?), } adv. Toward the east; in the direction of east from some point or place; as, New Haven lies eastward from New York.

 Eas"y (z"), a. [Compar. Easier (-*r); superl.
 Easiest.] [OF. aisié, F. aisé, prop. p. p. of OF. aisier. See Ease, v. t.] 1. At ease; free from pain, trouble, or constraint; as: (a) Free from pain, distress, toil, exertion, and the like; quiet; as, the patient is easy. (b) Free from care, responsibility, discontent, and the like; not anxious; tranquil; as, an easy mind. (c) Free from constraint, harshness, or formality; unconstrained; smooth; as, easy manners; an easy style. "The easy vigor of a line." Pope.
2. Not causing, or attended with, pain or disquiet, or much exertion; affording ease or rest; as, an easy carriage; a ship having an easy motion; easy movements, as in dancing. "Easy ways to die." Shak.
3. Not difficult; requiring little labor or effort; slight; inconsiderable; as, an easy task; an easy victory.

 It were an easy leap.

Shak.
4. Causing ease; giving freedom from care or labor; furnishing comfort; commodious; as, easy circumstances; an easy chair or cushion.

5. Not making resistance or showing unwillingness; tractable; yielding; complying; ready.

 He gained their easy hearts.

Dryden.
 He is too tyrannical to be an easy monarch.

Sir W. Scott.
6. Moderate; sparing; frugal. [Obs.] Chaucer.
7. (Com.) Not straitened as to money matters; as, the market is easy; -- opposed to tight.

Honors are easy (Card Playing), said when each side has an equal number of honors, in which case they are not counted as points.

Syn. -- Quiet; comfortable; manageable; tranquil; calm; facile; unconcerned.

 Eas"y-chair' (z"*châr'), n. An armchair for ease or repose.
 "Laugh... in Rabelais' easy-chair." Pope.
 Eas"y-go'ing (-g'ng), a. Moving easily; hence, mild-tempered; ease-loving; inactive.

 Eat (t), v. t. [imp. Ate (t; 277), Obsolescent & Colloq.
 Eat (t); p. p. Eaten (t"'n), Obs. or Colloq. Eat (t); p. pr.
 & vb. n. Eating.] [OE. eten, AS. etan; akin to OS.
 etan, OFries. eta, D. eten, OHG. ezzan, G. essen, Icel. eta, Sw. äta, Dan. æde, Goth. itan, Ir. & Gael. ith, W. ysu, L. edere, Gr. 'e'dein, Skr. ad. √6. Cf. Etch, Fret to rub, Edible.] 1. To chew and swallow as food; to devour; -- said especially of food not liquid; as, to eat bread. "To eat grass as oxen." Dan.
 iv. 25.
 They... ate the sacrifices of the dead.

Ps. cvi. 28.
 The lean... did eat up the first seven fat kine.

Gen. xli. 20.
 The lion had not eaten the carcass.

1 Kings xiii. 28.
 With stories told of many a feat, How fairy Mab the junkets eat.

Milton.
 The island princes overbold Have


UNCLE JOSH'S PUNKIN CENTRE STORIES By Cal Stewart Preface To the Reader.

 The one particular object in writing this book is to furnish you with an occasional laugh, and the writer with an occasional dollar. If you get the laugh you have your equivalent, and the writer has his.

 In Uncle Josh Weathersby you have a purely imaginary character, yet one true to life. A character chuck full of sunshine and rural simplicity.
 Take him as you find him, and in his experiences you will observe there is a bright side to everything.

 Sincerely Yours Cal Stewart CONTENTS Preface Life Sketch of Author My Old Yaller Almanac Uncle Josh Weathersby's Arrival in New York Uncle Josh in Society Uncle Josh in a Chinese Laundry Uncle Josh in a Museum Uncle Josh in Wall Street Uncle Josh and the Fire Department Uncle Josh in an Auction Room Uncle Josh on a Fifth Ave. 'Bus Uncle Josh in a Department Store Uncle Josh's Comments on the Signs Seen in New York Uncle Josh on a Street Car My Fust Pair of Copper Toed Boots Uncle Josh in Police Court Uncle Josh at Coney Island Uncle Josh at the Opera Uncle Josh at Delmonico's It is Fall Si Pettingill's Brooms Uncle Josh Plays Golf Jim Lawson's Hogs Uncle Josh and the Lightning Rod Agent A Meeting of the Annanias Club Jim Lawson's Hoss Trade A Meeting of the School Directors The Weekly Paper at Punkin Centre Uncle Josh at a Camp Meeting The Unveiling of the Organ Uncle Josh Plays a Game of Base Ball The Punkin Centre and Paw Paw Valley Railroad Uncle Josh on a Bicycle A Baptizin' at the Hickory Corners Church Reminiscence of My Railroad Days Uncle Josh at a Circus Uncle Josh Invites the City Folks to Visit Him Yosemite Jim, or a Tale of the Great White Death Uncle Josh Weathersby's Trip to Boston Who Marched in Sixty-One Life Sketch of Author THE author was born in Virginia, on a little patch of land, so poor we had to fertilize it to make brick. Our family, while having cast their fortunes with the South, was not a family ruined by the war; we did not have anything when the war commenced, and so we held our own. I secured a common school education, and at the age of twelve I left home, or rather home left me—things just petered out. I was slush cook on an Ohio River Packet; check clerk in a stave and heading camp in the knobs of Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia; I helped lay the track of the M. K. & T. R. R., and was chambermaid in a livery stable. Made my first appearance on the stage at the National Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio, and have since then chopped cord wood, worked in a coal mine, made cross ties (and walked them), worked on a farm, taught a district school (made love to the big girls), run a threshing machine, cut bands, fed the machine and ran the engine. Have been a freight and passenger brakeman, fired and ran a locomotive; also a freight train conductor and check clerk in a freight house; worked on the section; have been a shot gun messenger for the Wells, Fargo Company. Have been with a circus, minstrels, farce comedy, burlesque and dramatic productions; have been with good shows, bad shows, medicine shows, and worse, and some shows where we had landlords singing in the chorus. Have played variety houses and vaudeville houses; have slept in a box car one night, and a swell hotel the next; have been a traveling salesman (could spin as many yarns as any of them). For the past four years have made the Uncle Josh stories for the talking machine. The Lord only knows what next!

 My Old Yaller Almanac Uncle Josh Weathersby's Arrival in New York WALL, fer a long time I had my mind made up that I'd cum down to New York, and so a short time ago, as I had my crops all gathered in and produce sold I calculated as how it would be a good time to come down here. Folks at home said I'd be buncoed or have my pockets picked fore I'd bin here mor'n half an hour; wall, I fooled 'em a little bit, I wuz here three days afore they buncoed me. I spose as how there are a good many of them thar bunco fellers around New York, but I tell you them thar street keer conductors take mighty good care on you. I wuz ridin' along in one of them keers, had my pockit book right in my hand, I alowed no feller would pick my pockits and git it long as I had it in my hand, and it shet up tight as a barrel when the cider's workin'. Wall that conductor feller he jest kept his eye on me, and every little bit he'd put his head in the door and say "hold fast." But I'm transgressin' from what I started to tell ye. I wuz ridin' along in one of them sleepin' keers comin' here, and along in the night some time I felt a feller rummagin' around under my bed, and I looked out jest in time to see him goin' away with my boots, wall I knowed the way that train wuz a runnin' he couldn't git off with them without breakin' his durned neck, but in about half an hour he brot them back, guess they didn't fit him. Wall I wuz sort of glad he took em cause he hed em all shined up slicker 'n a new tin whistle. Wall when I got up in the mornin' my trubbles commenced. I wuz so crouded up like, durned if I could git my clothes on, and when I did git em on durned if my pants wa'nt on hind side afore, and my socks got all tangled up in that little fish net along side of the bed and I couldn't git em out, and I lost a bran new collar button that I traded Si Pettingill a huskin' peg fer, and I got my right boot on my left foot and the left one on the right foot, and I wuz so durned badly mixed up I didn't know which way the train wuz a runnin', and I bumped my head on the roof of the bed over me, and then sot down right suddin like to think it over when some feller cum along and stepped right squar on my bunion and I let out a war whoop you could a heerd over in the next county. Wall, along cum that durned porter and told me I wuz a wakin' up everybody in the keer. Then I started in to hunt fer my collar button, cause I sot a right smart store by that button, thar warns another one like it in Punkin Centre, and I thought it would be kind of doubtful if they'd have any like it in New York, wall I see one stuck right in the wall so I tried to git it out with my jack knife, when along came that durned black jumpin' jack dressed in soldier clothes and ast me what I wanted, and I told him I didn't want anything perticler, then he told me to quit ringin' the bell, guess he wuz a little crazy, I didn't see no bell. Wall, finally I got my clothes on and went into a room whar they had a row of little troughs to wash in, and fast as I could pump water in the durned thing it run out of a little


, usually of elongated form, extending downward in a vein. Raymond.
Chimney board, a board or screen used to close a fireplace; a fireboard. -- Chimney cap, a device to improve the draught of a chimney, by presenting an exit aperture always to leeward. -- Chimney corner, the space between the sides of the fireplace and the fire; hence, the fireside. -- Chimney hook, a hook for holding pats and kettles over a fire, -- Chimney money, hearth money, a duty formerly paid in England for each chimney. -- Chimney pot (Arch.), a cylinder of earthenware or sheet metal placed at the top of a chimney which rises above the roof. -- Chimney swallow. (Zoöl.)
(a) An American swift (Chæture pelasgica) which lives in chimneys. (b) In England, the common swallow (Hirundo rustica).
 -- Chimney sweep, Chimney sweeper, one who cleans chimneys of soot; esp. a boy who climbs the flue, and brushes off the soot.

 Chim"ney-breast' (?), n. (Arch.) The horizontal projection of a chimney from the wall in which it is built; -- commonly applied to its projection in the inside of a building only.

 Chim"ney-piece' (?), n. (Arch.) A decorative construction around the opening of a fireplace.

 Chim*pan"zee (chm*pn"z; 277), n. [From the native name: cf. F. chimpanzé, chimpansé, chimpanzée.] (Zoöl.) An african ape (Anthropithecus troglodytes or Troglodytes niger) which approaches more nearly to man, in most respects, than any other ape.
 When full grown, it is from three to four feet high.

 Chin (chn), n. [AS. cin, akin to OS. kin, G kinn, Icel. kinn, cheek, Dan. & Sw. kind, L. gena, Gr. &?;; cf. Skr. hanu. √232.] 1. The lower extremity of the face below the mouth; the point of the under jaw.

2. (Zoöl.) The exterior or under surface embraced between the branches of the lower jaw bone, in birds.

 Chi"na (?), n. 1. A country in Eastern Asia.

2. China ware, which is the modern popular term for porcelain. See Porcelain.

China aster (Bot.), a well-known garden flower and plant.
 See Aster. -- China bean. See under Bean, 1. -- China clay See Kaolin. -- China grass, Same as Ramie. -- China ink. See India ink. -- China pink (Bot.), an anual or biennial species of Dianthus (D. Chiensis) having variously colored single or double flowers; Indian pink. -- China root (Med.), the rootstock of a species of Smilax (S. China, from the East Indies; -- formerly much esteemed for the purposes that sarsaparilla is now used for. Also the galanga root (from Alpinia Gallanga and Alpinia officinarum). -- China rose. (Bot.) (a) A popular name for several free-blooming varieties of rose derived from the Rosa Indica, and perhaps other species. (b) A flowering hothouse plant (Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis) of the Mallow family, common in the gardens of China and the east Indies. -- China shop, a shop or store for the sale of China ware or of crockery. -- China ware, porcelain; -- so called in the 17th century because brought from the far East, and differing from the pottery made in Europe at that time; also, loosely, crockery in general. -- Pride of China, China tree. (Bot.) See Azedarach.

 Chin*al"dine (?), n. [NL. chinium quinine + aldehyde.]
 (Chem.) See Quinaldine.

 Chi"na*man (?), n.; pl. Chinamen (&?;). A native of China; a Chinese.

 Chin"ca*pin (?), n. See Chinquapin.

 Chinch (?), n. [Cf. Sp. chinche, fr. L. cimex.] 1. (Zoöl.)
 The bedbug (Cimex lectularius).

2. (Zoöl.) A bug (Blissus leucopterus), which, in the United States, is very destructive to grass, wheat, and other grains; -- also called chiniz, chinch bug, chink bug.
 It resembles the bedbug in its disgusting odor.

 Chin"cha (?), n. [Cf. Chinchilla.] (Zoöl.) A south American rodent of the genus Lagotis.

 Chinche (?), a. [F. chiche miserly.] Parsimonious; niggardly. [Obs.] Chaucer.
 Chinch"er*ie (?), n. Penuriousness. [Obs.]

 By cause of his skarsete and chincherie. Caucer.
 Chin*chil"la (?), n. [Sp.] 1. (Zoöl.) A small rodent (Chinchilla lanigera), of the size of a large squirrel, remarkable for its fine fur, which is very soft and of a pearly gray color. It is a native of Peru and Chili.

2. The fur of the chinchilla.

3. A heavy, long-napped, tufted woolen cloth.

 { Chin*cho"na (?), Chin*co"na (?). }See Cinchona.

 Chin" cough" (?). [For chink cough; cf. As. cincung long laughter, Scot. kink a violent fit of coughing, akin to MHG. kchen to pant. Cf. Kinknaust, Cough.] Whooping cough.

 Chine (?), n. [Cf. Chink.] A chink or cleft; a narrow and deep ravine; as, Shanklin Chine in the Isle of Wight, a quarter of a mile long and 230 feet deep. [Prov. Eng.] "The cottage in a chine."
 J. Ingelow.
 Chine (?), n.[OF. eschine, F. échine, fr. OHG.
 skina needle, prickle, shin, G. schiene splint, schienbein shin. For the meaning cf. L. spina thorn, prickle, or spine, the backbone. Cf. Shin.] 1. The backbone or spine of an animal; the back. "And chine with rising bristles roughly spread." Dryden.
2. A piece of the backbone of an animal, with the adjoining parts, cut for cooking. [See Illust. of Beef.]

3. The edge or rim of a cask, etc., formed by the projecting ends of the staves; the chamfered end of a stave.

 Chine, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Chined (?).] 1. To cut through the backbone of; to cut into chine pieces.

2. Too chamfer the ends of a stave and form the chine.. Chined (?), a. 1. Pertaining to, or having, a chine, or backbone; -- used in composition. Beau. & Fl.
2. Broken in the back. [Obs.]

 He's chined, goodman. Beau. & Fl.
 Chi"nese" (?), a. Of or pertaining to China; peculiar to China.

Chinese paper. See India paper, under India. -- Chinese wax, a snowy-white, waxlike substance brought from China. It is the bleached secretion of certain insects of the family Coccidæ especially Coccus Sinensis.

 Chi*nese", n. sing. & pl. 1. A native or natives of China, or one of that yellow race with oblique eyel


THE LAMP AND THE BELL A Drama In Five Acts By Edna St. Vincent Millay Written on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Vassar College Alumnae Association Dedicated to '1917' PROLOGUE ACT I ACT II ACT III ACT IV ACT V PROLOGUE ACT I ACT II ACT III ACT IV ACT V Scene 2 [The court-room in the palace at Fiori, extremely crowded with restless and expectant people. The crowd is arranged on both sides of the stage, in such a way that a broad avenue is left in the middle, leading from the footlights to the back of the stage and gradually narrowing to a point at Beatrice's throne. On the extreme right and left of the stage, along the back of the crowd, stands the guard, a large body of armed soldiers, at attention, in double row. On either side the throne stands an armed soldier. As the curtain rises the court is all standing and looking off stage in a certain direction. Enter the Queen, Beatrice, from that direction, walks in, looking straight ahead, goes to the throne and seats herself. The court sits. The clerk begins to read.]


2. A calk on a shoe. See Calk, n., 1.

 Calk"in (?), n. A calk on a shoe. See Calk, n., 1.

 Calk"ing (?), n. The act or process of making seems tight, as in ships, or of furnishing with calks, as a shoe, or copying, as a drawing.

Calking iron, a tool like a chisel, used in calking ships, tightening seams in ironwork, etc.

 Their left hand does the calking iron guide. Dryden.
 Call (kl), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Called (kld); p. pr.
 & vb. n. Calling] [OE. callen, AS. ceallian; akin to Icel. & Sw. kalla, Dan. kalde, D. kallen to talk, prate, OHG. kalln to call; cf. Gr. ghry'ein to speak, sing, Skr. gar to praise. Cf. Garrulous.] 1. To command or request to come or be present; to summon; as, to call a servant.

Call hither Clifford; bid him come amain Shak.
2. To summon to the discharge of a particular duty; to designate for an office, or employment, especially of a religious character; -- often used of a divine summons; as, to be called to the ministry; sometimes, to invite; as, to call a minister to be the pastor of a church.

 Paul... called to be an apostle Rom. i. 1.
 The Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. Acts xiii. 2.
3. To invite or command to meet; to convoke; -- often with together; as, the President called Congress together; to appoint and summon; as, to call a meeting of the Board of Aldermen.

 Now call we our high court of Parliament. Shak.
4. To give name to; to name; to address, or speak of, by a specifed name.

 If you would but call me Rosalind. Shak.
 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. Gen. i. 5.
5. To regard or characterize as of a certain kind; to denominate; to designate.

 What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. Acts x. 15.
6. To state, or estimate, approximately or loosely; to characterize without strict regard to fact; as, they call the distance ten miles; he called it a full day's work.

 [The] army is called seven hundred thousand men. Brougham.
7. To show or disclose the class, character, or nationality of.
 [Obs.]

 This speech calls him Spaniard. Beau. & Fl.
8. To utter in a loud or distinct voice; -- often with off; as, to call, or call off, the items of an account; to call the roll of a military company.

 No parish clerk who calls the psalm so clear. Gay.
9. To invoke; to appeal to.

 I call God for a witness. 2 Cor. i. 23 [Rev. Ver. ]
10. To rouse from sleep; to awaken.

 If thou canst awake by four o' the clock. I prithee call me.
 Sleep hath seized me wholly. Shak.
To call a bond, to give notice that the amount of the bond will be paid. -- To call a party (Law), to cry aloud his name in open court, and command him to come in and perform some duty requiring his presence at the time on pain of what may befall him. -- To call back, to revoke or retract; to recall; to summon back. -- To call down, to pray for, as blessing or curses. -- To call forth, to bring or summon to action; as, to call forth all the faculties of the mind.
 -- To call in, (a) To collect; as, to call in debts or money; ar to withdraw from cirulation; as, to call in uncurrent coin. (b) To summon to one's side; to invite to come together; as, to call in neighbors. -- To call (any one) names, to apply contemptuous names (to any one). -- To call off, to summon away; to divert; as, to call off the attention; to call off workmen from their employment. -- To call out. (a) To summon to fight; to challenge. (b) To summon into service; as, to call out the militia. -- To call over, to recite separate particulars in order, as a roll of names. -- To call to account, to demand explanation of. -- To call to mind, to recollect; to revive in memory. -- To call to order, to request to come to order; as: (a) A public meeting, when opening it for business. (b) A person, when he is transgressing the rules of debate. -- To call to the bar, to admit to practice in courts of law. -- To call up. (a) To bring into view or recollection; as to call up the image of deceased friend. (b) To bring into action or discussion; to demand the consideration of; as, to call up a bill before a legislative body.

Syn. -- To name; denominate; invite; bid; summon; convoke; assemble; collect; exhort; warn; proclaim; invoke; appeal to; designate.
 -- To Call, Convoke, Summon. Call is the generic term; as, to call a public meeting. To convoke is to require the assembling of some organized body of men by an act of authority; as, the king convoked Parliament. To summon is to require attendance by an act more or less stringent anthority; as, to summon a witness.

 Call, v. i. 1. To speak in loud voice; to cry out; to address by name; -- sometimes with to.

 You must call to the nurse. Shak.
 The angel of God called to Hagar. Gen. xxi. 17.
2. To make a demand, requirement, or request.

 They called for rooms, and he showed them one. Bunyan.
3. To make a brief visit; also, to stop at some place designated, as for orders.

 He ordered her to call at the house once a week. Temple.
To call for (a) To demand; to require; as, a crime calls for punishment; a survey, grant, or deed calls for the metes and bounds, or the quantity of land, etc., which it describes. (b) To give an order for; to request. "Whenever the coach stopped, the sailor called for more ale." Marryat. -- To call on, To call upon, (a) To make a short visit to; as, call on a friend. (b) To appeal to; to invite; to request earnestly; as, to call upon a person to make a speech. (c) To solicit payment, or make a demand, of a debt. (d) To invoke or play to; to worship; as, to call upon God. -- To call out To call or utter loudly; to brawl.

 Call (?), n. 1. The act of calling; -- usually with the voice, but often otherwise, as by signs, the sound of some instrument, or by writing; a summons; an entreaty; an invitation; as, a call for help; the bugle's call. "Call of the trumpet." Shak.
 I rose as at thy call, but found thee not. Milton.
2. A signal, as on a drum, bugle, trumpet, or pipe, to summon soldiers or sailors to duty.

3. (Eccl.) An invitation to take charge of or serve a church as its pastor.

4. A requirement or appeal arising from the circumstances of the case; a moral requirement or appeal.

 Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity. Addison.
 Running into danger without any


C. C. (s) 1. C is the third letter of the English alphabet. It is from the Latin letter C, which in old Latin represented the sounds of k, and g (in go); its original value being the latter. In Anglo-Saxon words, or Old English before the Norman Conquest, it always has the sound of k. The Latin C was the same letter as the Greek, γ, and came from the Greek alphabet. The Greeks got it from the Phœnicians.
 The English name of C is from the Latin name ce, and was derived, probably, through the French. Etymologically C is related to g, h, k, q, s (and other sibilant sounds). Examples of these relations are in L. acutus, E. acute, ague; E. acrid, eager, vinegar; L. cornu, E. horn; E. cat, kitten; E. coy, quiet; L. circare, OF. cerchier, E. search.

 See Guide to Pronunciation, §§ 221-228.

2. (Mus.) (a) The keynote of the normal or "natural" scale, which has neither flats nor sharps in its signature; also, the third note of the relative minor scale of the same. (b) C after the clef is the mark of common time, in which each measure is a semibreve (four fourths or crotchets); for alla breve time it is written &?;. (c) The "C clef," a modification of the letter C, placed on any line of the staff, shows that line to be middle C.

3. As a numeral, C stands for Latin centum or 100, CC for 200, etc.

C spring, a spring in the form of the letter C.

 ||Ca*a"ba (k*"b), n. [Ar. ka'bah, lit., a square building, fr. ka'b cube.] The small and nearly cubical stone building, toward which all Mohammedans must pray. [Written also kaaba.]

 The Caaba is situated in Mecca, a city of Arabia, and contains a famous black stone said to have been brought from heaven. Before the time of Mohammed, the Caaba was an idolatrous temple, but it has since been the chief sanctuary and object of pilgrimage of the Mohammedan world.

 Caas (käs), n. sing. & pl. Case. [Obs.] Chaucer.
 Cab (kb), n. [Abbrev. fr. cabriolet.] 1. A kind of close carriage with two or four wheels, usually a public vehicle. "A cab came clattering up." Thackeray.
 A cab may have two seats at right angles to the driver's seat, and a door behind; or one seat parallel to the driver's, with the entrance from the side or front.

Hansom cab. See Hansom.

2. The covered part of a locomotive, in which the engineer has his station. Knight.
 Cab (kb), n. [Heb. qab, fr. qbab to hollow.] A Hebrew dry measure, containing a little over two (2.37) pints. W. H. Ward.
2 Kings vi. 25.
 Ca*bal" (k*bl"), n. [F. cabale cabal, cabala, LL. cabala cabala, fr. Heb. qabblh reception, tradition, mysterious doctrine, fr. qbal to take or receive, in Piël qibbel to adopt (a doctrine).] 1. Tradition; occult doctrine. See Cabala [Obs.] Hakewill.
2. A secret. [Obs.] "The measuring of the temple, a cabal found out but lately." B. Jonson.
3. A number of persons united in some close design, usually to promote their private views and interests in church or state by intrigue; a secret association composed of a few designing persons; a junto.

 It so happend, by a whimsical coincidence, that in 1671 the cabinet consisted of five persons, the initial letters of whose names made up the word cabal; Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. Macaulay.
4. The secret artifices or machinations of a few persons united in a close design; intrigue.

 By cursed cabals of women. Dryden.
Syn. -- Junto; intrigue; plot; combination; conspiracy. -- Cabal, Combination, Faction. An association for some purpose considered to be bad is the idea common to these terms. A combination is an organized union of individuals for mutual support, in urging their demands or resisting the claims of others, and may be good or bad according to circumstances; as, a combiniation of workmen or of employers to effect or to prevent a change in prices. A cabal is a secret association of a few individuals who seek by cunning practices to obtain office and power. A faction is a larger body than a cabal, employed for selfish purposes in agitating the community and working up an excitement with a view to change the existing order of things.
 "Selfishness, insubordination, and laxity of morals give rise to combinations, which belong particularly to the lower orders of society. Restless, jealous, ambitious, and little minds are ever forming cabals. Factions belong especially to free governments, and are raised by busy and turbulent spirits for selfish purposes". Crabb.
 Ca*bal", v. i. [imp. & p. p. Caballed (-bld"); p. pr.
 & vb. n. Caballing]. [Cf. F. cabaler.] To unite in a small party to promote private views and interests by intrigue; to intrigue; to plot.

Caballing still against it with the great. Dryden.
 Cab"a*la (kb"*l), n. [LL. See Cabal, n.] 1. A kind of occult theosophy or traditional interpretation of the Scriptures among Jewish rabbis and certain mediæval Christians, which treats of the nature of god and the mystery of human existence. It assumes that every letter, word, number, and accent of Scripture contains a hidden sense; and it teaches the methods of interpretation for ascertaining these occult meanings. The cabalists pretend even to foretell events by this means.

2. Secret science in general; mystic art; mystery.

 Cab"a*lism (kb"*lz'm), n. [Cf. F. cabalisme.]

1. The secret science of the cabalists.

2. A superstitious devotion to the mysteries of the religion which one professes. [R] Emerson.
 Cab"a*list (-lst), n. [Cf. F. cabaliste.] One versed in the cabala, or the mysteries of Jewish traditions. "Studious cabalists." Swift.
 { Cab'a*lis"tic (kb'*ls"tk), Cab'a*lis"tic*al (-t*kal) } a. Of or pertaining to the cabala; containing or conveying an occult meaning; mystic.

 The Heptarchus is a cabalistic exposition of the first chapter of Genesis . Hallam.
 Cab'a*lis"tic*al*ly, adv. In a cabalistic manner.

 Cab"a*lize (?), v. i. [Cf. F. cabaliser.] To use cabalistic language. [R] Dr. H. More.
 Ca*bal"ler (k*bl"lr), n. One who cabals.

 A close caballer and tongue-valiant lord. Dryden.
 Cab"al*line (kb"al*ln), a. [L. caballinus, fr. caballus a nag. Cf. Cavalier.] Of or pertaining to a horse. -- n. Caballine aloes.

Caballine aloes, an inferior and impure kind of aloes formerly used in veterinary practice; -- called also horse aloes. -- Caballine spring, the fountain of Hipp


for keeping money or other valuables. Chaucer.
 In ivory coffers I have stuffed my crowns. Shak.
2. Fig.: Treasure or funds; -- usually in the plural.

 He would discharge it without any burden to the queen's coffers, for honor sake. Bacon.
 Hold, here is half my coffer. Shak.
3. (Arch.) A panel deeply recessed in the ceiling of a vault, dome, or portico; a caisson.

4. (Fort.) A trench dug in the bottom of a dry moat, and extending across it, to enable the besieged to defend it by a raking fire.

5. The chamber of a canal lock; also, a caisson or a cofferdam.

Coffer dam. (Engin.) See Cofferdam, in the Vocabulary. -- Coffer fish. (Zoöl.) See Cowfish.

 Cof"fer, v. t. 1. To put into a coffer. Bacon.
2. (Mining.) To secure from leaking, as a shaft, by ramming clay behind the masonry or timbering. Raymond.
3. To form with or in a coffer or coffers; to furnish with a coffer or coffers.

 Cof"fer*dam (?), n. A watertight inclosure, as of piles packed with clay, from which the water is pumped to expose the bottom (of a river, etc.) and permit the laying of foundations, building of piers, etc.

 Cof"fer*er (?), n. One who keeps treasures in a coffer. [R.]

 Cof"fer*work' (?), n. (Masonry) Rubblework faced with stone.
 Knight.
 Cof"fin (?; 115), n. [OE., a basket, receptacle, OF. cofin, fr. L. cophinus. See Coffer, n.] 1. The case in which a dead human body is inclosed for burial.

 They embalmed him [Joseph], and he was put in a coffin. Gen.
 1. 26.
2. A basket. [Obs.] Wyclif (matt. xiv. 20).
3. A casing or crust, or a mold, of pastry, as for a pie.

 Of the paste a coffin I will rear. Shak.
4. A conical paper bag, used by grocers. [Obs.] Nares.
5. (Far.) The hollow crust or hoof of a horse's foot, below the coronet, in which is the coffin bone.

Coffin bone, the foot bone of the horse and allied animals, inclosed within the hoof, and corresponding to the third phalanx of the middle finger, or toe, of most mammals. -- Coffin joint, the joint next above the coffin bone.

 Cof"fin, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Coffined (?); p. pr.
 & vb. n. Coffining.] To inclose in, or as in, a coffin.

 Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffined home? Shak.
 Devotion is not coffined in a cell. John Hall (1646).
 Cof"fin*less, a. Having no coffin.

 Cof"fle (?; 115), n. [Ar. kafala caravan.] A gang of negro slaves being driven to market.

 Cog (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Cogged (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Cogging.] [Cf. W. coegio to make void, to beceive, from coeg empty, vain, foolish. Cf. Coax, v. t.]

1. To seduce, or draw away, by adulation, artifice, or falsehood; to wheedle; to cozen; to cheat. [R.]

 I'll... cog their hearts from them. Shak.
2. To obtrude or thrust in, by falsehood or deception; as, to cog in a word; to palm off. [R.]

 Fustian tragedies... have, by concerted applauses, been cogged upon the town for masterpieces. J. Dennis To cog a die, to load so as to direct its fall; to cheat in playing dice. Swift.
 Cog (?), v. i. To deceive; to cheat; to play false; to lie; to wheedle; to cajole.

 For guineas in other men's breeches, Your gamesters will palm and will cog. Swift.
 Cog, n. A trick or deception; a falsehood. Wm. Watson.
 Cog, n. [Cf. Sw. kugge a cog, or W. cocos the cogs of a wheel.] 1. (Mech.) A tooth, cam, or catch for imparting or receiving motion, as on a gear wheel, or a lifter or wiper on a shaft; originally, a separate piece of wood set in a mortise in the face of a wheel.

2. (Carp.) (a) A kind of tenon on the end of a joist, received into a notch in a bearing timber, and resting flush with its upper surface. (b) A tenon in a scarf joint; a coak. Knight.
3. (Mining.) One of the rough pillars of stone or coal left to support the roof of a mine.

 Cog, v. t. To furnish with a cog or cogs.

Cogged breath sound (Auscultation), a form of interrupted respiration, in which the interruptions are very even, three or four to each inspiration. Quain.
 Cog, n. [OE. cogge; cf. D. kog, Icel. kuggr Cf. Cock a boat.] A small fishing boat. Ham. Nav. Encyc.
 Co"gen*cy (?), n. [See Cogent.] The quality of being cogent; power of compelling conviction; conclusiveness; force.

 An antecedent argument of extreme cogency. J. H. Newman.
 Co*ge"ni*al (?), a. Congenial. [Obs.]

 Co"gent (k"jnt), a. [L. cogens, p. pr. of cogere to drive together, to force; co- + agere to drive. See Agent, a., and cf. Coact to force, Coagulate, p. a.] 1.
 Compelling, in a physical sense; powerful. [Obs.]

 The cogent force of nature. Prior.
2. Having the power to compel conviction or move the will; constraining; conclusive; forcible; powerful; not easily reasisted.

 No better nor more cogent reason. Dr. H. More.
 Proofs of the most cogent description. Tyndall.
 The tongue whose strains were cogent as commands, Revered at home, and felt in foreign lands. Cowper.
Syn. -- Forcible; powerful; potent; urgent; strong; persuasive; convincing; conclusive; influential.

 Co"gent*ly, adv. In a cogent manner; forcibly; convincingly; conclusively. Locke.
 Cog"ger (kg"gr), n. [From Cog to wheedle.] A flatterer or deceiver; a sharper.

 Cog"ger*y, n. Trick; deception. Bp. Watson.
 Cog"gle (?), n. [See Cog small boat.] A small fishing boat. Ham.
 Nav. Encyc.
 Cog"gle, n. [Cf. Cobble a cobblestone.] A cobblestone. [Prov. Eng.]
 Halliwell.
 Cog'i*ta*bil"i*ty (?), n. The quality of being cogitable; conceivableness.

 Cog"i*ta*ble (?), a. [L. cogitabilis, fr. cogitare to think.] Capable of being brought before the mind as a thought or idea; conceivable; thinkable.

 Creation is cogitable by us only as a putting forth of divine power. Sir W. Hamilton.
 Cog"i*ta*bund' (?), a.


.

5. (Scots Law) A writ issuing from the chancery, directed to any judge ordinary, commanding and authorizing that judge to call a jury to inquire into the case, and upon their verdict to pronounce sentence.

6. A letter patent, from proper authority, authorizing a collection or charitable contribution of money in churches, for any public or private purpose. [Eng.]

Apostolical brief, a letter of the pope written on fine parchment in modern characters, subscribed by the secretary of briefs, dated "a die Nativitatis," i. e., "from the day of the Nativity," and sealed with the ring of the fisherman. It differs from a bull, in its parchment, written character, date, and seal. See Bull. -- Brief of title, an abstract or abridgment of all the deeds and other papers constituting the chain of title to any real estate. -- In brief, in a few words; in short; briefly. "Open the matter in brief." Shak.
 Brief, v. t. To make an abstract or abridgment of; to shorten; as, to brief pleadings.

 Brief"less (&?;), a. Having no brief; without clients; as, a briefless barrister.

 Brief"ly (&?;), adv. Concisely; in few words.

 Brief"man (&?;), n. 1. One who makes a brief.

2. A copier of a manuscript.

 Brief"ness (&?;), n. The quality of being brief; brevity; conciseness in discourse or writing.

 { Bri"er, Bri"ar } (&?;), n. [OE. brere, brer, AS. brr, brær; cf. Ir. briar prickle, thorn, brier, pin, Gael. preas bush, brier, W. prys, prysg.]
 1. A plant with a slender woody stem bearing stout prickles; especially, species of Rosa, Rubus, and Smilax.

2. Fig.: Anything sharp or unpleasant to the feelings.

 The thorns and briers of reproof. Cowper.
Brier root, the root of the southern Smilax laurifolia and S. Walteri; -- used for tobacco pipes. -- Cat brier, Green brier, several species of Smilax (S. rotundifolia, etc.) -- Sweet brier (Rosa rubiginosa). See Sweetbrier. - - Yellow brier, the Rosa Eglantina.

 Bri"ered (&?;), a. Set with briers. Chatterton.
 Bri"er*y (&?;), a. Full of briers; thorny.

 Bri"er*y, n. A place where briers grow. Huloet.
 Brig (brg), n. A bridge. [Scot.] Burns.
 Brig, n. [Shortened from Brigantine.] (Naut.) A two-masted, square-rigged vessel.

Hermaphrodite brig, a two-masted vessel squarerigged forward and schooner-rigged aft. See Illustration in Appendix.

 Bri*gade" (&?;), n. [F. brigade, fr. It. brigata troop, crew, brigade, originally, a contending troop, fr. briga trouble, quarrel. See Brigand.] 1. (Mil.) A body of troops, whether cavalry, artillery, infantry, or mixed, consisting of two or more regiments, under the command of a brigadier general.

 Two or more brigades constitute a division, commanded by a major general; two or more divisions constitute an army corps, or corps d'armée.
 [U.S.]

2. Any body of persons organized for acting or marching together under authority; as, a fire brigade.

Brigade inspector, an officer whose duty is to inspect troops in companies before they are mustered into service. -- Brigade major, an officer who may be attached to a brigade to assist the brigadier in his duties.

 Bri*gade", v. t. [imp. & p. p. Brigaded; p. pr. & vb. n. Brigading.] (Mil.) To form into a brigade, or into brigades.

 Brig'a*dier" gen"er*al (&?;). [F. brigadier, fr. brigade.]
 (Mil.) An officer in rank next above a colonel, and below a major general. He commands a brigade, and is sometimes called, by a shortening of his title, simple a brigadier.

 Brig"and (brg"and), n. [F. brigand, OF. brigant light-armed soldier, fr. LL. brigans light-armed soldier (cf. It.
 brigante.) fr. brigare to strive, contend, fr. briga quarrel; prob. of German origin, and akin to E. break; cf. Goth. brikan to break, brakja strife. Cf. Brigue.] 1. A light-armed, irregular foot soldier. [Obs.]

2. A lawless fellow who lives by plunder; one of a band of robbers; especially, one of a gang living in mountain retreats; a highwayman; a freebooter.

 Giving them not a little the air of brigands or banditti. Jeffery.
 Brig"and*age (-j), n. [F. brigandage.] Life and practice of brigands; highway robbery; plunder.

 Brig"an*dine (&?;), n. [F. brigandine (cf. It. brigantina), fr. OF. brigant. See Brigand.] A coast of armor for the body, consisting of scales or plates, sometimes overlapping each other, generally of metal, and sewed to linen or other material. It was worn in the Middle Ages. [Written also brigantine.] Jer. xlvi. 4.
 Then put on all thy gorgeous arms, thy helmet, And brigandine of brass. Milton.
 Brig"and*ish (&?;), a. Like a brigand or freebooter; robberlike.

 Brig"and*ism (&?;), n. Brigandage.

 Brig"an*tine (&?;), n. [F. brigantin, fr. It. brigantino, originally, a practical vessel. See Brigand, and cf. Brig] 1. A practical vessel. [Obs.]

2. A two-masted, square-rigged vessel, differing from a brig in that she does not carry a square mainsail.

3. See Brigandine.

 Brig"ge (&?;), n. A bridge. [Obs.] Chaucer.
 Bright (&?;), v. i. See Brite, v. i. Bright (&?;), a. [OE. briht, AS. beorht, briht; akin to OS. berht, OHG. beraht, Icel. bjartr, Goth.
 baírhts. √94.] 1. Radiating or reflecting light; shedding or having much light; shining; luminous; not dark.

 The sun was bright o'erhead. Longfellow.
 The earth was dark, but the heavens were bright. Drake.
 The public places were as bright as at noonday. Macaulay.
2. Transmitting light; clear; transparent.

 From the brightest wines He 'd turn abhorrent. Thomson.
3. Having qualities that render conspicuous or attractive, or that affect the mind as light does the eye; resplendent with charms; as, bright beauty.

Bright as an angel new-dropped from the sky. Parnell.
4. Having a clear, quick intellect; intelligent.

5. Sparkling with wit; lively; vivacious; shedding cheerfulness and joy around; cheerful; cheery.

 Be bright and jovial among your guests. Shak.
6. Illustrious; glorious.

 In the brightest annals of a female reign. Cotton.
7. Manifest to the mind, as light is to the eyes; clear; evident; plain.

 That he may with more ease


which produces an edible root the first year and seed the second year.

2. The root of plants of the genus Beta, different species and varieties of which are used for the table, for feeding stock, or in making sugar.

 There are many varieties of the common beet (Beta vulgaris). The Old "white beet", cultivated for its edible leafstalks, is a distinct species (Beta Cicla).

 { Beete, Bete } (bt), v. t. [AS. btan to mend. See Better.]
 1. To mend; to repair. [Obs.] Chaucer.
2. To renew or enkindle (a fire). [Obs.] Chaucer.
 Bee"tle (b"t'l), n. [OE. betel, AS. btl, b&?;tl, mallet, hammer, fr. beátan to beat. See Beat, v. t.]
 1. A heavy mallet, used to drive wedges, beat pavements, etc.

2. A machine in which fabrics are subjected to a hammering process while passing over rollers, as in cotton mills; -- called also beetling machine. Knight.
 Bee"tle (b"t'l), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Beetled (-t'ld); p. pr. & vb. n. Beetling.] 1. To beat with a heavy mallet.

2. To finish by subjecting to a hammering process in a beetle or beetling machine; as, to beetle cotton goods.

 Bee"tle, n. [OE. bityl, bittle, AS. btel, fr.
 btan to bite. See Bite, v. t.] Any insect of the order Coleoptera, having four wings, the outer pair being stiff cases for covering the others when they are folded up. See Coleoptera.

Beetle mite (Zoöl.), one of many species of mites, of the family Oribatidæ, parasitic on beetles. -- Black beetle, the common large black cockroach (Blatta orientalis).

 Bee"tle, v. i. [See Beetlebrowed.] To extend over and beyond the base or support; to overhang; to jut.

 To the dreadful summit of the cliff That beetles o'er his base into the sea. Shak.
 Each beetling rampart, and each tower sublime. Wordsworth.
 Bee"tle brow' (&?;). An overhanging brow.

 Bee"tle-browed' (&?;), a. [OE. bitelbrowed; cf. OE. bitel, adj., sharp, projecting, n., a beetle. See Beetle an insect.] Having prominent, overhanging brows; hence, lowering or sullen.

 The earlier meaning was, "Having bushy or overhanging eyebrows."

 Bee"tle*head' (&?;), n. [Beetle a mallet + head.]
 1. A stupid fellow; a blockhead. Sir W. Scott.
2. (Zoöl.) The black-bellied plover, or bullhead (Squatarola helvetica). See Plover.

 Bee"tle-head'ed (&?;), a. Dull; stupid. Shak.
 Bee"tle*stock' (&?;), n. The handle of a beetle.

 Beet" rad'ish (&?;). Same as Beetrave.

 Beet"rave' (&?;), n. [F. betterave; bette beet + rave radish.] The common beet (Beta vulgaris).

 Beeve (&?;), n. [Formed from beeves, pl. of beef.]
 A beef; a beef creature.

 They would knock down the first beeve they met with. W. Irving.
 Beeves (bvz), n. plural of Beef, the animal.

 Be*fall" (&?;), v. t. [imp. Befell (&?;); p. p. Befallen (&?;); p. pr. & vb. n. Befalling.] [AS. befeallan; pref. be- + feallan to fall.] To happen to.

 I beseech your grace that I may know The worst that may befall me. Shak.
 Be*fall", v. i. To come to pass; to happen.

 I have revealed... the discord which befell. Milton.
 Be*fit" (&?;), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Befitted; p. pr. & vb. n. Befitting.] To be suitable to; to suit; to become.

 That name best befits thee. Milton.
 Be*fit"ting, a. Suitable; proper; becoming; fitting.

 Be*fit"ting*ly, adv. In a befitting manner; suitably.

 Be*flat"ter (&?;), v. t. To flatter excessively.

 Be*flow"er (&?;), v. t. To besprinkle or scatter over with, or as with, flowers. Hobbes.
 Be*fog" (&?;), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Befogged (&?;); p. pr. & vb. n. Befogging (&?;).] 1. To involve in a fog; -- mostly as a participle or part. adj.

2. Hence: To confuse; to mystify.

 Be*fool" (&?;), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Befooled (&?;); p. pr. & vb. n. Befooling.] [OE. befolen; pref. be- + fol fool.] 1. To fool; to delude or lead into error; to infatuate; to deceive.

 This story... contrived to befool credulous men. Fuller.
2. To cause to behave like a fool; to make foolish. "Some befooling drug." G. Eliot.
 Be*fore" (&?;), prep. [OE. beforen, biforen, before, AS. beforan; pref. be- + foran, fore, before.
 See Be-, and Fore.] 1. In front of; preceding in space; ahead of; as, to stand before the fire; before the house.

 His angel, who shall go Before them in a cloud and pillar of fire. Milton.
2. Preceding in time; earlier than; previously to; anterior to the time when; -- sometimes with the additional idea of purpose; in order that.

Before Abraham was, I am. John viii. 58.
Before this treatise can become of use, two points are necessary.
Swift.
 Formerly before, in this sense, was followed by that. "Before that Philip called thee... I saw thee." John i. 48.
3. An advance of; farther onward, in place or time.

 The golden age... is before us. Carlyle.
4. Prior or preceding in dignity, order, rank, right, or worth; rather than.

 He that cometh after me is preferred before me. John i.
 15.
 The eldest son is before the younger in succession. Johnson.
5. In presence or sight of; face to face with; facing.

 Abraham bowed down himself before the people. Gen. xxiii.
 12.
 Wherewith shall I come before the Lord? Micah vi. 6.
6. Under the cognizance or jurisdiction of.

 If a suit be begun before an archdeacon. Ayliffe.
7. Open for; free of access to; in the power of.

 The world was all before them where to choose. Milton.
Before the mast (Naut.), as a common sailor, -- because the sailors live in the forecastle, forward of the foremast. -- Before the wind (Naut.), in the direction of the wind and by its impulse; having the wind aft.

 Be*fore", adv. 1. On the fore part; in front, or in the direction of the front; -- opposed to in the


not green and not a card. Less frequently used now because of the decrease in the use of assembly language. "I'll go get my green card so I can check the addressing mode for that instruction."
The original green card became a yellow card when the System/370 was introduced, and later a yellow booklet. An anecdote from IBM refers to a scene that took place in a programmers' terminal room at Yorktown in 1978. A luser overheard one of the programmers ask another "Do you have a green card?" The other grunted and passed the first a thick yellow booklet. At this point the luser turned a delicate shade of olive and rapidly left the room, never to return.
In fall 2000 it was reported from Electronic Data Systems that the green card for 370 machines has been a blue-green booklet since 1989.
Node:green lightning, Next:green machine, Previous:green card, Up:= G = green lightning n.
[IBM] 1. Apparently random flashing streaks on the face of 3278-9 terminals while a new symbol set is being downloaded. This hardware bug was left deliberately unfixed, as some genius within IBM suggested it would let the user know that 'something is happening'. That, it certainly does. Later microprocessor-driven IBM color graphics displays were actually programmed to produce green lightning! 2. [proposed] Any bug perverted into an alleged feature by adroit rationalization or marketing. "Motorola calls the CISC cruft in the 88000 architecture 'compatibility logic', but I call it green lightning". See also feature (sense 6).
Node:green machine, Next:Green's Theorem, Previous:green lightning, Up:= G = green machine n. A computer or peripheral device that has been designed and built to military specifications for field equipment (that is, to withstand mechanical shock, extremes of temperature and humidity, and so forth). Comes from the olive-drab 'uniform' paint used for military equipment.
Node:Green's Theorem, Next:greenbar, Previous:green machine, Up:= G = Green's Theorem prov.
[TMRC] For any story, in any group of people there will be at least one person who has not heard the story. A refinement of the theorem states that there will be exactly one person (if there were more than one, it wouldn't be as bad to re-tell the story). [The name of this theorem is a play on a fundamental theorem in calculus. --ESR] Node:greenbar, Next:grep, Previous:Green's Theorem, Up:= G = greenbar n. A style of fanfolded continuous-feed paper with alternating green and white bars on it, especially used in old-style line printers. This slang almost certainly dates way back to mainframe days.
Node:grep, Next:gribble, Previous:greenbar, Up:= G = grep /grep/ vi.
[from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p, where re stands for a regular expression, to Globally search for the Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches to it, via Unix grep(1)] To rapidly scan a file or set of files looking for a particular string or pattern (when browsing through a large set of files, one may speak of 'grepping around'). By extension, to look for something by pattern. "Grep the bulletin board for the system backup schedule, would you?" See also vgrep.
[It has also been alleged that the source is from the title of a paper "A General Regular Expression Parser" -ESR] Node:gribble, Next:grilf, Previous:grep, Up:= G = gribble n. Random binary data rendered as unreadable text. Noise characters in a data stream are displayed as gribble. Modems with mismatched bitrates usually generate gribble (more specifically, baud barf). Dumping a binary file to the screen is an excellent source of gribble, and (if the bell/speaker is active) headaches.
Node:grilf, Next:grind, Previous:gribble, Up:= G = grilf // n. Girlfriend. Like newsfroup and filk, a typo reincarnated as a new word. Seems to have originated sometime in 1992 on Usenet. [A friend tells me there was a Lloyd Biggle SF novel "Watchers Of The Dark", in which alien species after species goes insane and begins to chant "Grilf! Grilf!". A human detective eventually determines that the word means "Liar!"
I hope this has nothing to do with the popularity of the Usenet term. --ESR] Node:grind, Next:grind crank, Previous:grilf, Up:= G = grind vt.
1. [MIT and Berkeley; now rare] To prettify hardcopy of code, especially LISP code, by reindenting lines, printing keywords and comments in distinct fonts (if available), etc. This usage was associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare; prettyprint was and is the generic term for such operations. 2. [Unix] To generate the formatted version of a document from the nroff, troff, TeX, or Scribe source. 3. [common] To run seemingly interminably, esp. (but not necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless task. Similar to crunch or grovel. Grinding has a connotation of using a lot of CPU time, but it is possible to grind a disk, network, etc. See also hog. 4. To make the whole system slow. "Troff really grinds a PDP-11." 5. 'grind grind' excl. Roughly, "Isn't the machine slow today!"
Node:grind crank, Next:gripenet, Previous:grind, Up:= G = grind crank n. // A mythical accessory to a terminal. A crank on the side of a monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and causes the computer to run faster. Usually one does not refer to a grind crank out loud, but merely makes the appropriate gesture and noise. See grind.
Historical note: At least one real machine actually had a grind crank -- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of the days of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also known as 'The Rice Institute Computer' (TRIC) and later as 'The Rice University Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run switch for use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping through a large program was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam and gear arrangement that repeatedly pushed the single-step button. This allowed one to 'crank' through a lot of code, then slow down to single-step for a bit when you got near the code of interest, poke at some registers using the console typewriter, and then keep on cranking.
Node:gripenet, Next:gritch, Previous:grind crank, Up:= G = gripenet n.
[IBM] A wry (and thoroughly unofficial) name for IBM's internal VNET system, deriving from its common use by IBMers to voice pointed criticism of IBM management that would be taboo in more formal channels.
Node:gritch, Next:grok, Previous:gripenet, Up:= G = gritch /grich/ [MIT] 1. n. A complaint (often caused by a glitch). 2. vi. To complain. Often verb-doubled: "Gritch gritch". 3. A synonym for glitch (as verb or noun).
Interestingly, this word seems to have a separate history from glitch, with which it is often confused. Back in the early 1960s, when 'glitch' was strictly a hardware-tech's term of art, the Burton House dorm at M.I.T.
maintained a "Gritch Book", a blank volume, into which the residents hand-wrote complaints, suggestions, and witticisms.
Previous years' volumes of this tradition were maintained, dating back to antiquity. The word "gritch" was described as a portmanteau of "gripe" and "bitch". Thus, sense 3 above is at least historically incorrect.
Node:grok, Next:gronk, Previous:gritch, Up:= G = grok /grok/, var. /grohk/ vt.
[from the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", by


h'gon fluhks/ n. A measure of a supposed field of bogosity emitted by a speaker, measured by a bogometer; as a speaker starts to wander into increasing bogosity a listener might say "Warning, warning, bogon flux is rising". See quantum bogodynamics.
Node:bogosity, Next:bogotify, Previous:bogon flux, Up:= B = bogosity /boh-go's*-tee/ n.
1. [orig. CMU, now very common] The degree to which something is bogus. Bogosity is measured with a bogometer; in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and say "My bogometer just triggered". More extremely, "You just pinned my bogometer" means you just said or did something so outrageously bogus that it is off the scale, pinning the bogometer needle at the highest possible reading (one might also say "You just redlined my bogometer"). The agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microLenat. 2.
The potential field generated by a bogon flux; see quantum bogodynamics. See also bogon flux, bogon filter, bogus.
Node:bogotify, Next:bogue out, Previous:bogosity, Up:= B = bogotify /boh-go't*-fi:/ vt.
To make or become bogus. A program that has been changed so many times as to become completely disorganized has become bogotified. If you tighten a nut too hard and strip the threads on the bolt, the bolt has become bogotified and you had better not use it any more. This coinage led to the notional 'autobogotiphobia' defined as 'the fear of becoming bogotified'; but is not clear that the latter has ever been 'live' jargon rather than a self-conscious joke in jargon about jargon. See also bogosity, bogus.
Node:bogue out, Next:bogus, Previous:bogotify, Up:= B = bogue out /bohg owt/ vi.
To become bogus, suddenly and unexpectedly. "His talk was relatively sane until somebody asked him a trick question; then he bogued out and did nothing but flame afterwards." See also bogosity, bogus.
Node:bogus, Next:Bohr bug, Previous:bogue out, Up:= B = bogus adj.
1. Non-functional. "Your patches are bogus." 2. Useless.
"OPCON is a bogus program." 3. False. "Your arguments are bogus."
4. Incorrect. "That algorithm is bogus." 5. Unbelievable. "You claim to have solved the halting problem for Turing Machines?
That's totally bogus." 6. Silly. "Stop writing those bogus sagas."
Astrology is bogus. So is a bolt that is obviously about to break. So is someone who makes blatantly false claims to have solved a scientific problem. (This word seems to have some, but not all, of the connotations of random -- mostly the negative ones.)
It is claimed that 'bogus' was originally used in the hackish sense at Princeton in the late 1960s. It was spread to CMU and Yale by Michael Shamos, a migratory Princeton alumnus. A glossary of bogus words was compiled at Yale when the word was first popularized there about 1975-76. These coinages spread into hackerdom from CMU and MIT. Most of them remained wordplay objects rather than actual vocabulary items or live metaphors.
Examples: 'amboguous' (having multiple bogus interpretations); 'bogotissimo' (in a gloriously bogus manner); 'bogotophile' (one who is pathologically fascinated by the bogus); 'paleobogology' (the study of primeval bogosity).
Some bogowords, however, obtained sufficient live currency to be listed elsewhere in this lexicon; see bogometer, bogon, bogotify, and quantum bogodynamics and the related but unlisted Dr. Fred Mbogo.
By the early 1980s 'bogus' was also current in something like hacker usage sense in West Coast teen slang, and it had gone mainstream by 1985. A correspondent from Cambridge reports, by contrast, that these uses of 'bogus' grate on British nerves; in Britain the word means, rather specifically, 'counterfeit', as in "a bogus 10-pound note".
Node:Bohr bug, Next:boink, Previous:bogus, Up:= B = Bohr bug /bohr buhg/ n.
[from quantum physics] A repeatable bug; one that manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined set of conditions. Antonym of heisenbug; see also mandelbug, schroedinbug.
Node:boink, Next:bomb, Previous:Bohr bug, Up:= B = boink /boynk/ [Usenet: variously ascribed to the TV series "Cheers" "Moonlighting", and "Soap"] 1. v. To have sex with; compare bounce, sense 3. (This is mainstream slang.) In Commonwealth hackish the variant 'bonk' is more common. 2. n. After the original Peter Korn 'Boinkon' Usenet parties, used for almost any net social gathering, e.g., Miniboink, a small boink held by Nancy Gillett in 1988; Minniboink, a Boinkcon in Minnesota in 1989; Humpdayboinks, Wednesday get-togethers held in the San Francisco Bay Area. Compare @-party. 3. Var of 'bonk'; see bonk/oif.
Node:bomb, Next:bondage-and-discipline language, Previous:boink, Up:= B = bomb 1. v. General synonym for crash (sense 1) except that it is not used as a noun; esp. used of software or OS failures. "Don't run Empire with less than 32K stack, it'll bomb." 2. n.,v. Atari ST and Macintosh equivalents of a Unix 'panic' or Amiga guru meditation, in which icons of little black-powder bombs or mushroom clouds are displayed, indicating that the system has died. On the Mac, this may be accompanied by a decimal (or occasionally hexadecimal) number indicating what went wrong, similar to the Amiga guru meditation number. MS-DOS machines tend to get locked up in this situation.
Node:bondage-and-discipline language, Next:bonk/oif, Previous:bomb, Up:= B = bondage-and-discipline language n. A language (such as Pascal, Ada, APL, or Prolog) that, though ostensibly general-purpose, is designed so as to enforce an author's theory of 'right programming' even though said theory is demonstrably inadequate for systems hacking or even vanilla general-purpose programming. Often abbreviated 'B&D'; thus, one may speak of things "having the B&D nature". See Pascal; oppose languages of choice.
Node:bonk/oif, Next:book titles, Previous:bondage-and-discipline language, Up:= B = bonk/oif /bonk/, /oyf/ interj.
In the U.S. MUD community, it has become traditional to express pique or censure by 'bonking' the offending person. Convention holds that one should acknowledge a bonk by saying 'oif!' and there is a myth to the effect that failing to do so upsets the cosmic bonk/oif balance, causing much trouble in the universe. Some MUDs have implemented special commands for bonking and oifing. Note: in parts of the U.K.
'bonk' is a sexually loaded slang term; care is advised in transatlantic conversations (see boink). Commonwealth hackers report a similar convention involving the 'fish/bang' balance. See also talk mode.
Node:book titles, Next:boot, Previous:bonk/oif, Up:= B = book titles There is a tradition in hackerdom of informally tagging important textbooks and standards documents with the dominant color of their covers or with some other conspicuous feature of the cover. Many of these are described in this lexicon under their own entries. See Aluminum Book, Blue Book, Camel Book, Cinderella Book, Devil Book, Dragon Book, Green Book, Orange Book, Purple Book, Red Book, Silver Book, White Book, Wizard Book, Yellow Book, and bible; see also rainbow series. Since about 1983 this tradition has gotten a


mean pragmatically? It means, not only that there are no preventive conditions present, but that some of the conditions of production of the possible thing actually are here. Thus a concretely possible chicken means: (1) that the idea of chicken contains no essential self-contradiction; (2) that no boys, skunks, or other enemies are about; and (3) that at least an actual egg exists. Possible chicken means actual egg—plus actual sitting hen, or incubator, or what not. As the actual conditions approach completeness the chicken becomes a better-and-better-grounded possibility. When the conditions are entirely complete, it ceases to be a possibility, and turns into an actual fact.

 Let us apply this notion to the salvation of the world. What does it pragmatically mean to say that this is possible? It means that some of the conditions of the world's deliverance do actually exist. The more of them there are existent, the fewer preventing conditions you can find, the better-grounded is the salvation's possibility, the more PROBABLE does the fact of the deliverance become.

 So much for our preliminary look at possibility.

 Now it would contradict the very spirit of life to say that our minds must be indifferent and neutral in questions like that of the world's salvation. Anyone who pretends to be neutral writes himself down here as a fool and a sham. We all do wish to minimize the insecurity of the universe; we are and ought to be unhappy when we regard it as exposed to every enemy and open to every life-destroying draft. Nevertheless there are unhappy men who think the salvation of the world impossible. Theirs is the doctrine known as pessimism.

 Optimism in turn would be the doctrine that thinks the world's salvation inevitable.

 Midway between the two there stands what may be called the doctrine of meliorism, tho it has hitherto figured less as a doctrine than as an attitude in human affairs. Optimism has always been the regnant DOCTRINE in european philosophy. Pessimism was only recently introduced by Schopenhauer and counts few systematic defenders as yet. Meliorism treats salvation as neither inevitable nor impossible. It treats it as a possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability the more numerous the actual conditions of salvation become.

 It is clear that pragmatism must incline towards meliorism. Some conditions of the world's salvation are actually extant, and she cannot possibly close her eyes to this fact: and should the residual conditions come, salvation would become an accomplished reality. Naturally the terms I use here are exceedingly summary. You may interpret the word'salvation' in any way you like, and make it as diffuse and distributive, or as climacteric and integral a phenomenon as you please.

 Take, for example, any one of us in this room with the ideals which he cherishes, and is willing to live and work for. Every such ideal realized will be one moment in the world's salvation. But these particular ideals are not bare abstract possibilities. They are grounded, they are LIVE possibilities, for we are their live champions and pledges, and if the complementary conditions come and add themselves, our ideals will become actual things. What now are the complementary conditions? They are first such a mixture of things as will in the fulness of time give us a chance, a gap that we can spring into, and, finally, OUR ACT.

 Does our act then CREATE the world's salvation so far as it makes room for itself, so far as it leaps into the gap? Does it create, not the whole world's salvation of course, but just so much of this as itself covers of the world's extent?

 Here I take the bull by the horns, and in spite of the whole crew of rationalists and monists, of whatever brand they be, I ask WHY NOT? Our acts, our turning-places, where we seem to ourselves to make ourselves and grow, are the parts of the world to which we are closest, the parts of which our knowledge is the most intimate and complete. Why should we not take them at their face-value? Why may they not be the actual turning-places and growing-places which they seem to be, of the world—why not the workshop of being, where we catch fact in the making, so that nowhere may the world grow in any other kind of way than this?

 Irrational! we are told. How can new being come in local spots and patches which add themselves or stay away at random, independently of the rest?
 There must be a reason for our acts, and where in the last resort can any reason be looked for save in the material pressure or the logical compulsion of the total nature of the world? There can be but one real agent of growth, or seeming growth, anywhere, and that agent is the integral world itself. It may grow all-over, if growth there be, but that single parts should grow per se is irrational.

 But if one talks of rationality and of reasons for things, and insists that they can't just come in spots, what KIND of a reason can there ultimately be why anything should come at all? Talk of logic and necessity and categories and the absolute and the contents of the whole philosophical machine-shop as you will, the only REAL reason I can think of why anything should ever come is that someone wishes it to be here. It is DEMANDED, demanded, it may be, to give relief to no matter how small a fraction of the world's mass. This is living reason, and compared with it material causes and logical necessities are spectral things.

 In short the only fully rational world would be the world of wishing-caps, the world of telepathy, where every desire is fulfilled instanter, without having to consider or placate surrounding or intermediate powers. This is the Absolute's own world. He calls upon the phenomenal world to be, and it IS, exactly as he calls for it, no other condition being required. In our world, the wishes of the individual are only one condition. Other individuals are there with other wishes and they must be propitiated first. So Being grows under all sorts of resistances in this world of the many, and, from compromise to compromise, only gets organized gradually into what may be called secondarily rational shape. We approach the wishing-cap type of organization only in a few departments of life. We want water and we turn a faucet. We want a kodak-picture and we press a button. We want information and we telephone. We want to travel and we buy a ticket. In these and similar cases, we hardly need to do more than the wishing—the world is rationally organized to do the rest.

 But this talk of rationality is a parenthesis and a digression. What we were discussing was the idea of a world growing not integrally but piecemeal by the contributions of its several parts. Take the hypothesis seriously and as a live one. Suppose that the world's author put the case to you before creation, saying: "I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condition being that each several agent does its own 'level best.' I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done.
 Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?"

 Should you in all seriousness, if participation in such a world were proposed to you, feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? Would you say that, rather than be part and parcel of so fundamentally pluralistic and irrational a universe, you preferred to relapse into the slumber of nonentity from which you had been momentarily aroused by the tempter's voice?

 Of course if you are normally constituted, you would do nothing of the sort. There is a healthy-minded buoyancy