HADES

n : The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the place where the dead live. Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris. When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in proce of evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a majority vote on translating the Greek word “Ady” as “Hell”; but a conscientious minority member secretly po e ed himself of the record and struck out the objectionable word wherever he could find it. At the next meeting, the Bishop of Salisbury, looking over the work, suddenly sprang to his feet and said with considerable excitement: ‘Gentlemen, somebody has been razing ‘Hell’ here!” Years afterward the good prelate’s death was made sweet by the reflection that he had been the means (under Providence) of making an important, serviceable and immortal addition to the phraseology of the English tongue. Hac, n. An elderly lady whom you do not i happen to like; sometimes called, also, a hen, or cat. Old witches, sorcere es, etc., were called hags from the belief that their heads were surrounded by a kind of baleful lumination or nimbus—hag being the popular name of that peculiar electrical light sometimes observed in the hair. At one time hag was not a word of reproach: Drayton speaks of a “beautiful hag, all i smiles,’ much as Shakespeare said, “sweet | wench.” It would not now be proper to call your sweetheart a hag—that compliment is reserved for the use of her grandchildren. i i 132