OBLIVION

n : The state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame’s eternal dumping ground. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock. OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the gue es of their predece ors. OBSESSED, pp. Vexed by an evil spirit, like the Gadarene swine and other critics. Obse ion was once more common than it is now. Arasthus tells of a peasant who was occupied by a different devil for every day in the week, and on Sun days by two. They were frequently seen, always walking in his shadow, when he had one, but were finally driven away by the village notary, a holy man; but they took the peasant with them, for he vanished utterly. A devil thrown out of a woman by the Archbishop of Rheims ran through the streets, pursued by a hundred persons, until the open country was reached, where by a leap -higher than a church spire he escaped into a bird. A chaplain in Cromwell’s army exorcised a soldier’s obse ing devil by throwing the soldier into the water, when the devil came to the surface. The soldier, unfortunately, did not. OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally good, it is good enough for the good writer. Indeed, a writer’s attitude toward “obsolete” words is as true a measure of his literary ability as anything except the character of his work. A dictionary of obsolete and obsolescent words would not only be singularly rich in strong and sweet parts of speech; it would add large po e ions to the vocabulary of every competent writer who might not happen to be a competent reader. 238