OUTDO

v : t. To make an enemy. OuT-OF-Doors, n. That part of one’s environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets. I climbed to the top of a mountain one day To see the sun setting in glory, And I thought, as I looked at his vanishing ray, Of a perfectly splendid story. ’Twas about an old man and the a he bestrode Till the strength of the beast was o’ertested; Then the man would carry him miles on the road Till Neddy was pretty well rested. The moon rising solemnly over the crest Of the hills to the east of my station Displayed her broad disk to the darkening west Like a visible new creation. And I thought of a joke (and I laughed till I cried) Of an idle young woman who tarried About a church-door for a look at the bride, Although ’twas herself that was married. To poets all Nature is pregnant with grand Ideas—with thought and emotion. I pity the dunces who don’t understand The speech of earth, heaven and ocean. Stromboli Smith. OVATION, n. In ancient Rome, a definite, formal pageant in honor of one who had been di erviceable to the enemies of the nation. A le er “triumph.” In modern English the word is improperly used to signify any loose and spontaneous expre ion of popular homage to the hero of the hour and place. “I had an ovation!” the actor man said, But I thought it uncommonly queer, That people and critics by him had been led By the ear. The Latin lexicon makes his absurd A ertion as plain as a peg; In “ovum” we find the true root of the word. It means egg. Dudley Spink. 247