SALAMANDER

n : Originally a reptile inhabiting fire; later, an anthropomorph ous immortal, but still a pyrophile. Salamanders are now believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account having been seen in Car cas sonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it with a bucket of holy water. SARCOPHAGUS, n. Among the Greeks a coffin which being made of a certain kind of carnivorous stone, had the peculiar property of devouring the body placed in it. The sarcophagus known to modern obsequiographers is commonly a product of the carpenter’s art. SATAN, n. mistakes, One of the Creator’s lamentable repented in sash cloth and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. “There is one favor that I should like to ask,” said he. “Name it.” “Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws.” “What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul—you ask for the right to make his laws?” “Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself.” It was so ordered. SATIETY, n. The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten its contents, madam. SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author’s enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderne . In this country satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. Moreover, although Americans are “endowed by their Creator” with abundant vice and folly, it is not generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the Satirist is popularly regarded as a sour spirited knave, and his every victim’s outcry for codefendants evokes a national a ent. Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung In the dead language of a mummy’s tongue, For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well— Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell. Had it been such as consecrates the Bible Thou hadst not perished by the law of libel. Barney 313