In childhood we expect, in youth demand, in manhood hope, and in age beseech. EPITAPH, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect. Following is a touching example: Here lie the bones of Parson Platt, Wise, pious, humble, and all that, Who showed us life as all should live it; Let that be said--and God forgive it! ERUDITION, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull. So wide his erudition's mighty span, He knew by heart the laws of God and man, And only came by accident to grief He thought, poor man, 't was right to be a thief, Romach Pute. ESOPHAGUS, n. That part of the alimentary canal that lies between pleasure and business. ESOTERIC, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient philosophies were of two kinds,--exoteric, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and esoteric, those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our time. ESSENTIAL, adj. Pertaining to the essence, or that which determines the distinctive character of a thing. Persons who, because they do not know the English language, are driven to the unprofitable vocation of writing for American newspapers, commonly use this word in the sense of necessary, as, "April rains are essential to June harvests." ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots, and ethnologists. EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled. EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead. EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation, and the damnation of our neighbors. EVERLASTING, adj. Lasting forever. It is with no small diffidence that I venture to offer this brief and elementary definition, for I am not unaware of the existence of a bulky volume by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Sprowle, sometime Bishop of Worcester, entitled, A Partial Definition of the Word "Everlasting" as Used in the Authorised Version of the Holy Scriptures. His book was once esteemed of great authority in the Anglican Church, and is still, I understand, studied with pleasure to the mind and profit to the soul.