All-Father Folly! be it mine to raise, With lusty lung, here on this western strand With all thine offspring thronged from every land, Thyself inspiring me, the song of praise. And if too weak, I 'll hire, to help me bawl, Dick Watson Gilder, gravest of us all. Aramis Loto Frope FOOL, n. A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscient, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, the platitude, and the circle of the sciences. He created patriotism and taught the nations war--founded theology, philosophy, law, medicine, and San Francisco. He established monarchical and republican government. He is from everlasting to everlasting--such as creation's dawn beheld he fooleth now. In the morning of time he sang upon primitive hills, and in the noonday of existence headed the procession of being. His grandmotherly hand has warmly tucked-in the set sun of civilization, and in the twilight he prepares Man's evening meal of milkand-morality and turns down the covers of the universal grave. And after the rest of us shall have retired for the night of eternal oblivion, he will sit up to write a history of human civilization. FORCE, n. "Force is but might," the teacher said-- "That definition 's just." The boy said naught but thought instead, Remembering his pounded head: "Force is not might but must!" FOREFINGER, n. The finger commonly used in pointing out two malefactors. FOREORDINATION, n. This looks like an easy word to define, but when I consider that pious and learned theologians have spent long lives in explaining it, and written libraries to explain their explanations; when I remember that nations have been divided and bloody battles caused by the difference between foreordination and predestination, and that millions of treasure have been expended in the effort to prove and disprove its compatibility with freedom of the will and the efficacy of prayer, praise, and a religious life,--recalling these awful facts in the history of the word, I stand appalled before the mighty problem of its signification, abase my spiritual eyes, fearing to contemplate its portentous magnitude, reverently uncover and humbly refer it to His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons and His Grace Bishop Potter. FORGETFULNESS, n. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.