Woman absent is woman dead.

Acquaintance

An acquaintance is someone we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

Alliances

Alliance. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Calamity

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

Compromise

Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.

Credit

Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.

Debt

Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

Education

Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

Experience

Experience. The wisdom that enables us to recognize in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

History and Historians

Historian. A broad -- gauge gossip.

Laughter

Laughter -- An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.

Life and Living

Life. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

Marriage

Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.

Names

Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Misses (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense. Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master. If we must have them, let us be consistent and give one to the unmarried man. I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to MH.

Optimism

Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.

Perseverance

A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.

Physicians

Physician -- One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.

Praise

Admiration; is our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

Prophecy

The are and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.

Slander

Backbite. To "speak of a man as you find him" when he can't find you.

Trials

Appeal. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.

Weddings

Bride. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.