"
ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the
understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.
ORPHAN, n. A living person whom death has deprived of the power of
filial ingratitude -- a privation appealing with a particular
eloquence to all that is sympathetic in human nature. When young the
orphan is commonly sent to an asylum, where by careful cultivation of
its rudimentary sense of locality it is taught to know its place. It
is then instructed in the arts of dependence and servitude and
eventually turned loose to prey upon the world as a bootblack or
scullery maid.
ORTHODOX, n. An ox wearing the popular religious joke.
ORTHOGRAPHY, n. The science of spelling by the eye instead of the
ear. Advocated with more heat than light by the outmates of every
asylum for the insane. They have had to concede a few things since
the time of Chaucer, but are none the less hot in defence of those to
be conceded hereafter.
A spelling reformer indicted
For fudge was before the court cicted.
The judge said: "Enough --
His candle we'll snough,
And his sepulchre shall not be whicted."
OSTRICH, n. A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature
has denied that hinder toe in which so many pious naturalists have
seen a conspicuous evidence of design.
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