HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
HANDKERCHIEF, n. A small square of silk or linen, used in various ignoble offices about the face and especially serviceable at funerals to conceal the lack of tears. The handkerchief is of recent invention; our ancestors knew nothing of it and intrusted its duties to the sleeve. Shakespeare's introducing it into the play of "Othello" is an anachronism: Desdamona dried her nose with her coat-tails as Dr. Mary Walker and other reformers have done in our own day an evidence that revolutions sometimes go backward.
HANGMAN, n. An officer of the law charged with duties of the highest dignity and utmost gravity, and held in hereditary disesteem by a populace having a criminal ancestry. In some of the American States his functions are now performed by an electrician, as in New Jersey, where executions by electricity have recently been ordered the first instance known to this lexicographer of anybody questioning the expediency of hanging Jersey men.
HAPPINESS, n. An agreeble sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
HARANGUE, n. A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harangoutang.
HARBOR, n. A place where ships taking shelter from storms are exposed to the fury of the customs.
HARMONISTS, n. A sect of Protestants,
now extinct, who came from Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.
HASH, x. There is no definition for this word nobody knows what hash is.
HATCHET, n. A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.
HEAD-MONEY, n. A capitation or polltax.
HEARSE, n. Death's baby-carriage.
HEART, n. An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments a very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of the gastric fluid. The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a feeling tender or not, according to the age of the animal from which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a caviare sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a pungent epigram; the marvellous functional methods of converting a hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh of sensibility these things have been patiently ascertained by M. Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity. (See, also, my monograph on "The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion" 4to, 687 pp.) In a scientific work entitled, I believe, Delectatio Demonorum (John Camden Hotten, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a striking illustration and support in the author's account of an experiment made with a view to testing it. The stomach of a man who had died of a surfeit of turkey on Thanksgiving Day was removed and kept tightly closed until it was greatly distended with the gases produced by digestion. The compression on the neck of it being then relaxed, the words, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow!" were heard with distinct articulation, as the swollen organ collapsed. It is nonsense to ignore, belittle, pervert or deny the significance of a fact like that. For further light upon this subject, consult Professor Dam's famous treatise on "Love as a product of Alimentary Maceration."