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costly, and so within the reach of only the noble and rich, thus indicating the bride to be of high rank. A third is that the orange bridal wreath had its origin in Spain, where oranges are indigenous or have been cultivated for centuries. Thence the fashion passed into France, whence, through French milliners, it became spread over Europe.

When

It is possible, even on the supposition that one or the other of the last two theories (or a theory based on both) is correct, that the Eastern tradition regarding fruitfulness may have had an influence in prompting the selection of the orange-blossom for a bridal wreath and in continuing its use. Mrs. Malaprop, in "The Rivals" (Act iii., Sc. 3), complains that "Nowadays few think how a little knowledge becomes a gentleman; men have no sense but for the worthless flowers of beauty," the gallant Captain Absolute makes reply, "Too true; but our ladies seldom show fruit until time has robbed them of more specious blossom; few, like Mrs. Malaprop and the orange-tree, are rich in both at once."

Within recent years the lilac and rose have largely superseded the orangeblossom for bridal wreaths, the last being, in many countries, difficult to

obtain.

Order reigns at Warsaw. The Polish rebellion of 1830 broke out almost simultaneously with the revolution in Paris which banished the Bourbons and placed Louis Philippe on the throne. As the representative of liberal ideas, it was expected that his government would give some aid to Poland. But a deaf ear was studiously turned to the demands of the press, the people, and the National Guard. Poland fell, and on September 16, 1831, Marshal Sebastiani, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, announced the termination of the struggle to the Chamber of Deputies in these words: "My letters from Poland announce that order reigns in Warsaw" ("Des lettres que je reçois de Pologne m'annoncent que la tranquillité règne à Varsovie"). The cold-blooded phrase recalls Byron's sarcasm,—

He makes a solitude and calls it-peace,

The Bride of Abydos, ii. 20,

which Byron, however, borrowed from Tacitus: “Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant." (Agricola, ch. xxx.) Sebastiani and the government greatly increased their unpopularity by this unfortunate mot. Of recent years the words are usually, though erroneously, attributed to the Emperor Nicholas, who is supposed to have addressed them to one of the foreign ambassadors at St. Petersburg. As exactly the sort of thing he might have said, the credit will probably remain with him.

Orders, To make, a grim medieval jest. A clerk in holy orders was known by his tonsure, or shaven crown. Hence the summary process of shaving off a large portion of a foeman's scalp by a dexterous swing of the sword was called as above. Thus, in the old epic "The Sowdane [Sultan] of Babylone" (ed. Hausknecht, 1. 2036), when the Twelve Peers attacked the Sultan and his men we are told that they

maden orders wondir fast;

Thai slowe doun alle, that were in the halle
And made hem wondirly sore agast.

In other words, they sliced pieces off their adversaries' heads at an amazing rate. To do this was a favorite amusement with the renowned Twelve Peers.

Orleanists, the party of French monarchists which favored the claims of the descendants of the Orleans branch of the royal house of France, to which belonged the Louis Philippe who was King of the French from 1830 till 1848.

Louis Philippe (born 1838), better known as the Comte de Paris, is the present representative of the line, and since the death of the Duc d'Aumale, who, according to the "Legitimists," was the rightful king of France, and the extinction with him of the direct line, the former represents in his person all the loyal pretensions to the French throne. At present the royalists of all shades in France are in a condition of innocuous desuetude.

Out of sight, out of mind, the modern form of a well-known saw which was an "owlde proverbe" in the time of Nathaniel Bacon, and is so quoted by him on page 19 of the "Private Correspondence of Lady Cornwallis." Its earliest appearance in English is in Hendyng's "Proverbs," a manuscript collection (circa 1320):

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I do perceive that the old proverbis be not alwaies trew, for I do finde that the absence of my Nath. doth breede in me the more continuall remembrance of him.-Anne, Lady Bacon, to Jane, Lady Cornwallis (1613).

And when he is out of sight, quickly also is he out of mind.-THOMAS A KEMPIS: Imitation of Christ, ch. xxiii.

Outsider. Until the nomination of Franklin Pierce for the Presidency, the word "outsider" was unknown in political parlance. The committee on credentials came in to make its report, and could not get into the hall because of the crowd of people who were not members of the convention. The chair

man of the convention asked if the committee was ready to report, and the chairman of the committee answered, "Yes, Mr. Chairman, but the committee is unable to get inside, on account of the crowd and pressure of the outsiders." The newspaper reporters took up the word and used it.

Ox. Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn, an injunction found in Deuteronomy xxv. 4, has come to be used figu ratively to signify that valuable services, patiently rendered, are not to be rewarded with ingratitude. According to Opie P. Read, in "A Kentucky Colonel," it was a much-quoted text by Southern preachers, by which the brethren were reminded that their ministration merited substantial and earthly reward.

Ox on the tongue, To have an (L. "Bovem in lingua habere"),—i.e., to be bribed to silence. The Latin is probably derived from the Greek phrase of the same import, and its origin and meaning are explained by the earliest coins being stamped with the figure of an ox. Before metallic money, cattle (L. pecus, whence pecunia, "money") were the standard of value and medium of exchange among both Hellenes and Latins, and the stamping of the ox on the earlier coins represents a surviving memory of this state of things. To say that one had an ox on the tongue was therefore equivalent to saying that he was tongue-tied by money.

Ox, To be trodden on the foot by the black, to suffer ills, especially domestic, and at the hands of near relatives. Hesiod speaks of himself as having been trodden on by the black ox, having suffered outrageous wrong from a brother, who defrauded him of his inheritance. Sir Walter Scott uses the saying in "The Antiquary," with the significance that misfortune has come over one's house. It has become a common proverb,

P.

P, the sixteenth letter, and twelfth consonant, of the English alphabet. This letter is one of admirable consistency. It has no varieties or irregularities of pronunciation save only as the initial in a few words borrowed from the Greek, when it is entirely silent,-psalm, pneumatic, etc. As an abbre viation it enters into such symbols as P.M., post meridiem (afternoon), and P.S., postscript. Standing alone, usually in lower-case, it may mean page, or the musical direction piano, ("softly"), according to circumstances; pp. in the former case meaning pages, and in the latter pianissimo (“very softly”).

=

The expression "Mind your P's and Q's" is generally believed to have arisen from the former bar-room usage of scoring up against customers the amount of beer for which they had been trusted,-P standing for pint and Q for quart. Scores of this sort were settled weekly, and the application of the saying is self-evident. But Charles Knight suggests the more plausible explanation that the expression arose in the printing-office, where many other terse and quaint phrases have had their origin. The forms of the small p and q in Roman type have always proved puzzling to the printer's apprentice. In the one the downward stroke is on the left of the loop or oval, and in the other on the right. Now, when types are reversed, as they are in process of distribution, the young printer is often puzzled to distinguish the p from the q. Especially in assorting pi,-a mixed heap of types,-where the p and the q have not the form of any word for a guide, it is wellnigh impossible for an inexperienced person to distinguish one from the other at first sight. If this be true, the letters should be written in lower-case, and not in capitals, thus: "Mind your p's and q's."

Paddle your own canoe. This expressive phrase seems to have first appeared in a poem published in Harper's Magazine (New York, May, 1854). The following stanzas give a fair example of the whole :

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Pain, Capacity for. Mrs. Browning has a very striking stanza :

That the mark of rank in nature

Is capacity for pain,

And the anguish of the singer

Makes the sweetness of the strain.

This may be a reminiscence of Dante :

Quando la cosa e più perfetta,

Più senta 'l bene, e così la doglienza.

Inferno, Canto vi.

("The more perfect the thing,
The more it feels pleasure, and also pain.")

But in truth the thought is an obvious one, and it is now an axiom with evolutionists that the higher the organism the greater its capacity for both pleasure and pain. The heights to which we can rise constitute the measure of the depths to which we can fall. See also MIRTH AND MELANCHOLY, POETS AND POETRY.

Painter, I too am a (It. “Anch' io son pittore"), an expression traditionally attributed to Correggio when looking at Raphael's St. Cecilia. Oehlenschläger has further popularized it in his drama of "Correggio," and the phrase is now common property.

When I gave the effect I intended to any part of the picture for which I had prepared my colors; when I imitated the roughness of the skin by a lucky stroke of the pencil; when I hit the clear pearly tone of a vein; when I gave the ruddy complexion of health, the blood circulating under the broad shadows of one side of the face, I thought my fortune made; or rather it was already more than made, in my fancying that I might one day be able to say, with Correggio, "I also am a painter!" It was an idle thought, a boy's conceit; but it did not make me less happy at the time.-HAZLITT: On the Pleasure of Painting.

I should like to write a nightcap book,-a book that you can muse over, that you can smile over, that you can yawn over,-a book of which you can say, "Well, this man is so-and-so and so-and-so, but he has a friendly heart (although some wiseacres have painted him as black as Bogey), and you may trust what he says." I should like to touch you sometimes with a reminiscence that shall waken your sympathy, and make you say, lo anchè have so thought, felt, smiled, suffered. Now, how is this to be done except by egotism? Linea recta brevisThat right line "I" is the very shortest, simplest, straightforwardest means of com. munication between us, and stands for what it is worth and no more.-THACKERAY: Roundabout Papers.

sima.

Painting it red, in American slang, to go on a reckless debauch, to be wildly extravagant. An outgrowing phrase is "to paint the town red," or, more simply, "to paint the town." Originally the metaphor was applied to bonfires, etc., painting the sky or the scenery red. Thus, in an old Irish ballad,

The beacon hills were painted red
With many a fire that night.

But the immediate source of the phrase may be traced to the times when a Mississippi steamboat captain would strain every nerve to make his boat defeat a rival. "Paint her red, boys!" would be his command to his men as they heaped fuel upon the roaring fires at night, casting a red glare upon the surrounding scenery. Undoubtedly the phrase was helped into popularity by the fact that to paint-i.e., to paint the nose red-was an old slang term for drinking:

The muse is dry,

And Pegasus does thirst for Hippocrene,

And fain would paint,-imbibe the vulgar call,-
Or hot, or cold, or long, or short.

CHARLES KINGSLEY: Two Years Ago.

Pair off, To, in American politics, to agree with a member of a rival party that neither shall vote, so that both shall be spared trouble, yet the result be in no way affected. Pairing-off was first practised in the United States in 1839, and, though at first looked upon with disfavor, has now thoroughly established itself as a legitimate arrangement, especially in the legislative halls. It is said that in a Western town the practice was once carried to such an extent that not a vote was polled.

The vast majority of strong-minded women wouldn't care so much about voting they could only get a chance to pair off.-New Haven News.

Palace of the soul. This metaphor for the human head was first used by Waller in his poem "On Tea :"

Tea does our fancy aid,

Repress those vapors which the head invade,
And keeps the palace of the soul.

Byron uses the same figure in his musings over a skull in the Acropolis :

Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall,

Its chambers desolate, and portals foul:

Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall,

The dome of Thought, the palace of the Soul:
Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole

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The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit,

And Passion's host, that never brook'd control:
Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ
People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?

Childe Harold, Canto ii., Stanza 6.

This stanza has some affiliation with Hamlet's musings in the graveyard of Elsinore, first over an unknown skull,—

his

Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, cases, his tenures, and his tricks?

and then over Yorick's:

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols, your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come.-Hamlet, Act v., Sc. I.

An anonymous poem "To a Skeleton," believed to have been written about 1825, has something of the same vein of moralizing:

Behold this ruin! 'Twas a skull

Once of ethereal spirit full.

This narrow cell was Life's retreat,

This space was Thought's mysterious seat.

What beauteous visions filled this spot!
What dreams of pleasure long forgot!

Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear,
Have left one trace of record here.

Poe also may have been indebted to Byron or to Waller for the first idea of his "Haunted Palace," of which these are two stanzas:

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Pale, Within the. The origin of this expression must be sought in history. The Pale, or English Pale, was that part of the kingdom of Ireland in which English rule and law were acknowledged after the conquest of 1172. Its limits varied at different times, centring always in the environs of Dublin, and including generally the counties of Meath, Louth, Carlow, and Kilkenny. Knight says it included the whole eastern coast of Ireland, from Dundalk Bay to Waterford harbor, and extended some forty or fifty miles inland. It received the name Pale because it was said the conquerors, in fear of the "rough, rug-headed kerns,” “enclosed and impaled themselves, as it were, within certain lists and territories."

Paley's Watch, the familiar name for a once famous illustration employed by Rev. William Paley in his "Natural Theology" in support of what is known in theology as the “argument of design.' The illustration, briefly

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