urt which reverses the judgment of a
popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure
competitor.

POTABLE, n. Suitable for drinking. Water is said to be potable;
indeed, some declare it our natural beverage, although even they find
it palatable only when suffering from the recurrent disorder known as
thirst, for which it is a medicine. Upon nothing has so great and
diligent ingenuity been brought to bear in all ages and in all
countries, except the most uncivilized, as upon the invention of
substitutes for water. To hold that this general aversion to that
liquid has no basis in the preservative instinct of the race is to be
unscientific--and without science we are as the snakes and toads.

POVERTY, n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. The
number of plans for its abolition equals that of the reformers who
suffer from it, plus that of the philosophers who know nothing about
it. Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues
and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a
prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.

PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf
of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory
race of antedated Creation and lived under conditions not easily
conceived. Melsius believed them to have inhabited "the Void" and to
have been something intermediate between fishes and birds. Little its
known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and
theologians with a controversy.

PRECEDENT, n. In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in
the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a
Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of
doing as he pleases. As there are precedents for everything, he has
only to ignore those that make against his interest and accentuate
those in the line of his desire. Invention of the precedent elevates
the trial-at-law from the low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the
noble attitude of a dirigible arbitrament.

PRECIPITATE, adj. Anteprandial.

Precipitate in all, this sinner
Took action first, and then his dinner.

Judibras

PREDESTINATION, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to
programme. This doctrine should not be confused with that of
foreordination, which means that all things are programmed, but does