Belly. He had a broad face, and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
C. C. MOORE, A Visit from St. Nicholas

Benefits.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

Thou dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.

SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It, ii, 7

Benison.- God's benison go with you; and with those
That would make good of bad, and friends of foes!
SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth, ii, 4

Best. Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be.

R. BROWNING, Rabbi Ben Ezra, st. 1

BYRON, Don Juan, Canto vi, st. 1

No doubt everything is for the best.

Who does the best his circumstance allows,

Does well, acts nobly; angels could no more.

YOUNG, Night Thoughts, II, lines 91, 92

Betimes. Not to be a-bed after midnight is to be up betimes.

SHAKESPEARE, Twelfth Night, ii, 3

Beware. I know a maiden fair to see,

Take care!

She can both false and friendly be,

Beware! Beware!

Trust her not,

She is fooling thee!

LONGFELLOW, Translation from the German: Beware! st. 1

Bible. Slowly the Bible of the race is writ,

And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone;
Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it,
Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan.1

LOWELL, Bibliolatres, st. 6

Bier. They bore him barefaced on the bier.

SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet, iv, 5

Bile. There are but two bad things in this world and bile.

1 Out from the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,

- sin HANNAH MORE

Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,-
The canticles of love and woe.

EMERSON, The Problem, st. 2

Bilious.— No solemn sanctimonious face I pull,
Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious.

HOOD, Ode to Rae Wilson, Esquire, st. 4

Billiards. Let's to billiards.

SHAKESPEARE, Antony and Cleopatra, ii, 5

Bird. The bird that hath been limèd in a bush,
With trembling wings misdoubteth every bush.
SHAKESPEARE, King Henry VI, Part III, v, 6

The ruddy square of comfortable light,
Far-blazing from the rear of Philip's house,
Allured him, as the beacon-blaze allures
The bird of passage, till he madly strikes
Against it and beats out his weary life.

TENNYSON, Enoch Arden, lines 722-726

Birdie. What does little birdie say
In her nest at peep of day?

TENNYSON, Sea Dreams, lines 281, 282

Birnam.-Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane.

SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth, v, 3

Birth. The owl shrieked at thy birth,- an evil sign;
The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time;
Dogs howled, and hideous tempests [tempest] shook
down trees;

The raven rooked her on the chimney's top,
And chattering pies in dismal discords sung.
SHAKESPEARE, King Henry VI, Part III,

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.

v, 6

WORDSWORTH, Ode on Intimations of Immortality, st. 5

Birthdays. What different dooms our birthdays bring!

Birthright.

Hood, Miss Kilmansegg, Her Birth

Thy blood and virtue

Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness
Share with thy birthright!

SHAKESPEARE, All's Well That Ends Well, i, 1

Biscay.— Loud roared the dreadful thunder,
The rain a deluge showers,
The clouds were rent asunder
By lightning's vivid powers;
The night both drear and dark,
Our poor devoted bark,

Till next day, there she lay,

In the Bay of Biscay, O!

ANDREW CHERRY, The Bay of Biscay, st. 1

Bite.— And having looked to government for bread, in the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them. BURKE, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. Bivouac. On fame's eternal camping-ground

Their silent tents are spread,

And glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.

THEODORE O'HARA, The Bivouac of the Dead, st. 1 Blackguards.-"Arcades ambo," id est blackguards both. BYRON, Don Juan, Canto iv, st. 93

Black-jack. Our vicar still preaches that Peter and Poule
Laid a swingeing long curse on the bonny brown bowl,
That there's wrath and despair in the jolly black-jack,
And the seven deadly sins in a flagon of sack;

Yet whoop, Barnaby! off with thy liquor,
Drink upsees out, and a fig for the vicar.

SCOTT, Lady of the Lake, Canto vi, st. 5

Blade. The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty,
For want of fighting had grown rusty,
And ate into itself, for lack

Of some body to hew and hack.1

BUTLER, Hudibras, I, i, lines 359-362

Blaize. Good people all, with one accord,
Lament for Madam Blaize;

Who never wanted a good word

From those who spoke her praise.

GOLDSMITH, Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize, st. I

Blameless. Wearing the white flower of a blameless life. TENNYSON, Idylls of the King: Dedication, line 24

Blank. That man may last, but never lives,

Who much receives but nothing gives;

Whom none can love, whom none can thank,
Creation's blot, creation's blank.

T. GIBBONS, When Jesus Dwelt

1 A sword laid by,

Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.

BYRON, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto iii, st. 44

Blessed.
And I blessed them unaware.

A spring of love gushed from my heart,

COLERIDGE, Ancient Mariner, lines 284, 285

Blessings. How blessings brighten as they take their flight. YOUNG, Night Thoughts, II, line 606

Blind. A blind man is a poor man, and blind a poor man is; For the former seeth no man, and the latter no man sees. LONGFELLOW, Poverty and Blindness, from the

German of F. von Logau

Bliss. That dearest bliss, the power of blessing thee! THOMSON, The Seasons, Spring, lines 1170-1176

Scenes where love and bliss immortal reign.

Ibid., Spring, lines 1170-1176

Blocks. You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! SHAKESPEARE, Julius Cæsar, i, 1

Blood.

When I touched the lifeless clay,

The blood gushed out amain.

HOOD, The Dream of Eugene Aram, st. 18

That is best blood that hath most iron in 't,
To edge resolve with, pouring without stint
For what makes manhood dear.

LOWELL, Commemoration Ode, st. 10

Pleased to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
POPE, Essay on Man, Epistle i, lines 83, 84

There is no sure foundation set on blood,

No certain life achieved by others' death.

SHAKESPEARE, King John, iv, 2

Fie, foh, and fum,

I smell the blood of a British man.

SHAKESPEARE, King Lear, iii, 4

Lay the summer's dust with showers of blood.

SHAKESPEARE, King Richard II, iii, 3

Blood will have blood. SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth, iii, 4

He forfeits his own blood that spills another.

SHAKESPEARE, Timon of Athens, iii, 5

Where blood with gold is bought and sold.

SHELLEY, Prometheus Unbound, i

Blood-avenging. And now, from forth the frowning sky, From the Heaven's topmost height,

I heard a voice ·

the awful voice

Of the blood-avenging sprite1

"Thou guilty man! take up thy dead
And hide it from my sight!"

HOOD, The Dream of Eugene Aram, st. 20

Bludgeonings.- In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

W. E. HENLEY, Out of the Night That Covers Me, st. 2
Blue. Under the laurel, the Blue,
Under the willow, the Gray.

F. M. FINCH, The Blue and the Gray, st. 2 Blunder. Sire, it is worse than a crime, it is a blunder. JOSEPH FOUCHÉ, cited by Barbère de Vieuzac

In men this blunder still you find,
All think their little set-mankind.

HANNAH MORE, Florio, I

Blunt. Though he be blunt, I know him passing wise. SHAKESPEARE, Taming of the Shrew, iii, 2

Blushes. The man that blushes is not quite a brute.

YOUNG, Night Thoughts, VII, line 496

And my bark is on the sea.-BYRON, Lines to Moore, st. 1 Bodies.-- Our bodies are [our] gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners. SHAKESPEARE, Othello, i, 3

Body. A dem'd, damp, moist, unpleasant body.

DICKENS, Nicholas Nickleby, xxxiv

The human body is a furnace which keeps in blast threescore years and ten, more or less. When the fire slackens, life declines; when it goes out, we are dead. HOLMES, Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, vii

-

Bold. Write on your door the saying wise and old,
"Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere Be bold;
Be not too bold!" Yet better the excess
Than the defect; better the more than less;
Better like Hector in the field to die,2
Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly.

LONGFELLOW, Morituri Salutamus, st. 1I

Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies:
The gods on murderers fix revengeful eyes.

2 Better to sink beneath the shock,

CHAPMAN, Widow's Tears

Than moulder piecemeal on the rock! BYRON, The Giaour, lines 969, 970