They quite justify a
_double-entendre_ of Daniel Webster's, which we heard him utter many
years ago in court. He had forced such a meaning upon some word in a
paper connected with the case on trial, that the opposing counsel
interrupted him to ask in what dictionary he found the word so defined.
He silenced his questioner instantly with a happy play upon the name
common to himself and the lexicographer: "In _Webster's_ Dictionary,
Sir!" We find in Webster, for example, the following definition of a
word as to whose meaning he could have been set right by any
coasting-skipper that sailed out of New Haven:--
"AMID-SHIPS; _in marine language_, the middle of a ship with regard to
her length and breadth." Now, when one ship runs into another at sea
and strikes her _amid-ships_, how is she to contrive to accomplish it
so as to satisfy the requirements of this definition? Or if a sailor is
said to be standing amidships, must he be planted precisely in what he
would probably agree with Dr. Webster in spelling the _center_ of the
main-hatch? Dr. Worcester, quoting Falconer, is of course right.
We give another of Dr. Webster's definitions, which caught our eye in
looking over his array of words compounded with _out_. "OUTWARD-BOUND;
proceeding from a port or country.
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