Ha-ha (A). A ditch serving the purpose of a hedge without breaking the prospect. (Anglo-Saxon, hœh, a hole.)
Hahnemann (Samuel). A German physician, who set forth in his Organon of Medicine the system which he called "homœopathy" the principles of which are these: (1) that diseases are cured by those medicines which would produce the disease in healthy bodies; (2) that medicines are to be simple and not compounded; (3) that doses are to be exceedingly minute. (1755-1843).
Haidee (2 syl.). A beautiful Greek girl, who found Don Juan when he was cast ashore, and restored him to animation. "Her hair was auburn, and her eyes were black as death." Her mother, a Moorish woman from Fez, was dead, and her father, Lambro, a rich Greek pirate, was living on one of the Cyclades. She and Juan fell in love with each other during the absence of Lambro from the island. On his return Juan was arrested, placed in a galliot, and sent from the island. Haidee went mad and, after a lingering illness, died. (Byron: Don Juan, cantos ii. iii. iv.)
Hail Health, an exclamation of welcome, like the Latin Salve (Anglo-Saxon, hél, health; but hail=frozen
rain is the Anglo-Saxon hægl.)
"All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Glamis." Shakespeare: Macbeth, i. 3.Hail To call to.
To hail a ship or an omnibus. To call to those on board.
Hail-fellow-well-met (A). One on easy, familiar terms. (See Jockey .)
"Hail fellow well met, all dirty and wet;Hair One single tuft is left on the shaven crown of a Mussulman, for Mahomet to grasp hold of when drawing the deceased to Paradise.
Find out, if you can, who's master, who's man."
Swift: My Lady's Lamentation.
"And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair."The scalp-lock of the North American Indians, left on the otherwise bald head, is for a conquering enemy to seize when he tears off the scalp.
Byron: Siege of Corinth.
Hair (Absalom's) (2 Sam. xiv. 25). Absalom used to cut his hair once a year, and the clippings "weighed
200 shekels after the king's weight," i.e. 100 oz. avoirdupois. It would be a fine head of hair which weighed
five ounces, but the mere clippings of Absalom's hair weighed 43,800 grains (more than 100 oz.). Paul
says (1 Cor. xi. 14), "Doth not even nature itself teach you, that if a man have long hair, it is a shame
unto him?"
Mrs. Astley, the actress, could stand upright and cover her feet with her flaxen hair.
Hair, Hairs (Anglo-Saxon, har.)
The greatest events are often drawn by hairs. Events of great pith and
moment are often brought about by causes of apparently no importance.
Sir John Hawkins's History of
Music, a work of sixteen years labour, was plunged into long oblivion by a pun.
The magnificent discovery
of gravitation by Newton is ascribed to the fall of an apple from a tree under which he was musing.
The
dog Diamond, upsetting a lamp, destroyed the papers of Sir Isaac Newton, which had been the toil of
his life. (See page 350).
A spark from a candle falling on a cottage floor was the cause of the Great Fire
of London.
A ballad chanted by a fille-de-chambre undermined the colossal power of Albereni.
A jest of
the French king was the death of William the Conqueror.
The destruction of Athens was brought about
by a jest on Sulla. Some witty Athenian, struck with his pimply face, called him a "mulberry pudding."
Rome
was saved from capture by the Gauls by the cackling of some sacred geese.
Benson, in his Sketches of
Corsica, says that Napoleon's love for war was planted in his boyhood by the present of a small brass
cannon.
The life of Napoleon was saved from the "Infernal Machine" because General Rapp detained
Josephine a minute or two to arrange her shawl after the manner of Egyptian women.
The famous "Rye-
house Plot" miscarried from the merest accident. The house in which Charles II. was staying happened
to catch fire, and the king was obliged to leave for Newmarket a little sooner than he had intended.
Lafitte,
the great banker, was a pauper, and he always ascribed his rise in life to his picking up a pin in the
streets of Paris.
A single line of Frederick II., reflecting not on politics but on the poetry of a French minister,
plunged France into the Seven Years' War.
The invention of glass is ascribed to some Phœnician merchants
lighting a fire on the sands of the seashore.
The three hairs. When Reynard wanted to get talked about,