CHARADE, shn-rad' (Fr.. Languedoc char rode, idle probably from Sp. charrado, speech or action of a eherro, clown). A form of amusement which consists in dividing a word of one or more syllables into its component syl lables. r into its component letters. something predicated of each: and them the whole being re united, and something predicated of that also. the reader or listener is asked to guess the word. As a specimen of the charade depending upon s? Babies. we adduee the following: first is plowed for various reasons, and grain is frequently buried in it to little pur pose. My .second is neither riches nor vet the former would generally he given for it, and the latter are often tasteless without it.
whob• applies equally to spring. summer, autumn. and winter: and both fish and flesh, praise and censure. mirth and melancholy, are the better fer being in it Answer: Sert-son." As a spe•imen of the second class of charade:, we take the following example from the French: •.(matre rn•ntbreiii tint tout mon Hen.
Mon derm•r vain mon toot, et mon tout ne vaut The word i- it is composed of four letters, of which the last (viz. o) is equal to zero; the whole, zero it-elf. being equal to nothing.
But. be-ides charades of this nature, there is another kind rather popular at evening parties— the act,il charades—the character of which is entirely drama tie. Tialf a dozen or so of the company retire to a private apartment. and there agree t.) select a vermin word as the subject of the eharade. The next done is to take the first syllabic, and arrange a little scene and Ilia II ?gin'. each member taking a certain part. This being accomplished, the amateur actors; re turn to the drdwing-room and commence their performance, the rest of the company constitut ing the spectator:. Care is taken to mention
conspicuously. and yet not obtrusively, in the worse of the dialogue. the syllable which is the subject of the seene. On its conclusion they again retire and devise a new series of incidents The male organ (antheridimu) is a spherical, ma1tkcilnfur body situated pear the oi;gonium. In the interior are numerous filaments divided by partitions into disk-like cells. each of which produces a sperm. An antheridium may de velop from '20,000 to 40,000 sperms, which escape into the water and swim to the The North An•riean genera and species of Charales have been described by Allen, 7'hc Pharacor of North America (New York, ISSS) ; Braun, Pray 'Pirate since Monographic der Ch racer'', edited by No•dstedt (Berlin. 18'33) ; Filarsky, Dic Chara•cen (Budapest, 1893).
In Massinger and Field's Fatal Dowry, the son of the Marshal of Burgundy. By his own imprisonment he redeems the body of his father. who had died in prison, and w hose corpse had been seized for debt.
for the next syllable, and so on. Finally they retire to eontrive the final scene, into which the whole word must he dexterously introduced at an odd moment. when the spectators are thought to he off the scent. The company are then asked to guess the word. For the wective performance of a charade of this sort, the actors must possess a good share of inventiveness, self-possession, and ready talk, as the greater portion of the dialogue has to beextemporized.