The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce (best english books to read TXT) 📖

caught by some sturdy peasants in a churchyard at Sudbury

and ducked in a horsepond. (He appears to think that so distinguished

a criminal should have been ducked in a tank of rosewater.) The water

turned at once to blood “and so contynues unto ys daye.” The pond has

since been bled with a ditch. As late as the beginning of the

fourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the crypt of the cathedral

at Amiens and the whole population surrounded the place. Twenty armed

men with a priest at their head, bearing a crucifix, entered and

captured the ghoul, which, thinking to escape by the stratagem, had

transformed itself to the semblance of a well known citizen, but was

nevertheless hanged, drawn and quartered in the midst of hideous

popular orgies. The citizen whose shape the demon had assumed was so

affected by the sinister occurrence that he never again showed himself

in Amiens and his fate remains a mystery.

 

GLUTTON, n. A person who escapes the evils of moderation by

committing dyspepsia.

 

GNOME, n. In North-European mythology, a dwarfish imp inhabiting the

interior parts of the earth and having special custody of mineral

treasures. Bjorsen, who died in 1765, says gnomes were common enough

in the southern parts of Sweden in his boyhood, and he frequently saw

them scampering on the hills in the evening twilight. Ludwig

Binkerhoof saw three as recently as 1792, in the Black Forest, and

Sneddeker avers that in 1803 they drove a party of miners out of a

Silesian mine. Basing our computations upon data supplied by these

statements, we find that the gnomes were probably extinct as early as

1764.

 

GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion

between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not

go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin

of the fusion managers.

 

GNU, n. An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state

resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag. In its wild condition it is

something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.

 

A hunter from Kew caught a distant view

Of a peacefully meditative gnu,

And he said: “I’ll pursue, and my hands imbrue

In its blood at a closer interview.”

But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw

O’er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;

And he said as he flew: “It is well I withdrew

Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew

That really meritorious gnu.”

 

Jarn Leffer

 

GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer.

Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.

 

GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some

occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various

degrees of the bird’s intellectual energies and emotional character,

so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person

called an “author,” there results a very fair and accurate transcript

of the fowl’s thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as

discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found

to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be

very great geese indeed.

 

GORGON, n.

 

The Gorgon was a maiden bold

Who turned to stone the Greeks of old

That looked upon her awful brow.

We dig them out of ruins now,

And swear that workmanship so bad

Proves all the ancient sculptors mad.

 

GOUT, n. A physician’s name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.

 

GRACES, n. Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne,

who attended upon Venus, serving without salary. They were at no

expense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and

dressed according to the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened to

be blowing.

 

GRAMMAR, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet

for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to

distinction.

 

GRAPE, n.

 

Hail noble fruit! — by Homer sung,

Anacreon and Khayyam;

Thy praise is ever on the tongue

Of better men than I am.

 

The lyre in my hand has never swept,

The song I cannot offer:

My humbler service pray accept —

I’ll help to kill the scoffer.

The water-drinkers and the cranks

Who load their skins with liquor —

I’ll gladly bear their belly-tanks

And tap them with my sticker.

 

Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools

When e’er we let the wine rest.

Here’s death to Prohibition’s fools,

And every kind of vine-pest!

 

Jamrach Holobom

 

GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to

the demands of American Socialism.

 

GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of

the medical student.

 

Beside a lonely grave I stood —

With brambles ‘twas encumbered;

The winds were moaning in the wood,

Unheard by him who slumbered,

 

A rustic standing near, I said:

“He cannot hear it blowing!”

“‘Course not,” said he: “the feller’s dead —

He can’t hear nowt [sic] that’s going.”

 

“Too true,” I said; “alas, too true —

No sound his sense can quicken!”

“Well, mister, wot is that to you? —

The deadster ain’t a-kickin’.”

 

I knelt and prayed: “O Father, smile

On him, and mercy show him!”

That countryman looked on the while,

And said: “Ye didn’t know him.”

 

Pobeter Dunko

 

GRAVITATION, n. The tendency of all bodies to approach one another

with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain —

the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength

of their tendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and

edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B,

makes B the proof of A.

 

GREAT, adj.

 

“I’m great,” the Lion said — “I reign

The monarch of the wood and plain!”

 

The Elephant replied: “I’m great —

No quadruped can match my weight!”

 

“I’m great — no animal has half

So long a neck!” said the Giraffe.

 

“I’m great,” the Kangaroo said — “see

My femoral muscularity!”

 

The ‘Possum said: “I’m great — behold,

My tail is lithe and bald and cold!”

 

An Oyster fried was understood

To say: “I’m great because I’m good!”

 

Each reckons greatness to consist

In that in which he heads the list,

 

And Vierick thinks he tops his class

Because he is the greatest ass.

 

Arion Spurl Doke

 

GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders

with good reason.

In his great work on Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution, the

learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture

— the shrug — among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles

and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracing the head inside

the shell. It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an

authority, but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth and

enforced in my work entitled Hereditary Emotions — lib. II, c. XI)

the shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important a

theory, for previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown. I

have not a doubt that it is directly referable to the terror inspired

by the guillotine during the period of that instrument’s activity.

 

GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the

settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left

unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to

the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it

was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion

seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels. Moreover,

it has the hearty concurrence of the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of

Agriculture.

Secretary Wilson became interested in gunpowder through an event

that occurred on the Government experimental farm in the District of

Columbia. One day, several years ago, a rogue imperfectly reverent of

the Secretary’s profound attainments and personal character presented

him with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the sed of the

Flashawful flabbergastor, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial

value, admirably adapted to this climate. The good Secretary was

instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with

soil. This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line

of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look

backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a

lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point. Contact with the

earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary

saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke and

fierce evolution. He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless,

then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himself

thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators

along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak

prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages,

and audibly refusing to be comforted. “Great Scott! what is that?”

cried a surveyor’s chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fading

line of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon. “That,”

said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again

centering his attention upon his instrument, “is the Meridian of

Washington.”

H

HABEAS CORPUS. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when

confined for the wrong crime.

 

HABIT, n. A shackle for the free.

 

HADES, n. The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the

place where the dead live.

Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our

Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in

a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves

were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris.

When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of

evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a

majority vote on translating the Greek word “Aides” as “Hell”; but a

conscientious minority member secretly possessed himself of the record

and struck out the objectional word wherever he could find it. At the

next meeting, the Bishop of Salisbury, looking over the work, suddenly

sprang to his feet and said with considerable excitement: “Gentlemen,

somebody has been razing ‘Hell’ here!” Years afterward the good

prelate’s death was made sweet by the reflection that he had been the

means (under Providence) of making an important, serviceable and

immortal addition to the phraseology of the English tongue.

 

HAG, n. An elderly lady whom you do not happen to like; sometimes

called, also, a hen, or cat. Old witches, sorceresses, etc., were

called hags from the belief that their heads were surrounded by a kind

of baleful lumination or nimbus — hag being the popular name of that

peculiar electrical light sometimes observed in the hair. At one time

hag was not a word of reproach: Drayton speaks of a “beautiful hag,

all smiles,” much as Shakespeare said, “sweet wench.” It would not

now be proper to call your sweetheart a hag — that compliment is

reserved for the use of her grandchildren.

 

HALF, n. One of two equal parts into which a thing may be divided, or

considered as divided. In the fourteenth century a heated discussion

arose among theologists and philosophers as to whether Omniscience

could part an object into three halves; and the pious Father

Aldrovinus publicly prayed in the cathedral at Rouen that God would

demonstrate the affirmative of the proposition in some signal and

unmistakable way, and particularly (if it should please Him) upon the

body of that hardy blasphemer, Manutius Procinus, who maintained