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

the

negative. Procinus, however, was spared to die of the bite of a

viper.

 

HALO, n. Properly, a luminous ring encircling an astronomical body,

but not infrequently confounded with “aureola,” or “nimbus,” a

somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a head-dress by divinities and

saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by moisture

in the air, in the manner of a rainbow; but the aureola is conferred

as a sign of superior sanctity, in the same way as a bishop’s mitre,

or the Pope’s tiara. In the painting of the Nativity, by Szedgkin, a

pious artist of Pesth, not only do the Virgin and the Child wear the

nimbus, but an ass nibbling hay from the sacred manger is similarly

decorated and, to his lasting honor be it said, appears to bear his

unaccustomed dignity with a truly saintly grace.

 

HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and

commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.

 

HANDKERCHIEF, n. A small square of silk or linen, used in various

ignoble offices about the face and especially serviceable at funerals

to conceal the lack of tears. The handkerchief is of recent

invention; our ancestors knew nothing of it and intrusted its duties

to the sleeve. Shakespeare’s introducing it into the play of

“Othello” is an anachronism: Desdemona dried her nose with her skirt,

as Dr. Mary Walker and other reformers have done with their coattails

in our own day — an evidence that revolutions sometimes go backward.

 

HANGMAN, n. An officer of the law charged with duties of the highest

dignity and utmost gravity, and held in hereditary disesteem by a

populace having a criminal ancestry. In some of the American States

his functions are now performed by an electrician, as in New Jersey,

where executions by electricity have recently been ordered — the

first instance known to this lexicographer of anybody questioning the

expediency of hanging Jerseymen.

 

HAPPINESS, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the

misery of another.

 

HARANGUE, n. A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harrangue-outang.

 

HARBOR, n. A place where ships taking shelter from stores are exposed

to the fury of the customs.

 

HARMONISTS, n. A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from

Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for

the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.

 

HASH, x. There is no definition for this word — nobody knows what

hash is.

 

HATCHET, n. A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.

 

“O bury the hatchet, irascible Red,

For peace is a blessing,” the White Man said.

The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred,

With imposing rites, in the White Man’s head.

 

John Lukkus

 

HATRED, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another’s

superiority.

 

HEAD-MONEY, n. A capitation tax, or poll-tax.

 

In ancient times there lived a king

Whose tax-collectors could not wring

From all his subjects gold enough

To make the royal way less rough.

For pleasure’s highway, like the dames

Whose premises adjoin it, claims

Perpetual repairing. So

The tax-collectors in a row

Appeared before the throne to pray

Their master to devise some way

To swell the revenue. “So great,”

Said they, “are the demands of state

A tithe of all that we collect

Will scarcely meet them. Pray reflect:

How, if one-tenth we must resign,

Can we exist on t’other nine?”

The monarch asked them in reply:

“Has it occurred to you to try

The advantage of economy?”

“It has,” the spokesman said: “we sold

All of our gray garrotes of gold;

With plated-ware we now compress

The necks of those whom we assess.

Plain iron forceps we employ

To mitigate the miser’s joy

Who hoards, with greed that never tires,

That which your Majesty requires.”

Deep lines of thought were seen to plow

Their way across the royal brow.

“Your state is desperate, no question;

Pray favor me with a suggestion.”

“O King of Men,” the spokesman said,

“If you’ll impose upon each head

A tax, the augmented revenue

We’ll cheerfully divide with you.”

As flashes of the sun illume

The parted storm-cloud’s sullen gloom,

The king smiled grimly. “I decree

That it be so — and, not to be

In generosity outdone,

Declare you, each and every one,

Exempted from the operation

Of this new law of capitation.

But lest the people censure me

Because they’re bound and you are free,

‘Twere well some clever scheme were laid

By you this poll-tax to evade.

I’ll leave you now while you confer

With my most trusted minister.”

The monarch from the throne-room walked

And straightway in among them stalked

A silent man, with brow concealed,

Bare-armed — his gleaming axe revealed!

 

G.J.

 

HEARSE, n. Death’s baby-carriage.

 

HEART, n. An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this

useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments — a

very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once

universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments and emotions

reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of

the gastric fluid. The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a

feeling — tender or not, according to the age of the animal from

which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a

caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a

pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a

hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh

of sensibility — these things have been patiently ascertained by M.

Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity. (See, also,

my monograph, _The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and

Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion_ — 4to, 687 pp.) In a

scientific work entitled, I believe, Delectatio Demonorum (John

Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a

striking illustration; and for further light consult Professor Dam’s

famous treatise on Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration.

 

HEAT, n.

 

Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode

Of motion, but I know now how he’s proving

His point; but this I know — hot words bestowed

With skill will set the human fist a-moving,

And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.

Crede expertum — I have seen them, child.

 

Gorton Swope

 

HEATHEN, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship

something that he can see and feel. According to Professor Howison,

of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.

 

“The Hebrews are heathens!” says Howison. He’s

A Christian philosopher. I’m

A scurril agnostical chap, if you please,

Addicted too much to the crime

Of religious discussion in my rhyme.

 

Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree

On a modus vivendi — not they! —

Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,

And I haven’t been reared in a way

To joy in the thick of the fray.

 

For this of my creed is the soul and the gist,

And the truth of it I aver:

Who differs from me in his faith is an ‘ist,

And ‘ite, an ‘ie, or an ‘er —

And I’m down upon him or her!

 

Let Howison urge with perfunctory chin

Toleration — that’s all very well,

But a roast is “nuts” to his nostril thin,

And he’s running — I know by the smell —

A secret and personal Hell!

 

Bissell Gip

 

HEAVEN, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with

talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention

while you expound your own.

 

HEBREW, n. A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an

altogether superior creation.

 

HELPMATE, n. A wife, or bitter half.

 

“Now, why is yer wife called a helpmate, Pat?”

Says the priest. “Since the time ‘o yer wooin’

She’s niver [sic] assisted in what ye were at —

For it’s naught ye are ever doin’.”

 

“That’s true of yer Riverence [sic],” Patrick replies,

And no sign of contrition envices;

“But, bedad, it’s a fact which the word implies,

For she helps to mate the expinses [sic]!”

 

Marley Wottel

 

HEMP, n. A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of

neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open

air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.

 

HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.

 

HERS, pron. His.

 

HIBERNATE, v.i. To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion.

There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of

various animals. Many believe that the bear hibernates during the

whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking its paws. It is

admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so lean

that it had to try twice before it can cast a shadow. Three or four

centuries ago, in England, no fact was better attested than that

swallows passed the winter months in the mud at the bottom of their

brooks, clinging together in globular masses. They have apparently

been compelled to give up the custom and account of the foulness of

the brooks. Sotus Ecobius discovered in Central Asia a whole nation

of people who hibernate. By some investigators, the fasting of Lent

is supposed to have been originally a modified form of hibernation, to

which the Church gave a religious significance; but this view was

strenuously opposed by that eminent authority, Bishop Kip, who did not

wish any honors denied to the memory of the Founder of his family.

 

HIPPOGRIFF, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half

griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and

half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, a one-quarter

eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of

zoology is full of surprises.

 

HISTORIAN, n. A broad-gauge gossip.

 

HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant,

which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly

fools.

 

Of Roman history, great Niebuhr’s shown

‘Tis nine-tenths lying. Faith, I wish ‘twere known,

Ere we accept great Niebuhr as a guide,

Wherein he blundered and how much he lied.

 

Salder Bupp

 

HOG, n. A bird remarkable for the catholicity of its appetite and

serving to illustrate that of ours. Among the Mahometans and Jews,

the hog is not in favor as an article of diet, but is respected for

the delicacy and the melody of its voice. It is chiefly as a songster

that the fowl is esteemed; the cage of him in full chorus has been

known to draw tears from two persons at once. The scientific name of

this dicky-bird is Porcus Rockefelleri. Mr. Rockefeller did not

discover the hog, but it is considered his by right of resemblance.

 

HOMOEOPATHIST, n. The humorist of the medical profession.

 

HOMOEOPATHY, n. A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and

Christian Science. To the last both the others are distinctly

inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they

can not.

 

HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are

four kinds of homocide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and

praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain

whether he fell by one kind or another — the classification is for

advantage of the lawyers.

 

HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual

needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.

 

So skilled the parson was in homiletics

That all his normal purges and emetics

To medicine the spirit were compounded

With a most just discrimination founded

Upon a rigorous examination

Of tongue and pulse and heart and respiration.

Then, having diagnosed each one’s condition,

His scriptural specifics this physician

Administered —