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

A kind of net for effecting an involuntary change of

environment. For fish it is made strong and coarse, but women are

more easily taken with a singularly delicate fabric weighted with

small, cut stones.

 

The devil casting a seine of lace,

(With precious stones ‘twas weighted)

Drew it into the landing place

And its contents calculated.

 

All souls of women were in that sack —

A draft miraculous, precious!

But ere he could throw it across his back

They’d all escaped through the meshes.

 

Baruch de Loppis

 

SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement.

 

SELF-EVIDENT, adj. Evident to one’s self and to nobody else.

 

SELFISH, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.

 

SENATE, n. A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and

misdemeanors.

 

SERIAL, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true,

creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.

Frequently appended to each installment is a “synposis of preceding

chapters” for those who have not read them, but a direr need is a

synposis of succeeding chapters for those who do not intend to read

them. A synposis of the entire work would be still better.

The late James F. Bowman was writing a serial tale for a weekly

paper in collaboration with a genius whose name has not come down to

us. They wrote, not jointly but alternately, Bowman supplying the

installment for one week, his friend for the next, and so on, world

without end, they hoped. Unfortunately they quarreled, and one Monday

morning when Bowman read the paper to prepare himself for his task, he

found his work cut out for him in a way to surprise and pain him. His

collaborator had embarked every character of the narrative on a ship

and sunk them all in the deepest part of the Atlantic.

 

SEVERALTY, n. Separateness, as, lands in severalty, i.e., lands held

individually, not in joint ownership. Certain tribes of Indians are

believed now to be sufficiently civilized to have in severalty the

lands that they have hitherto held as tribal organizations, and could

not sell to the Whites for waxen beads and potato whiskey.

 

Lo! the poor Indian whose unsuited mind

Saw death before, hell and the grave behind;

Whom thrifty settler ne’er besought to stay —

His small belongings their appointed prey;

Whom Dispossession, with alluring wile,

Persuaded elsewhere every little while!

His fire unquenched and his undying worm

By “land in severalty” (charming term!)

Are cooled and killed, respectively, at last,

And he to his new holding anchored fast!

 

SHERIFF, n. In America the chief executive office of a country, whose

most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern

States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.

 

John Elmer Pettibone Cajee

(I write of him with little glee)

Was just as bad as he could be.

 

‘Twas frequently remarked: “I swon!

The sun has never looked upon

So bad a man as Neighbor John.”

 

A sinner through and through, he had

This added fault: it made him mad

To know another man was bad.

 

In such a case he thought it right

To rise at any hour of night

And quench that wicked person’s light.

 

Despite the town’s entreaties, he

Would hale him to the nearest tree

And leave him swinging wide and free.

 

Or sometimes, if the humor came,

A luckless wight’s reluctant frame

Was given to the cheerful flame.

 

While it was turning nice and brown,

All unconcerned John met the frown

Of that austere and righteous town.

 

“How sad,” his neighbors said, “that he

So scornful of the law should be —

An anar c, h, i, s, t.”

 

(That is the way that they preferred

To utter the abhorrent word,

So strong the aversion that it stirred.)

 

“Resolved,” they said, continuing,

“That Badman John must cease this thing

Of having his unlawful fling.

 

“Now, by these sacred relics” — here

Each man had out a souvenir

Got at a lynching yesteryear —

 

“By these we swear he shall forsake

His ways, nor cause our hearts to ache

By sins of rope and torch and stake.

 

“We’ll tie his red right hand until

He’ll have small freedom to fulfil

The mandates of his lawless will.”

 

So, in convention then and there,

They named him Sheriff. The affair

Was opened, it is said, with prayer.

 

J. Milton Sloluck

 

SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt

to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any

lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing

performance.

 

SLANG, n. The grunt of the human hog (_Pignoramus intolerabilis_)

with an audible memory. The speech of one who utters with his tongue

what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in

accomplishing the feat of a parrot. A means (under Providence) of

setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.

 

SMITHAREEN, n. A fragment, a decomponent part, a remain. The word is

used variously, but in the following verse on a noted female reformer

who opposed bicycle-riding by women because it “led them to the devil”

it is seen at its best:

 

The wheels go round without a sound —

The maidens hold high revel;

In sinful mood, insanely gay,

True spinsters spin adown the way

From duty to the devil!

They laugh, they sing, and — ting-a-ling!

Their bells go all the morning;

Their lanterns bright bestar the night

Pedestrians a-warning.

With lifted hands Miss Charlotte stands,

Good-Lording and O-mying,

Her rheumatism forgotten quite,

Her fat with anger frying.

She blocks the path that leads to wrath,

Jack Satan’s power defying.

The wheels go round without a sound

The lights burn red and blue and green.

What’s this that’s found upon the ground?

Poor Charlotte Smith’s a smithareen!

 

John William Yope

 

SOPHISTRY, n. The controversial method of an opponent, distinguished

from one’s own by superior insincerity and fooling. This method is

that of the later Sophists, a Grecian sect of philosophers who began

by teaching wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in brief, whatever men

ought to know, but lost themselves in a maze of quibbles and a fog of

words.

 

His bad opponent’s “facts” he sweeps away,

And drags his sophistry to light of day;

Then swears they’re pushed to madness who resort

To falsehood of so desperate a sort.

Not so; like sods upon a dead man’s breast,

He lies most lightly who the least is pressed.

 

Polydore Smith

 

SORCERY, n. The ancient prototype and forerunner of political

influence. It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was

punished by torture and death. Augustine Nicholas relates that a poor

peasant who had been accused of sorcery was put to the torture to

compel a confession. After enduring a few gentle agonies the

suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively asked his

tormentors if it were not possible to be a sorcerer without knowing

it.

 

SOUL, n. A spiritual entity concerning which there hath been brave

disputation. Plato held that those souls which in a previous state of

existence (antedating Athens) had obtained the clearest glimpses of

eternal truth entered into the bodies of persons who became

philosophers. Plato himself was a philosopher. The souls that had

least contemplated divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and

despots. Dionysius I, who had threatened to decapitate the broad-browed philosopher, was a usurper and a despot. Plato, doubtless, was

not the first to construct a system of philosophy that could be quoted

against his enemies; certainly he was not the last.

“Concerning the nature of the soul,” saith the renowned author of

Diversiones Sanctorum, “there hath been hardly more argument than

that of its place in the body. Mine own belief is that the soul hath

her seat in the abdomen — in which faith we may discern and interpret

a truth hitherto unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men

most devout. He is said in the Scripture to ‘make a god of his belly’

— why, then, should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him

to freshen his faith? Who so well as he can know the might and

majesty that he shrines? Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach

are one Divine Entity; and such was the belief of Promasius, who

nevertheless erred in denying it immortality. He had observed that

its visible and material substance failed and decayed with the rest of

the body after death, but of its immaterial essence he knew nothing.

This is what we call the Appetite, and it survives the wreck and reek

of mortality, to be rewarded or punished in another world, according

to what it hath demanded in the flesh. The Appetite whose coarse

clamoring was for the unwholesome viands of the general market and the

public refectory shall be cast into eternal famine, whilst that which

firmly through civilly insisted on ortolans, caviare, terrapin,

anchovies, pates de foie gras and all such Christian comestibles

shall flesh its spiritual tooth in the souls of them forever and ever,

and wreak its divine thirst upon the immortal parts of the rarest and

richest wines ever quaffed here below. Such is my religious faith,

though I grieve to confess that neither His Holiness the Pope nor His

Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I equally and profoundly

revere) will assent to its dissemination.”

 

SPOOKER, n. A writer whose imagination concerns itself with

supernatural phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks. One of

the most illustrious spookers of our time is Mr. William D. Howells,

who introduces a well-credentialed reader to as respectable and

mannerly a company of spooks as one could wish to meet. To the terror

that invests the chairman of a district school board, the Howells

ghost adds something of the mystery enveloping a farmer from another

township.

 

STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories

here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.

 

One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated

at dinner alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.

“Mr. Pollard,” said he, “my book, The Biography of a Dead Cow,

is published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its

authorship. Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the

Idiot of the Century. Do you think that fair criticism?”

“I am very sorry, sir,” replied the critic, amiably, “but it did

not occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who

wrote it.”

 

Mr. W.C. Morrow, who used to live in San Jose, California, was

addicted to writing ghost stories which made the reader feel as if a

stream of lizards, fresh from the ice, were streaking it up his back

and hiding in his hair. San Jose was at that time believed to be

haunted by the visible spirit of a noted bandit named Vasquez, who had

been hanged there. The town was not very well lighted, and it is

putting it mildly to say that San Jose was reluctant to be out o’

nights. One particularly dark night two gentlemen were abroad in the

loneliest spot within the city limits, talking loudly to keep up their

courage, when they came upon Mr. J.J. Owen, a well-known journalist.

“Why, Owen,” said one, “what brings you here on such a night as

this? You told me that this is one of Vasquez’ favorite haunts! And

you are a believer. Aren’t you afraid to be out?”

“My dear fellow,” the journalist replied with a drear autumnal

cadence in his speech, like the moan of a leaf-laden wind, “I am

afraid to be in. I have one of Will Morrow’s stories in my pocket and