The Devil’s Dictionary Ambrose Bierce (best ereader for pdf and epub .txt) 📖

death of a friend.” Calumnus

A graduate of the School for Scandal.

Camel

A quadruped (the Splaypes humpidorsus) of great value to the show business. There are two kinds of camels⁠—the camel proper and the camel improper. It is the latter that is always exhibited.

Cannibal

A gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period.

Cannon

An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.

Canonicals

The motley worn by Jesters of the Court of Heaven.

Capital

The seat of misgovernment. That which provides the fire, the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the disgrace before meat.

Capital Punishment

A penalty regarding the justice and expediency of which many worthy persons⁠—including all the assassins⁠—entertain grave misgivings.

Carmelite

A mendicant friar of the order of Mount Carmel.

As Death was a-riding out one day,
Across Mount Carmel he took his way,
Where he met a mendicant monk,
Some three or four quarters drunk,
With a holy leer and a pious grin,
Ragged and fat and as saucy as sin,
Who held out his hands and cried:
“Give, give in Charity’s name, I pray.
Give in the name of the Church. O give,
Give that her holy sons may live!”
And Death replied,
Smiling long and wide:
“I’ll give, holy father, I’ll give thee⁠—a ride.”

With a rattle and bang
Of his bones, he sprang
From his famous Pale Horse, with his spear;
By the neck and the foot
Seized the fellow, and put
Him astride with his face to the rear.

The Monarch laughed loud with a sound that fell
Like clods on the coffin’s sounding shell:
“Ho, ho! A beggar on horseback, they say,
Will ride to the devil!”⁠—and thump
Fell the flat of his dart on the rump
Of the charger, which galloped away.

Faster and faster and faster it flew,
Till the rocks and the flocks and the trees that grew
By the road were dim and blended and blue
To the wild, wild eyes
Of the rider⁠—in size
Resembling a couple of blackberry pies.
Death laughed again, as a tomb might laugh
At a burial service spoiled,
And the mourners’ intentions foiled
By the body erecting
Its head and objecting
To further proceedings in its behalf.

Many a year and many a day
Have passed since these events away.
The monk has long been a dusty corse,
And Death has never recovered his horse.
For the friar got hold of its tail,
And steered it within the pale
Of the monastery gray,
Where the beast was stabled and fed
With barley and oil and bread
Till fatter it grew than the fattest friar,
And so in due course was appointed Prior.

—⁠G. J. Carnivorous

Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorous vegetarian, his heirs and assigns.

Cartesian

Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum⁠—whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum⁠—“I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;” as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

Cat

A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

This is a dog,
This is a cat.
This is a frog,
This is a rat.
Run, dog, mew, cat.
Jump, frog, gnaw, rat.

—⁠Elevenson Caviler

A critic of our own work.

Cemetery

An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies, poets write at a target and stonecutters spell for a wager. The inscriptions following will serve to illustrate the success attained in these Olympian games:

“His virtues were so conspicuous that his enemies, unable to overlook them, denied them, and his friends, to whose loose lives they were a rebuke, represented them as vices. They are here commemorated by his family, who shared them.”

In the earth we here prepare a
Place to lay our little Clara.
—Thomas M. and Mary Frazer
P.S.⁠—Gabriel will raise her.

Cenobite

A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness; and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.

O Cœnobite, O cœnobite,
Monastical gregarian,
You differ from the anchorite,
That solitudinarian:
With vollied prayers you wound Old Nick;
With dropping shots he makes him sick.

—⁠Quincy Giles Centaur

One of a race of persons who lived before the division of labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who followed the primitive economic maxim, “Every man his own horse.” The best of the lot was Chiron, who to the wisdom and virtues of the horse added the fleetness of man. The scripture story of the head of John the Baptist on a charger shows that pagan myths have somewhat sophisticated sacred history.

Cerberus

The watchdog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance⁠—against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance. Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the poets have credited him with as many as a hundred. Professor Graybill, whose clerky erudition and profound knowledge of Greek give his opinion great weight, has averaged all the estimates, and makes the number twenty-seven⁠—a judgment that would be entirely conclusive if Professor Graybill had known (a) something about dogs, and (b) something about arithmetic.

Childhood

The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth⁠—two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

Christian

One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

I dreamed I stood upon a hill, and, lo!
The godly multitudes walked to and fro
Beneath, in Sabbath garments fitly clad,
With pious mien, appropriately sad,
While all the church bells made a solemn din⁠—
A fire-alarm to those who lived in sin.
Then saw I gazing