The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce [spicy books to read .TXT] 📗

by the Aztecs and Peruvians, as in modern times they are popular with the Chinese; though it is believed that the ancient dead, like the modern, were light eaters. Among the many feasts of the Romans was the Novemdiale, which was held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven. Felon

A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.

Female

One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.

The Maker, at Creation’s birth,
With living things had stocked the earth.
From elephants to bats and snails,
They all were good, for all were males.
But when the Devil came and saw
He said: “By Thine eternal law
Of growth, maturity, decay,
These all must quickly pass away
And leave untenanted the earth
Unless Thou dost establish birth”⁠—
Then tucked his head beneath his wing
To laugh⁠—he had no sleeve⁠—the thing
With deviltry did so accord,
That he’d suggested to the Lord.
The Master pondered this advice,
Then shook and threw the fateful dice
Wherewith all matters here below
Are ordered, and observed the throw;
Then bent His head in awful state,
Confirming the decree of Fate.
From every part of earth anew
The conscious dust consenting flew,
While rivers from their courses rolled
To make it plastic for the mould.
Enough collected (but no more,
For niggard Nature hoards her store)
He kneaded it to flexile clay,
While Nick unseen threw some away.
And then the various forms He cast,
Gross organs first and finer last;
No one at once evolved, but all
By even touches grew and small
Degrees advanced, till, shade by shade,
To match all living things He’d made
Females, complete in all their parts
Except (His clay gave out) the hearts.
“No matter,” Satan cried; “with speed
I’ll fetch the very hearts they need”⁠—
So flew away and soon brought back
The number needed, in a sack.
That night earth rang with sounds of strife⁠—
Ten million males each had a wife;
That night sweet Peace her pinions spread
O’er Hell⁠—ten million devils dead!

—⁠G. J. Fib

A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar’s nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.

When David said: “All men are liars,” Dave,
Himself a liar, fibbed like any thief.
Perhaps he thought to weaken disbelief
By proof that even himself was not a slave
To Truth; though I suspect the aged knave
Had been of all her servitors the chief
Had he but known a fig’s reluctant leaf
Is more than e’er she wore on land or wave.
No, David served not Naked Truth when he
Struck that sledgehammer blow at all his race;
Nor did he hit the nail upon the head:
For reason shows that it could never be,
And the facts contradict him to his face.
Men are not liars all, for some are dead.

—⁠Bartle Quinker Fickleness

The iterated satiety of an enterprising affection.

Fiddle

An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse’s tail on the entrails of a cat.

To Rome said Nero: “If to smoke you turn
I shall not cease to fiddle while you burn.”
To Nero Rome replied: “Pray do your worst,
’Tis my excuse that you were fiddling first.”

—⁠Orm Pludge Fidelity

A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

Finance

The art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager. The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America’s most precious discoveries and possessions.

Flag

A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees on vacant lots in London⁠—“Rubbish may be shot here.”

Flesh

The Second Person of the secular Trinity.

Flop

Suddenly to change one’s opinions and go over to another party. The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as a turncoat by some of our partisan journals.

Flyspeck

The prototype of punctuation. It is observed by Garvinus that the systems of punctuation in use by the various literary nations depended originally upon the social habits and general diet of the flies infesting the several countries. These creatures, which have always been distinguished for a neighborly and companionable familiarity with authors, liberally or niggardly embellish the manuscripts in process of growth under the pen, according to their bodily habit, bringing out the sense of the work by a species of interpretation superior to, and independent of, the writer’s powers. The “old masters” of literature⁠—that is to say, the early writers whose work is so esteemed by later scribes and critics in the same language⁠—never punctuated at all, but worked right along freehanded, without that abruption of the thought which comes from the use of points. (We observe the same thing in children today, whose usage in this particular is a striking and beautiful instance of the law that the infancy of individuals reproduces the methods and stages of development characterizing the infancy of races.) In the work of these primitive scribes all the punctuation is found, by the modern investigator with his optical instruments and chemical tests, to have been inserted by the writers’ ingenious and serviceable collaborator, the common housefly⁠—Musca maledicta. In transcribing these ancient MSS., for the purpose of either making the work their own or preserving what they naturally regard as divine revelations, later writers reverently and accurately copy whatever marks they find upon the papyrus or parchment, to the unspeakable enhancement of the lucidity of the thought and value of the work. Writers contemporary with the copyists naturally avail themselves of the obvious advantages of these marks in their own work, and with such assistance as the flies of their own household may be willing to grant, frequently rival and sometimes surpass the older compositions, in respect at least of punctuation, which is no small glory. Fully to understand the important services that flies perform to literature it is only necessary to lay a page of some popular novelist alongside a saucer of cream-and-molasses in a sunny room and observe “how the wit brightens and the style refines” in accurate proportion to the duration of exposure.

Folly

That “gift and faculty