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

own hand
Beneath the great oak tree.
He’d traveled in a foreign land.
He tried to make her understand
The dance that’s called the Saraband,
But he called it Scarabee.
He had called it so through an afternoon,
And she, the light of his harem if so might be,
Had smiled and said naught. O the body was fair to see,
All frosted there in the shine o’ the moon⁠—
Dead for a Scarabee
And a recollection that came too late.
O Fate!
They buried him where he lay,
He sleeps awaiting the Day,
In state,
And two Possible Puns, moon-eyed and wan,
Gloom over the grave and then move on.
Dead for a Scarabee! —⁠Fernando Tapple Scarification

A form of penance practised by the medieval pious. The rite was performed, sometimes with a knife, sometimes with a hot iron, but always, says Arsenius Asceticus, acceptably if the penitent spared himself no pain nor harmless disfigurement. Scarification, with other crude penances, has now been superseded by benefaction. The founding of a library or endowment of a university is said to yield to the penitent a sharper and more lasting pain than is conferred by the knife or iron, and is therefore a surer means of grace. There are, however, two grave objections to it as a penitential method: the good that it does and the taint of justice.

Scepter

A king’s staff of office, the sign and symbol of his authority. It was originally a mace with which the sovereign admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the bones of their proponents.

Scimitar

A curved sword of exceeding keenness, in the conduct of which certain Orientals attain a surprising proficiency, as the incident here related will serve to show. The account is translated from the Japanese of Shusi Itama, a famous writer of the thirteenth century.

When the great Gichi-Kuktai was Mikado he condemned to decapitation Jijiji Ri, a high officer of the Court. Soon after the hour appointed for performance of the rite what was his Majesty’s surprise to see calmly approaching the throne the man who should have been at that time ten minutes dead!

“Seventeen hundred impossible dragons!” shouted the enraged monarch. “Did I not sentence you to stand in the marketplace and have your head struck off by the public executioner at three o’clock? And is it not now 3:10?”

“Son of a thousand illustrious deities,” answered the condemned minister, “all that you say is so true that the truth is a lie in comparison. But your heavenly Majesty’s sunny and vitalizing wishes have been pestilently disregarded. With joy I ran and placed my unworthy body in the marketplace. The executioner appeared with his bare scimitar, ostentatiously whirled it in air, and then, tapping me lightly upon the neck, strode away, pelted by the populace, with whom I was ever a favorite. I am come to pray for justice upon his own dishonorable and treasonous head.”

“To what regiment of executioners does the black-boweled caitiff belong?” asked the Mikado.

“To the gallant Ninety-eight Hundred and Thirty-seventh⁠—I know the man. His name is Sakko-Samshi.”

“Let him be brought before me,” said the Mikado to an attendant, and a half-hour later the culprit stood in the Presence.

“Thou bastard son of a three-legged hunchback without thumbs!” roared the sovereign⁠—“why didst thou but lightly tap the neck that it should have been thy pleasure to sever?”

“Lord of Cranes and Cherry Blooms,” replied the executioner, unmoved, “command him to blow his nose with his fingers.”

Being commanded, Jijiji Ri laid hold of his nose and trumpeted like an elephant, all expecting to see the severed head flung violently from him. Nothing occurred: the performance prospered peacefully to the close, without incident.

All eyes were now turned on the executioner, who had grown as white as the snows on the summit of Fujiama. His legs trembled and his breath came in gasps of terror.

“Several kinds of spike-tailed brass lions!” he cried; “I am a ruined and disgraced swordsman! I struck the villain feebly because in flourishing the scimitar I had accidentally passed it through my own neck! Father of the Moon, I resign my office.”

So saying, he grasped his topknot, lifted off his head, and advancing to the throne laid it humbly at the Mikado’s feet.

Scrapbook

A book that is commonly edited by a fool. Many persons of some small distinction compile scrapbooks containing whatever they happen to read about themselves or employ others to collect. One of these egotists was addressed in the lines following, by Agamemnon Melancthon Peters:

Dear Frank, that scrapbook where you boast
You keep a record true
Of every kind of peppered roast
That’s made of you;

Wherein you paste the printed gibes
That revel round your name,
Thinking the laughter of the scribes
Attests your fame;

Where all the pictures you arrange
That comic pencils trace⁠—
Your funny figure and your strange
Semitic face⁠—

Pray lend it me. Wit I have not,
Nor art, but there I’ll list
The daily drubbings you’d have got
Had God a fist.

Scribbler

A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one’s own.

Scriptures

The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

Seal

A mark impressed upon certain kinds of documents to attest their authenticity and authority. Sometimes it is stamped upon wax, and attached to the paper, sometimes into the paper itself. Sealing, in this sense, is a survival of an ancient custom of inscribing important papers with cabalistic words or signs to give them a magical efficacy independent of the authority that they represent. In the British museum are preserved many ancient papers, mostly of a sacerdotal character, validated by necromantic pentagrams and other devices, frequently initial letters of words to conjure with; and in many instances these are attached in the same way that seals are appended now. As nearly every reasonless and apparently meaningless custom, rite or observance of modern times had origin in some remote utility, it is pleasing to note an example of ancient nonsense evolving in the process of ages into something really