Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

  DIE, n. The singular of “dice.” We seldom hear the word, because there is a prohibitory proverb, “Never say die.” At long intervals, however, some one says: “The die is cast,” which is not true, for it is cut. The word is found in an immortal couplet by that eminent poet and domestic economist, Senator Depew:

  A cube of cheese no larger than a die

  May bait the trap to catch a nibbling mie.

  DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead — a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.

  DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.

  DISABUSE, v.t. The present your neighbor with another and better error than the one which he has deemed it advantageous to embrace.

  DISCRIMINATE, v.i. To note the particulars in which one person or thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another.

  DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors.

  DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.

  DISOBEY, v.t. To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command.

  His right to govern me is clear as day,

  My duty manifest to disobey;

  And if that fit observance e’er I shut

  May I and duty be alike undone.

  –Israfel Brown

  DISSEMBLE, v.i. To put a clean shirt upon the character.

  Let us dissemble.

  –Adam

  DISTANCE, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs, and keep.

  DISTRESS, n. A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.

  DIVINATION, n. The art of nosing out the occult. Divination is of as many kinds as there are fruit-bearing varieties of the flowering dunce and the early fool.

  DOG, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship. This Divine Being in some of his smaller and silkier incarnations takes, in the affection of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant. The Dog is a survival — an anachronism. He toils not, neither does he spin, yet Solomon in all his glory never lay upon a door-mat all day long, sun-soaked and fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means wherewith to purchase the idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned with a look of tolerant recognition.

  DRAGOON, n. A soldier who combines dash and steadiness in so equal measure that he makes his advances on foot and his retreats on horseback.

  DRAMATIST, n. One who adapts plays from the French.

  DRUIDS, n. Priests and ministers of an ancient Celtic religion which did not disdain to employ the humble allurement of human sacrifice. Very little is now known about the Druids and their faith. Pliny says their religion, originating in Britain, spread eastward as far as Persia. Caesar says those who desired to study its mysteries went to Britain. Caesar himself went to Britain, but does not appear to have obtained any high preferment in the Druidical Church, although his talent for human sacrifice was considerable.

  Druids performed their religious rites in groves, and knew nothing of church mortgages and the season-ticket system of pew rents. They were, in short, heathens and — as they were once complacently catalogued by a distinguished prelate of the Church of England — Dissenters.

  DUCK-BILL, n. Your account at your restaurant during the canvas-back season.

  DUEL, n. A formal ceremony preliminary to the reconciliation of two enemies. Great skill is necessary to its satisfactory observance; if awkwardly performed the most unexpected and deplorable consequences sometimes ensue. A long time ago a man lost his life in a duel.

  That dueling’s a gentlemanly vice

  I hold; and wish that it had been my lot

  To live my life out in some favored spot —

  Some country where it is considered nice

  To split a rival like a fish, or slice

  A husband like a spud, or with a shot

  Bring down a debtor doubled in a knot

  And ready to be put upon the ice.

  Some miscreants there are, whom I do long

  To shoot, to stab, or some such way reclaim

  The scurvy rogues to better lives and manners,

  I seem to see them now — a mighty throng.

  It looks as if to challenge me they came,

  Jauntily marching with brass bands and banners!

  –Xamba Q. Dar

  DULLARD, n. A member of the reigning dynasty in letters and life. The Dullards came in with Adam, and being both numerous and sturdy have overrun the habitable world. The secret of their power is their insensibility to blows; tickle them with a bludgeon and they laugh with a platitude. The Dullards came originally from Boeotia, whence they were driven by stress of starvation, their dullness having blighted the crops. For some centuries they infested Philistia, and many of them are called Philistines to this day. In the turbulent times of the Crusades they withdrew thence and gradually overspread all Europe, occupying most of the high places in politics, art, literature, science and theology. Since a detachment of Dullards came over with the Pilgrims in the Mayflower and made a favorable report of the country, their increase by birth, immigration, and conversion has been rapid and steady. According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians. The intellectual centre of the race is somewhere about Peoria, Illinois, but the New England Dullard is the most shockingly moral.

  DUTY, n. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.

  Sir Lavender Portwine, in favor at court,

  Was wroth at his master, who’d kissed Lady Port.

  His anger provoked him to take the king’s head,

  But duty prevailed, and he took the king’s bread,

  Instead.

  –G.J.

  E

  EAT, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition.

  “I was in the drawing-room, enjoying my dinner,” said Brillat–Savarin, beginning an anecdote. “What!” interrupted Rochebriant; “eating dinner in a drawing-room?” “I must beg you to observe, monsieur,” explained the great gastronome, “that I did not say I was eating my dinner, but enjoying it. I had dined an hour before.”

  EAVESDROP, v.i. Secretly to overhear a catalogue of the crimes and vices of another or yourself.

  A lady with one of her ears applied

  To an open keyhole heard, inside,

  Two female gossips in converse free —

  The subject engaging them was she.

  “I think,” said one, “and my husband thinks

  That she’s a prying, inquisitive minx!”

  As soon as no more of it she could hear

  The lady, indignant, removed her ear.

  “I will not stay,” she said, with a pout,

  “To hear my character lied about!”

  –Gopete Sherany

  ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.

  ECONOMY, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.

  EDIBLE, adj. Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

  EDITOR, n. A person who combines the judicial functions of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, but is placable with an obolus; a severely virtuous censor, but so charitable withal that he tolerates the virtues of others and the vices of himself; who flings about him the splintering lightning and sturdy thunders of admonition till he resembles a bunch of firecrackers petulantl
y uttering his mind at the tail of a dog; then straightway murmurs a mild, melodious lay, soft as the cooing of a donkey intoning its prayer to the evening star. Master of mysteries and lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of thought, his face suffused with the dim splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to suit. And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack up some pathos.

  O, the Lord of Law on the Throne of Thought,

  A gilded impostor is he.

  Of shreds and patches his robes are wrought,

  His crown is brass,

  Himself an ass,

  And his power is fiddle-dee-dee.

  Prankily, crankily prating of naught,

  Silly old quilly old Monarch of Thought.

  Public opinion’s camp-follower he,

  Thundering, blundering, plundering free.

  Affected,

  Ungracious,

  Suspected,

  Mendacious,

  Respected contemporaree!

  J.H. Bumbleshook

  EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

  EFFECT, n. The second of two phenomena which always occur together in the same order. The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other — which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in the pursuit of a rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of a dog.

  EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

  Megaceph, chosen to serve the State

  In the halls of legislative debate,

  One day with all his credentials came

  To the capitol’s door and announced his name.

  The doorkeeper looked, with a comical twist

  Of the face, at the eminent egotist,

  And said: “Go away, for we settle here

  All manner of questions, knotty and queer,

  And we cannot have, when the speaker demands

  To be told how every member stands,

  A man who to all things under the sky

  Assents by eternally voting ‘I’.”

  EJECTION, n. An approved remedy for the disease of garrulity. It is also much used in cases of extreme poverty.

  ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man’s choice.

  ELECTRICITY, n. The power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else. It is the same thing as lightning, and its famous attempt to strike Dr. Franklin is one of the most picturesque incidents in that great and good man’s career. The memory of Dr. Franklin is justly held in great reverence, particularly in France, where a waxen effigy of him was recently on exhibition, bearing the following touching account of his life and services to science:

  “Monsieur Franqulin, inventor of electricity. This

  illustrious savant, after having made several voyages around the

  world, died on the Sandwich Islands and was devoured by savages,

  of whom not a single fragment was ever recovered.”

  Electricity seems destined to play a most important part in the

  arts and industries. The question of its economical application to some purposes is still unsettled, but experiment has already proved that it will propel a street car better than a gas jet and give more light than a horse.

  ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader’s mind the dampest kind of dejection. The most famous English example begins somewhat like this:

  The cur foretells the knell of parting day;

  The loafing herd winds slowly o’er the lea;

  The wise man homeward plods; I only stay

  To fiddle-faddle in a minor key.

  ELOQUENCE, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

  ELYSIUM, n. An imaginary delightful country which the ancients foolishly believed to be inhabited by the spirits of the good. This ridiculous and mischievous fable was swept off the face of the earth by the early Christians — may their souls be happy in Heaven!

  EMANCIPATION, n. A bondman’s change from the tyranny of another to the despotism of himself.

  He was a slave: at word he went and came;

  His iron collar cut him to the bone.

  Then Liberty erased his owner’s name,

  Tightened the rivets and inscribed his own.

  –G.J.

  EMBALM, v.i. To cheat vegetation by locking up the gases upon which it feeds. By embalming their dead and thereby deranging the natural balance between animal and vegetable life, the Egyptians made their once fertile and populous country barren and incapable of supporting more than a meagre crew. The modern metallic burial casket is a step in the same direction, and many a dead man who ought now to be ornamenting his neighbor’s lawn as a tree, or enriching his table as a bunch of radishes, is doomed to a long inutility. We shall get him after awhile if we are spared, but in the meantime the violet and rose are languishing for a nibble at his glutoeus maximus.

  EMOTION, n. A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.

  ENCOMIAST, n. A special (but not particular) kind of liar.

  END, n. The position farthest removed on either hand from the Interlocutor.

  The man was perishing apace

  Who played the tambourine;

  The seal of death was on his face —

  ‘Twas pallid, for ‘twas clean.

  “This is the end,” the sick man said

  In faint and failing tones.

  A moment later he was dead,

  And Tambourine was Bones.

  –Tinley Roquot

  ENOUGH, pro. All there is in the world if you like it.

  Enough is as good as a feast — for that matter

  Enougher’s as good as a feast for the platter.

  –Arbely C. Strunk

  ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.

  ENTHUSIASM, n. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience. Byron, who recovered long enough to call it “entuzy-muzy,” had a relapse, which carried him off — to Missolonghi.

  ENVELOPE, n. The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a bill; the husk of a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.

  ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.

  EPAULET, n. An ornamented badge, serving to distinguish a military officer from the enemy — that is to say, from the officer of lower rank to whom his death would give promotion.

  EPICURE, n. An opponent of Epicurus, an abstemious philosopher who, holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted no time in gratification from the senses.

  EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom. Following are some of the more notable epigrams of the learned and ingenious Dr. Jamrach Holobom:

  We know better the needs of ourselves than of others. To

  serve oneself is economy of administration.

  In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a

  nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal

  activity.

  There are three sexes; males, females and girls.

  Beauty in women and distinction in men are alike in this:

  they seem to be the unthinking a kind of credibility.

  Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be

  ashamed of.

  While your friend holds you
affectionately by both your hands

  you are safe, for you can watch both his.

  EPITAPH, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect. Following is a touching example:

  Here lie the bones of Parson Platt,

  Wise, pious, humble and all that,

  Who showed us life as all should live it;

  Let that be said — and God forgive it!

  ERUDITION, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

  So wide his erudition’s mighty span,

  He knew Creation’s origin and plan

  And only came by accident to grief —

  He thought, poor man, ‘twas right to be a thief.

  –Romach Pute

  ESOTERIC, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient philosophies were of two kinds — exoteric, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and esoteric, those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our time.

  ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.

  EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi.

  A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as

  to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.

  EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.