Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  FORCE, n.

  “Force is but might,” the teacher said —

  “That definition’s just.”

  The boy said naught but thought instead,

  Remembering his pounded head:

  “Force is not might but must!”

  FOREFINGER, n. The finger commonly used in pointing out two malefactors.

  FOREORDINATION, n. This looks like an easy word to define, but when I consider that pious and learned theologians have spent long lives in explaining it, and written libraries to explain their explanations; when I remember the nations have been divided and bloody battles caused by the difference between foreordination and predestination, and that millions of treasure have been expended in the effort to prove and disprove its compatibility with freedom of the will and the efficacy of prayer, praise, and a religious life — recalling these awful facts in the history of the word, I stand appalled before the mighty problem of its signification, abase my spiritual eyes, fearing to contemplate its portentous magnitude, reverently uncover and humbly refer it to His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons and His Grace Bishop Potter.

  FORGETFULNESS, n. A gift of God bestowed upon doctors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

  FORK, n. An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth. Formerly the knife was employed for this purpose, and by many worthy persons is still thought to have many advantages over the other tool, which, however, they do not altogether reject, but use to assist in charging the knife. The immunity of these persons from swift and awful death is one of the most striking proofs of God’s mercy to those that hate Him.

  FORMA PAUPERIS. [Latin] In the character of a poor person — a method by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to lose his case.

  When Adam long ago in Cupid’s awful court

  (For Cupid ruled ere Adam was invented)

  Sued for Eve’s favor, says an ancient law report,

  He stood and pleaded unhabilimented.

  “You sue in forma pauperis, I see,” Eve cried;

  “Actions can’t here be that way prosecuted.”

  So all poor Adam’s motions coldly were denied:

  He went away — as he had come — nonsuited.

  –G.J.

  FRANKALMOIGNE, n. The tenure by which a religious corporation holds lands on condition of praying for the soul of the donor. In mediaeval times many of the wealthiest fraternities obtained their estates in this simple and cheap manner, and once when Henry VIII of England sent an officer to confiscate certain vast possessions which a fraternity of monks held by frankalmoigne, “What!” said the Prior, “would you master stay our benefactor’s soul in Purgatory?” “Ay,” said the officer, coldly, “an ye will not pray him thence for naught he must e’en roast.” “But look you, my son,” persisted the good man, “this act hath rank as robbery of God!” “Nay, nay, good father, my master the king doth but deliver him from the manifold temptations of too great wealth.”

  FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.

  FREEDOM, n. Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half dozen of restraint’s infinite multitude of methods. A political condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly. Liberty. The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen of either.

  Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,

  Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;

  On every wind, indeed, that blows

  I hear her yell.

  She screams whenever monarchs meet,

  And parliaments as well,

  To bind the chains about her feet

  And toll her knell.

  And when the sovereign people cast

  The votes they cannot spell,

  Upon the pestilential blast

  Her clamors swell.

  For all to whom the power’s given

  To sway or to compel,

  Among themselves apportion Heaven

  And give her Hell.

  –Blary O’Gary

  FREEMASONS, n. An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids — always by a Freemason.

  FRIENDLESS, adj. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.

  FRIENDSHIP, n. A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.

  The sea was calm and the sky was blue;

  Merrily, merrily sailed we two.

  (High barometer maketh glad.)

  On the tipsy ship, with a dreadful shout,

  The tempest descended and we fell out.

  (O the walking is nasty bad!)

  –Armit Huff Bettle

  FROG, n. A reptile with edible legs. The first mention of frogs in profane literature is in Homer’s narrative of the war between them and the mice. Skeptical persons have doubted Homer’s authorship of the work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr. Schliemann has set the question forever at rest by uncovering the bones of the slain frogs. One of the forms of moral suasion by which Pharaoh was besought to favor the Israelities was a plague of frogs, but Pharaoh, who liked them fricasees, remarked, with truly oriental stoicism, that he could stand it as long as the frogs and the Jews could; so the programme was changed. The frog is a diligent songster, having a good voice but no ear. The libretto of his favorite opera, as written by Aristophanes, is brief, simple and effective—”brekekex-koax”; the music is apparently by that eminent composer, Richard Wagner. Horses have a frog in each hoof — a thoughtful provision of nature, enabling them to shine in a hurdle race.

  FRYING-PAN, n. One part of the penal apparatus employed in that punitive institution, a woman’s kitchen. The frying-pan was invented by Calvin, and by him used in cooking span-long infants that had died without baptism; and observing one day the horrible torment of a tramp who had incautiously pulled a fried babe from the waste-dump and devoured it, it occurred to the great divine to rob death of its terrors by introducing the frying-pan into every household in Geneva. Thence it spread to all corners of the world, and has been of invaluable assistance in the propagation of his sombre faith. The following lines (said to be from the pen of his Grace Bishop Potter) seem to imply that the usefulness of this utensil is not limited to this world; but as the consequences of its employment in this life reach over into the life to come, so also itself may be found on the other side, rewarding its devotees:

  Old Nick was summoned to the skies.

  Said Peter: “Your intentions

  Are good, but you lack enterprise

  Concerning new inventions.

  “Now, broiling in an ancient plan

  Of torment, but I hear it

  Reported that the frying-pan

  Sears best the wicked spirit.

  “Go get one — fill it up with fat —

  Fry sinners brown and good in’t.”

  “I know a trick worth two o’ that,”

  Said Nick—”I’ll cook their food in’t.”

  FUNERAL, n. A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.

  The savage dies — they sacrifice a horse

&nb
sp; To bear to happy hunting-grounds the corse.

  Our friends expire — we make the money fly

  In hope their souls will chase it to the sky.

  –Jex Wopley

  FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

  G

  GALLOWS, n. A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which the leading actor is translated to heaven. In this country the gallows is chiefly remarkable for the number of persons who escape it.

  Whether on the gallows high

  Or where blood flows the reddest,

  The noblest place for man to die —

  Is where he died the deadest.

  –(Old play)

  GARGOYLE, n. A rain-spout projecting from the eaves of mediaeval buildings, commonly fashioned into a grotesque caricature of some personal enemy of the architect or owner of the building. This was especially the case in churches and ecclesiastical structures generally, in which the gargoyles presented a perfect rogues’ gallery of local heretics and controversialists. Sometimes when a new dean and chapter were installed the old gargoyles were removed and others substituted having a closer relation to the private animosities of the new incumbents.

  GARTHER, n. An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country.

  GENEROUS, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.

  GENEALOGY, n. An account of one’s descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.

  GENTEEL, adj. Refined, after the fashion of a gent.

  Observe with care, my son, the distinction I reveal:

  A gentleman is gentle and a gent genteel.

  Heed not the definitions your “Unabridged” presents,

  For dictionary makers are generally gents.

  –G.J.

  GEOGRAPHER, n. A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between the outside of the world and the inside.

  Habeam, geographer of wide reknown,

  Native of Abu–Keber’s ancient town,

  In passing thence along the river Zam

  To the adjacent village of Xelam,

  Bewildered by the multitude of roads,

  Got lost, lived long on migratory toads,

  Then from exposure miserably died,

  And grateful travelers bewailed their guide.

  –Henry Haukhorn

  GEOLOGY, n. The science of the earth’s crust — to which, doubtless, will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come up garrulous out of a well. The geological formations of the globe already noted are catalogued thus: The Primary, or lower one, consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners’ tools, antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors. The Secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles. The Tertiary comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage, anarchists, snap-dogs and fools.

  GHOST, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.

  He saw a ghost.

  It occupied — that dismal thing! —

  The path that he was following.

  Before he’d time to stop and fly,

  An earthquake trifled with the eye

  That saw a ghost.

  He fell as fall the early good;

  Unmoved that awful vision stood.

  The stars that danced before his ken

  He wildly brushed away, and then

  He saw a post.

  –Jared Macphester

  Accounting for the uncommon behavior of ghosts, Heine mentions somebody’s ingenious theory to the effect that they are as much afraid of us as we of them. Not quite, if I may judge from such tables of comparative speed as I am able to compile from memories of my own experience.

  There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts. A ghost never comes naked: he appears either in a winding-sheet or “in his habit as he lived.” To believe in him, then, is to believe that not only have the dead the power to make themselves visible after there is nothing left of them, but that the same power inheres in textile fabrics. Supposing the products of the loom to have this ability, what object would they have in exercising it? And why does not the apparition of a suit of clothes sometimes walk abroad without a ghost in it? These be riddles of significance. They reach away down and get a convulsive grip on the very tap-root of this flourishing faith.

  GHOUL, n. A demon addicted to the reprehensible habit of devouring the dead. The existence of ghouls has been disputed by that class of controversialists who are more concerned to deprive the world of comforting beliefs than to give it anything good in their place. In 1640 Father Secchi saw one in a cemetery near Florence and frightened it away with the sign of the cross. He describes it as gifted with many heads an an uncommon allowance of limbs, and he saw it in more than one place at a time. The good man was coming away from dinner at the time and explains that if he had not been “heavy with eating” he would have seized the demon at all hazards. Atholston relates that a ghoul was caught by some sturdy peasants in a churchyard at Sudbury and ducked in a horsepond. (He appears to think that so distinguished a criminal should have been ducked in a tank of rosewater.) The water turned at once to blood “and so contynues unto ys daye.” The pond has since been bled with a ditch. As late as the beginning of the fourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the crypt of the cathedral at Amiens and the whole population surrounded the place. Twenty armed men with a priest at their head, bearing a crucifix, entered and captured the ghoul, which, thinking to escape by the stratagem, had transformed itself to the semblance of a well known citizen, but was nevertheless hanged, drawn and quartered in the midst of hideous popular orgies. The citizen whose shape the demon had assumed was so affected by the sinister occurrence that he never again showed himself in Amiens and his fate remains a mystery.

  GLUTTON, n. A person who escapes the evils of moderation by committing dyspepsia.

  GNOME, n. In North–European mythology, a dwarfish imp inhabiting the interior parts of the earth and having special custody of mineral treasures. Bjorsen, who died in 1765, says gnomes were common enough in the southern parts of Sweden in his boyhood, and he frequently saw them scampering on the hills in the evening twilight. Ludwig Binkerhoof saw three as recently as 1792, in the Black Forest, and Sneddeker avers that in 1803 they drove a party of miners out of a Silesian mine. Basing our computations upon data supplied by these statements, we find that the gnomes were probably extinct as early as 1764.

  GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.

  GNU, n. An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag. In its wild condition it is something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.

  A hunter from Kew caught a distant view

  Of a peacefully meditative gnu,

  And he said: “I’ll pursue, and my hands imbrue

  In its blood at a closer interview.”

  But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw

  O’er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;

  And he said as he flew: “It is well I withdrew

  Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew

  That really meritorious gnu.”

  –Jarn Leffer

  GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer. Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.

  GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird’s intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an “aut
hor,” there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl’s thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese indeed.

  GORGON, n.

  The Gorgon was a maiden bold

  Who turned to stone the Greeks of old

  That looked upon her awful brow.

  We dig them out of ruins now,

  And swear that workmanship so bad

  Proves all the ancient sculptors mad.

  GOUT, n. A physician’s name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.

  GRACES, n. Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne, who attended upon Venus, serving without salary. They were at no expense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and dressed according to the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened to be blowing.

  GRAMMAR, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.

  GRAPE, n.

  Hail noble fruit! — by Homer sung,

  Anacreon and Khayyam;

  Thy praise is ever on the tongue

  Of better men than I am.

  The lyre in my hand has never swept,

  The song I cannot offer:

  My humbler service pray accept —

  I’ll help to kill the scoffer.

  The water-drinkers and the cranks

  Who load their skins with liquor —

  I’ll gladly bear their belly-tanks

  And tap them with my sticker.