Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  Half a loaf is better than a whole one if there is much else.

  Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.

  What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.

  Least said is soonest disavowed.

  He laughs best who laughs least.

  Speak of the Devil and he will hear about it.

  Of two evils choose to be the least.

  Strike while your employer has a big contract.

  Where there’s a will there’s a won’t.

  SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar “tumble-bug.” It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity. Its habit of incubating its eggs in a ball of ordure may also have commended it to the favor of the priesthood, and may some day assure it an equal reverence among ourselves. True, the American beetle is an inferior beetle, but the American priest is an inferior priest.

  SCARABEE, n. The same as scarabaeus.

  He fell by his 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, n. A form of penance practised by the mediaeval 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 Scarification, with other crude penances, has now been superseded by benefaction.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, n. 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.

  SCIMETAR, n. 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 by 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 market-place 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 market-place. The

  executioner appeared with his bare scimetar, 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 of 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 scimetar I had accidentally passed it

  through my own neck! Father of the Moon, I resign my office.”

  So saying, he gasped his top-knot, lifted off his head, and

  advancing to the throne laid it humbly at the Mikado’s feet.

  SCRAP-BOOK, n. A book that is commonly edited by a fool. Many persons of some small distinction compile scrap-books 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 scrap-book 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, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one’s own.

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

  SEAL, n. 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 useful. Our word “sincere” is derived from sine cero, without wax, but the learned are not in agreement as to whether this refers to the absence of the cabalistic signs, or to that of the wax with which letters were formerly closed from public scrutiny. Either view of the matter will serve one in immediate need of an hypothesis. The initials L.S., commonly appended to signatures of legal documents, mean locum sigillis, the place of the seal, although the seal is no longer used — an admirable example of conservatism distinguishing Man from the beasts that perish. The words locum sigillis are humbly suggested as a suitable motto for the Pribyloff Islands whenever they shall take their place as a sovereign State of the American Union.

  SEINE, n. A kind of net for effecting an involuntary change of environment. For fish it is made strong and coarse, but women are more easily taken with a singularly delicate fabric weighted with small, cut stones.

  The devil casting a seine of lace,

  (With precious stones ‘twas weighted)

  Drew it into the landing place

  And its contents calculated.

  All souls of women were in that sack —

  A draft miraculous, precious!

  But ere he could throw it across his back

  They’d all escaped through the meshes.

  –Baruch de Loppis

  SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement.

  SELF-EVIDENT, adj. Evident to one’s self and to nobody else.

  SELFISH, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.

  SENATE, n. A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.

  SERIAL, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine. Frequently appended to each installment is a “synposis of preceding chapters” for those who have not read them, but a direr need is a synposis of succeeding chapters for those who do not intend to read them. A synposis of the entire work would be still better.

  The late James F. Bowman was writing a serial tale for a weekly paper in collaboration with a genius whose name has not come down to us. They wrote, not jointly but alternately, Bowman supplying the installment for one week, his friend for the next, and so on, world without end, they hoped. Unfortunately they quarreled, and one Monday morning when Bowman read the paper to prepare himself for his task, he found his work cut out for him in a way to surprise and pain him. His collaborator had embarked every character of the narrative on a ship and sunk them all in the deepest part of the Atlantic.

  SEVERALTY, n. Separateness, as, lands in severalty, i.e., lands held individually, not in joint ownership. Certain tribes of Indians are believed now to be sufficiently civilized to have in severalty the lands that they have hitherto held as tribal organizations, and could not sell to the Whites for waxen beads and potato whiskey.

  Lo! the poor Indian whose unsuited mind

  Saw death before, hell and the grave behind;

  Whom thrifty settler ne’er besought to stay —

  His small belongings their appointed prey;

  Whom Dispossession, with alluring wile,

  Persuaded elsewhere every little while!

  His fire unquenched and his undying worm

  By “land in severalty” (charming term!)

  Are cooled and killed, respectively, at last,

  And he to his new holding anchored fast!

  SHERIFF, n. In America the chief executive office of a country, whose most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.

  John Elmer Pettibone Cajee

  (I write of him with little glee)

  Was just as bad as he could be.

  ‘Twas frequently remarked: “I swon!

  The sun has never looked upon

  So bad a man as Neighbor John.”

  A sinner through and through, he had

  This added fault: it made him mad

  To know another man was bad.

  In such a case he thought it right

  To rise at any hour of night

  And quench that wicked person’s light.

  Despite the town’s entreaties, he

  Would hale him to the nearest tree

  And leave him swinging wide and free.

  Or sometimes, if the humor came,

  A luckless wight’s reluctant frame

  Was given to the cheerful flame.

  While it was turning nice and brown,

  All unconcerned John met the frown

  Of that austere and righteous town.

  “How sad,” his neighbors said, “that he

  So scornful of the law should be —

  An anar c, h, i, s, t.”

  (That is the way that they preferred

  To utter the abhorrent word,

  So strong the aversion that it stirred.)

  “Resolved,” they said, continuing,

  “That Badman John must cease this thing

  Of having his unlawful fling.

  “Now, by these sacred relics” — here

  Each man had out a souvenir

  Got at a lynching yesteryear —

  “By these we swear he shall forsake

  His ways, nor cause our hearts to ache

  By sins of rope and torch and stake.

  “We’ll tie his red right hand until

  He’ll have small freedom to fulfil

  The mandates of his lawless will.”

  So, in convention then and there,

  They named him Sheriff. The affair

  Was opened, it is said, with prayer.

  –J. Milton Sloluck

  SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance.

  SLANG, n. The grunt of the human hog (Pignoramus intolerabilis) with an audible memory. The speech of one who utters with his tongue what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in accomplishing the feat of a parrot. A means (under Providence) of setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.

  SMITHAREEN, n. A fragment, a decomponent part, a remain. The word is used variously, but in the following verse on a noted female reformer who opposed bicycle-riding by women because it “led them to the devil” it is seen at its best:

  The wheels go round without a sound —

  The maidens hold high revel;

  In sinful mood, insanely gay,

  True spinsters spin adown the way

  From duty to the devil!

  They laugh, they sing, and — ting-a-ling!

  Their bells go all the morning;

  Their lanterns bright bestar the night

  Pedestrians a-warning.

  With lifted hands Miss Charlotte stands,

  Good–Lording and O-mying,

  Her rheumatism forgotten quite,

  Her fat with anger frying.

  She blocks the path that leads to wrath,

  Jack Satan’s power defying.

  The wheels go round without a sound

  The lights burn red and blue and green.

  What’s this that’s found upon the ground?

  Poor Charlotte Smith’s a smithareen!

  –John William Yope

  SOPHISTRY, n. The controversial method of an opponent, distinguished from one’s own by superior insincerity and fooling. This method is that of the later Sophists, a Grecian sect of philosophers who began by teaching wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in brief, whatever men ought to know, but lost themselves in a maze of quibbles and a fog of words.

  His bad opponent’s “facts” he sweeps away,

  And drags his sophistry to light of day;

  Then swears they’re pushed to madness who resort

  To falsehood of so desperate a sort.

  Not so; like sods upon a dead man’s breast,

  He lies most lightly who the least is pressed.r />
  –Polydore Smith

  SORCERY, n. The ancient prototype and forerunner of political influence. It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was punished by torture and death. Augustine Nicholas relates that a poor peasant who had been accused of sorcery was put to the torture to compel a confession. After enduring a few gentle agonies the suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively asked his tormentors if it were not possible to be a sorcerer without knowing it.

  SOUL, n. A spiritual entity concerning which there hath been brave disputation. Plato held that those souls which in a previous state of existence (antedating Athens) had obtained the clearest glimpses of eternal truth entered into the bodies of persons who became philosophers. Plato himself was a philosopher. The souls that had least contemplated divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and despots. Dionysius I, who had threatened to decapitate the broad-browed philosopher, was a usurper and a despot. Plato, doubtless, was not the first to construct a system of philosophy that could be quoted against his enemies; certainly he was not the last.

  “Concerning the nature of the soul,” saith the renowned author of Diversiones Sanctorum, “there hath been hardly more argument than that of its place in the body. Mine own belief is that the soul hath her seat in the abdomen — in which faith we may discern and interpret a truth hitherto unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men most devout. He is said in the Scripture to ‘make a god of his belly’ — why, then, should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him to freshen his faith? Who so well as he can know the might and majesty that he shrines? Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach are one Divine Entity; and such was the belief of Promasius, who nevertheless erred in denying it immortality. He had observed that its visible and material substance failed and decayed with the rest of the body after death, but of its immaterial essence he knew nothing. This is what we call the Appetite, and it survives the wreck and reek of mortality, to be rewarded or punished in another world, according to what it hath demanded in the flesh. The Appetite whose coarse clamoring was for the unwholesome viands of the general market and the public refectory shall be cast into eternal famine, whilst that which firmly through civilly insisted on ortolans, caviare, terrapin, anchovies, pates de foie gras and all such Christian comestibles shall flesh its spiritual tooth in the souls of them forever and ever, and wreak its divine thirst upon the immortal parts of the rarest and richest wines ever quaffed here below. Such is my religious faith, though I grieve to confess that neither His Holiness the Pope nor His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I equally and profoundly revere) will assent to its dissemination.”