Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  TIGHTS, n. An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the general acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity. Public attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss Lillian Russell’s refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as to her motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of ingenuity and sustained reflection. It was Miss Hall’s belief that nature had not endowed Miss Russell with beautiful legs. This theory was impossible of acceptance by the male understanding, but the conception of a faulty female leg was of so prodigious originality as to rank among the most brilliant feats of philosophical speculation! It is strange that in all the controversy regarding Miss Russell’s aversion to tights no one seems to have thought to ascribe it to what was known among the ancients as “modesty.” The nature of that sentiment is now imperfectly understood, and possibly incapable of exposition with the vocabulary that remains to us. The study of lost arts has, however, been recently revived and some of the arts themselves recovered. This is an epoch of renaissances, and there is ground for hope that the primitive “blush” may be dragged from its hiding-place amongst the tombs of antiquity and hissed on to the stage.

  TOMB, n. The House of Indifference. Tombs are now by common consent invested with a certain sanctity, but when they have been long tenanted it is considered no sin to break them open and rifle them, the famous Egyptologist, Dr. Huggyns, explaining that a tomb may be innocently “glened” as soon as its occupant is done “smellynge,” the soul being then all exhaled. This reasonable view is now generally accepted by archaeologists, whereby the noble science of Curiosity has been greatly dignified.

  TOPE, v. To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig. In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping nations are in the forefront of civilization and power. When pitted against the hard-drinking Christians the abstemious Mahometans go down like grass before the scythe. In India one hundred thousand beef-eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race. With what an easy grace the whisky-loving American pushed the temperate Spaniard out of his possessions! From the time when the Berserkers ravaged all the coasts of western Europe and lay drunk in every conquered port it has been the same way: everywhere the nations that drink too much are observed to fight rather well and not too righteously. Wherefore the estimable old ladies who abolished the canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially augmented the nation’s military power.

  TORTOISE, n. A creature thoughtfully created to supply occasion for the following lines by the illustrious Ambat Delaso:

  TO MY PET TORTOISE

  My friend, you are not graceful — not at all;

  Your gait’s between a stagger and a sprawl.

  Nor are you beautiful: your head’s a snake’s

  To look at, and I do not doubt it aches.

  As to your feet, they’d make an angel weep.

  ‘Tis true you take them in whene’er you sleep.

  No, you’re not pretty, but you have, I own,

  A certain firmness — mostly you’re [sic] backbone.

  Firmness and strength (you have a giant’s thews)

  Are virtues that the great know how to use —

  I wish that they did not; yet, on the whole,

  You lack — excuse my mentioning it — Soul.

  So, to be candid, unreserved and true,

  I’d rather you were I than I were you.

  Perhaps, however, in a time to be,

  When Man’s extinct, a better world may see

  Your progeny in power and control,

  Due to the genesis and growth of Soul.

  So I salute you as a reptile grand

  Predestined to regenerate the land.

  Father of Possibilities, O deign

  To accept the homage of a dying reign!

  In the far region of the unforeknown

  I dream a tortoise upon every throne.

  I see an Emperor his head withdraw

  Into his carapace for fear of Law;

  A King who carries something else than fat,

  Howe’er acceptably he carries that;

  A President not strenuously bent

  On punishment of audible dissent —

  Who never shot (it were a vain attack)

  An armed or unarmed tortoise in the back;

  Subject and citizens that feel no need

  To make the March of Mind a wild stampede;

  All progress slow, contemplative, sedate,

  And “Take your time” the word, in Church and State.

  O Tortoise, ‘tis a happy, happy dream,

  My glorious testudinous regime!

  I wish in Eden you’d brought this about

  By slouching in and chasing Adam out.

  TREE, n. A tall vegetable intended by nature to serve as a penal apparatus, though through a miscarriage of justice most trees bear only a negligible fruit, or none at all. When naturally fruited, the tree is a beneficient agency of civilization and an important factor in public morals. In the stern West and the sensitive South its fruit (white and black respectively) though not eaten, is agreeable to the public taste and, though not exported, profitable to the general welfare. That the legitimate relation of the tree to justice was no discovery of Judge Lynch (who, indeed, conceded it no primacy over the lamp-post and the bridge-girder) is made plain by the following passage from Morryster, who antedated him by two centuries:

  While in yt londe I was carried to see ye Ghogo tree, whereof

  I had hearde moch talk; but sayynge yt I saw naught remarkabyll in

  it, ye hed manne of ye villayge where it grewe made answer as

  followeth:

  “Ye tree is not nowe in fruite, but in his seasonne you shall

  see dependynge fr. his braunches all soch as have affroynted ye

  King his Majesty.”

  And I was furder tolde yt ye worde “Ghogo” sygnifyeth in yr

  tong ye same as “rapscal” in our owne.

  –Trauvells in ye Easte

  TRIAL, n. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors. In order to effect this purpose it is necessary to supply a contrast in the person of one who is called the defendant, the prisoner, or the accused. If the contrast is made sufficiently clear this person is made to undergo such an affliction as will give the virtuous gentlemen a comfortable sense of their immunity, added to that of their worth. In our day the accused is usually a human being, or a socialist, but in mediaeval times, animals, fishes, reptiles and insects were brought to trial. A beast that had taken human life, or practiced sorcery, was duly arrested, tried and, if condemned, put to death by the public executioner. Insects ravaging grain fields, orchards or vineyards were cited to appeal by counsel before a civil tribunal, and after testimony, argument and condemnation, if they continued in contumaciam the matter was taken to a high ecclesiastical court, where they were solemnly excommunicated and anathematized. In a street of Toledo, some pigs that had wickedly run between the viceroy’s legs, upsetting him, were arrested on a warrant, tried and punished. In Naples and ass was condemned to be burned at the stake, but the sentence appears not to have been executed. D’Addosio relates from the court records many trials of pigs, bulls, horses, cocks, dogs, goats, etc., greatly, it is believed, to the betterment of their conduct and morals. In 1451 a suit was brought against the leeches infesting some ponds about Berne, and the Bishop of Lausanne, instructed by the faculty of Heidelberg University, directed that some of “the aquatic worms” be brought before the local magistracy. This was done and the leeches, both present and absent, were ordered to leave the places that they had infested within three days on pain of incurring “the malediction of God.” In the voluminous records of this cause celebre nothing is found to show whether the offenders braved the punishment, or departed forthwith out of that inhospitable jurisdictio
n.

  TRICHINOSIS, n. The pig’s reply to proponents of porcophagy.

  Moses Mendlessohn having fallen ill sent for a Christian physician, who at once diagnosed the philosopher’s disorder as trichinosis, but tactfully gave it another name. “You need and immediate change of diet,” he said; “you must eat six ounces of pork every other day.”

  “Pork?” shrieked the patient—”pork? Nothing shall induce me to touch it!”

  “Do you mean that?” the doctor gravely asked.

  “I swear it!”

  “Good! — then I will undertake to cure you.”

  TRINITY, n. In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches, three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one. Subordinate deities of the polytheistic faith, such as devils and angels, are not dowered with the power of combination, and must urge individually their claims to adoration and propitiation. The Trinity is one of the most sublime mysteries of our holy religion. In rejecting it because it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of theological fundamentals. In religion we believe only what we do not understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as a part of the latter.

  TROGLODYTE, n. Specifically, a cave-dweller of the paleolithic period, after the Tree and before the Flat. A famous community of troglodytes dwelt with David in the Cave of Adullam. The colony consisted of “every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented” — in brief, all the Socialists of Judah.

  TRUCE, n. Friendship.

  TRUTH, n. An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with increasing activity to the end of time.

  TRUTHFUL, adj. Dumb and illiterate.

  TRUST, n. In American politics, a large corporation composed in greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public enemies.

  TURKEY, n. A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.

  TWICE, adv. Once too often.

  TYPE, n. Pestilent bits of metal suspected of destroying civilization and enlightenment, despite their obvious agency in this incomparable dictionary.

  TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n. An African insect (Glossina morsitans) whose bite is commonly regarded as nature’s most efficacious remedy for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American novelist (Mendax interminabilis).

  U

  UBIQUITY, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only. This important distinction between ubiquity and omnipresence was not clear to the mediaeval Church and there was much bloodshed about it. Certain Lutherans, who affirmed the presence everywhere of Christ’s body were known as Ubiquitarians. For this error they were doubtless damned, for Christ’s body is present only in the eucharist, though that sacrament may be performed in more than one place simultaneously. In recent times ubiquity has not always been understood — not even by Sir Boyle Roche, for example, who held that a man cannot be in two places at once unless he is a bird.

  UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility.

  ULTIMATUM, n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.

  Having received an ultimatum from Austria, the Turkish Ministry met to consider it.

  “O servant of the Prophet,” said the Sheik of the Imperial Chibouk to the Mamoosh of the Invincible Army, “how many unconquerable soldiers have we in arms?”

  “Upholder of the Faith,” that dignitary replied after examining his memoranda, “they are in numbers as the leaves of the forest!”

  “And how many impenetrable battleships strike terror to the hearts of all Christian swine?” he asked the Imaum of the Ever Victorious Navy.

  “Uncle of the Full Moon,” was the reply, “deign to know that they are as the waves of the ocean, the sands of the desert and the stars of Heaven!”

  For eight hours the broad brow of the Sheik of the Imperial Chibouk was corrugated with evidences of deep thought: he was calculating the chances of war. Then, “Sons of angels,” he said, “the die is cast! I shall suggest to the Ulema of the Imperial Ear that he advise inaction. In the name of Allah, the council is adjourned.”

  UN-AMERICAN, adj. Wicked, intolerable, heathenish.

  UNCTION, n. An oiling, or greasing. The rite of extreme unction consists in touching with oil consecrated by a bishop several parts of the body of one engaged in dying. Marbury relates that after the rite had been administered to a certain wicked English nobleman it was discovered that the oil had not been properly consecrated and no other could be obtained. When informed of this the sick man said in anger: “Then I’ll be damned if I die!”

  “My son,” said the priest, “this is what we fear.”

  UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.

  His understanding was so keen

  That all things which he’d felt, heard, seen,

  He could interpret without fail

  If he was in or out of jail.

  He wrote at Inspiration’s call

  Deep disquisitions on them all,

  Then, pent at last in an asylum,

  Performed the service to compile ‘em.

  So great a writer, all men swore,

  They never had not read before.

  –Jorrock Wormley

  UNITARIAN, n. One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.

  UNIVERSALIST, n. One who forgoes the advantage of a Hell for persons of another faith.

  URBANITY, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York. Its commonest expression is heard in the words, “I beg your pardon,” and it is not consistent with disregard of the rights of others.

  The owner of a powder mill

  Was musing on a distant hill —

  Something his mind foreboded —

  When from the cloudless sky there fell

  A deviled human kidney! Well,

  The man’s mill had exploded.

  His hat he lifted from his head;

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said;

  “I didn’t know ‘twas loaded.”

  –Swatkin

  USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.

  UXORIOUSNESS, n. A perverted affection that has strayed to one’s own wife.

  V

  VALOR, n. A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler’s hope.

  “Why have you halted?” roared the commander of a division and Chickamauga, who had ordered a charge; “move forward, sir, at once.”

  “General,” said the commander of the delinquent brigade, “I am persuaded that any further display of valor by my troops will bring them into collision with the enemy.”

  VANITY, n. The tribute of a fool to the worth of the nearest ass.

  They say that hens do cackle loudest when

  There’s nothing vital in the eggs they’ve laid;

  And there are hens, professing to have made

  A study of mankind, who say that men

  Whose business ‘tis to drive the tongue or pen

  Make the most clamorous fanfaronade

  O’er their most worthless work; and I’m afraid

  They’re not entirely different from the
hen.

  Lo! the drum-major in his coat of gold,

  His blazing breeches and high-towering cap —

  Imperiously pompous, grandly bold,

  Grim, resolute, an awe-inspiring chap!

  Who’d think this gorgeous creature’s only virtue

  Is that in battle he will never hurt you?

  –Hannibal Hunsiker

  VIRTUES, n.pl. Certain abstentions.

  VITUPERATION, n. Saite, as understood by dunces and all such as suffer from an impediment in their wit.

  VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

  W

  W (double U) has, of all the letters in our alphabet, the only cumbrous name, the names of the others being monosyllabic. This advantage of the Roman alphabet over the Grecian is the more valued after audibly spelling out some simple Greek word, like epixoriambikos. Still, it is now thought by the learned that other agencies than the difference of the two alphabets may have been concerned in the decline of “the glory that was Greece” and the rise of “the grandeur that was Rome.” There can be no doubt, however, that by simplifying the name of W (calling it “wow,” for example) our civilization could be, if not promoted, at least better endured.