THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY

by Ambrose Bierce

  "All men are ingrates," sneered the cynic. "Nay,"

  The good philanthropist replied;

  "I did great service to a man one day

  Who never since has cursed me to repay,

  Nor vilified."

  "Ho!" cried the cynic, "lead me to him straight-

  With veneration I am overcome,

  And fain would have his blessing." "Sad your fate-

  He cannot bless you, for AI grieve to state

  This man is dumb."

  Ariel Selp

  INJURY, n. An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight.

  INJUSTICE, n. A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back.

  INK, n. A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime. The properties of ink are peculiar and contradictory: it may be used to make reputations and unmake them; to blacken them and to make them white; but it is most generally and acceptably employed as a mortar to bind together the stones of an edifice of fame, and as a whitewash to conceal afterward the rascal quality of the material. There are men called journalists who have established ink baths which some persons pay money to get into, others to get out of. Not infrequently it occurs that a person who has paid to get in pays twice as much to get out.

  INNATE, adj. Natural, inherent-as innate ideas, that is to say, ideas that we are born with, having had them previously imparted to us. The doctrine of innate ideas is one of the most admirable faiths of philosophy, being itself an innate idea and therefore inaccessible to disproof, though Locke foolishly supposed himself to have given it "a black eye." Among innate ideas may be mentioned the belief in one's ability to conduct a newspaper, in the greatness of one's country, in the superiority of one's civilization, in the importance of one's personal affairs and in the interesting nature of one's diseases.

  IN'ARDS, n. The stomach, heart, soul and other bowels. Many eminent investigators do not class the soul as an in'ard, but that acute observer and renowned authority, Dr. Gunsaulus, is persuaded that the mysterious organ known as the spleen is nothing less than our important part. To the contrary, Professor Garrett P. Servis holds that man's soul is that prolongation of his spinal marrow which forms the pith of his no tail; and for demonstration of his faith points confidently to the fact that no tailed animals have no souls. Concerning these two theories, it is best to suspend judgment by believing both.

  INSCRIPTION, n. Something written on another thing. Inscriptions are of many kinds, but mostly memorial, intended to commemorate the fame of some illustrious person and hand down to distant ages the record of his services and virtues. To this class of inscriptions belongs the name of John Smith, penciled on the Washington monument. Following are examples of memorial inscriptions on tombstones: (See EPITAPH.)

  "In the sky my soul is found,

  And my body in the ground.

  By and by my body'll rise

  To my spirit in the skies,

  Soaring up to Heaven's gate.

  1878."

  "Sacred to the memory of Jeremiah Tree. Cut down May 9th, 1862, aged 27 yrs. 4 mos. and 12 ds. Indigenous."

  "Affliction sore long time she boar,

  Phisicians was in vain,

  Till Deth released the dear deceased

  And left her a remain.

  Gone to join Ananias in the regions of bliss."

  "The clay that rests beneath this stone

  As Silas Wood was widely known.

  Now, lying here, I ask what good

  It was to let me be S. Wood.

  O Man, let not ambition trouble you,

  Is the advice of Silas W."

  "Richard Haymon, of Heaven. Fell to Earth Jan. 20, 1807, and had the dust brushed off him Oct. 3, 1874."

  INSECTIVORA, n.

  "See," cries the chorus of admiring preachers,

  "How Providence provides for all His creatures!"

  "His care," the gnat said, "even the insects follows:

  For us He has provided wrens and swallows."

  Sempen Railey

  INSURANCE, n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

  INSURANCE AGENT: My dear sir, that is a fine house-pray let me insure it.

  HOUSE OWNER: With pleasure. Please make the annual premium so low that by the time when, according to the tables of your actuary, it will probably be destroyed by fire I will have paid you considerably less than the face of the policy.

  INSURANCE AGENT: O dear, no-we could not afford to do that. We must fix the premium so that you will have paid more.

  HOUSE OWNER: How, then, can I afford that?

  INSURANCE AGENT: Why, your house may burn down at any time. There was Smith's house, for example, which-

  HOUSE OWNER: Spare me-there were Brown's house, on the contrary, and Jones's house, and Robinson's house, which-

  INSURANCE AGENT: Spare me!

  HOUSE OWNER: Let us understand each other. You want me to pay you money on the supposition that something will occur previously to the time set by yourself for its occurrence. In other words, you expect me to bet that my house will not last so long as you say that it will probably last.

  INSURANCE AGENT: But if your house burns without insurance it will be a total loss.

  HOUSE OWNER: Beg your pardon-by your own actuary's tables I shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I would otherwise have paid to you-amounting to more than the face of the policy they would have bought. But suppose it to burn, uninsured, before the time upon which your figures are based. If I could not afford that, how could you if it were insured?

  INSURANCE AGENT: O, we should make ourselves whole from our luckier ventures with other clients. Virtually, they pay your loss.

  HOUSE OWNER: And virtually, then, don't I help to pay their losses? Are not their houses as likely as mine to burn before they have paid you as much as you must pay them? The case stands this way: you expect to take more money from your clients than you pay to them, do you not?

  INSURANCE AGENT: Certainly; if we did not-

  HOUSE OWNER: I would not trust you with my money. Very well then. If it is certain, with reference to the whole body of your clients, that they lose money on you it is probable, with reference to any one of them, that he will. It is these individual probabilities that make the aggregate certainty.

  INSURANCE AGENT: I will not deny it-but look at the figures in this pamph-

  HOUSE OWNER: Heaven forbid!

  INSURANCE AGENT: You spoke of saving the premiums which you would otherwise pay to me. Will you not be more likely to squander them? We offer you an incentive to thrift.

  HOUSE OWNER: The willingness of A to take care of B's money is not peculiar to insurance, but as a charitable institution you command esteem. Deign to accept its expression from a Deserving Object.

  INSURRECTION, n. An unsuccessful revolution. Disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.

  INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.

  INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

  INTERREGNUM, n. The period during which a monarchical country is governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne. The experiment of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to make it warm again.

  INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.

  Two Seidlitz powders, one in blue

  And one in white, together drew

  And having each a
pleasant sense

  Of t'other powder's excellence,

  Forsook their jackets for the snug

  Enjoyment of a common mug.

  So close their intimacy grew

  One paper would have held the two.

  To confidences straight they fell,

  Less anxious each to hear than tell;

  Then each remorsefully confessed

  To all the virtues he possessed,

  Acknowledging he had them in

  So high degree it was a sin.

  The more they said, the more they felt

  Their spirits with emotion melt,

  Till tears of sentiment expressed

  Their feelings. Then they effervesced!

  So Nature executes her feats

  Of wrath on friends and sympathetes

  The good old rule who don't apply,

  That you are you and I am I.

  INTRODUCTION, n. A social ceremony invented by the devil for the gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies. The introduction attains its most malevolent development in this century, being, indeed, closely related to our political system. Every American being the equal of every other American, it follows that everybody has the right to know everybody else, which implies the right to introduce without request or permission. The Declaration of Independence should have read thus:

  "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right to make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly the liberty to introduce persons to one another without first ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies; and the pursuit of another's happiness with a running pack of strangers."

  INVENTOR, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

  IRRELIGION, n. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.

  ITCH, n. The patriotism of a Scotchman.

  J

  J is a consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel- than which nothing could be more absurd. Its original form, which has been but slightly modified, was that of the tail of a subdued dog, and it was not a letter but a character, standing for a Latin verb, jacere, "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape. This is the origin of the letter, as expounded by the renowned Dr. Jocolpus Bumer, of the University of Belgrade, who established his conclusions on the subject in a work of three quarto volumes and committed suicide on being reminded that the j in the Roman alphabet had originally no curl.

  JEALOUS, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.

  JESTER, n. An officer formerly attached to a king's household, whose business it was to amuse the court by ludicrous actions and utterances, the absurdity being attested by his motley costume. The king himself being attired with dignity, it took the world some centuries to discover that his own conduct and decrees were sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of all mankind. The jester was commonly called a fool, but the poets and romancers have ever delighted to represent him as a singularly wise and witty person. In the circus of to-day the melancholy ghost of the court fool effects the dejection of humbler audiences with the same jests wherewith in life he gloomed the marble hall, panged the patrician sense of humor and tapped the tank of royal tears.

  The widow-queen of Portugal

  Had an audacious jester

  Who entered the confessional

  Disguised, and there confessed her.

  "Father," she said, "thine ear bend down-

  My sins are more than scarlet:

  I love my fool-blaspheming clown,

  And common, base-born varlet."

  "Daughter," the mimic priest replied,

  "That sin, indeed, is awful:

  The church's pardon is denied

  To love that is unlawful.

  "But since thy stubborn heart will be

  For him forever pleading,

  Thou'dst better make him, by decree,

  A man of birth and breeding."

  She made the fool a duke, in hope

  With Heaven's taboo to palter;

  Then told a priest, who told the Pope,

  Who damned her from the altar!

  Barel Dort

  JEWS-HARP, n. An unmusical instrument, played by holding it fast with the teeth and trying to brush it away with the finger.

  JOSS-STICKS, n. Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.

  JUSTICE, n. A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.

  K

  K is a consonant that we get from the Greeks, but it can be traced away back beyond them to the Cerathians, a small commercial nation inhabiting the peninsula of Smero. In their tongue it was called Klatch, which means "destroyed." The form of the letter was originally precisely that of our H, but the erudite Dr. Snedeker explains that it was altered to its present shape to commemorate the destruction of the great temple of Jarute by an earthquake, circa 730 B.C. This building was famous for the two lofty columns of its portico, one of which was broken in half by the catastrophe, the other remaining intact. As the earlier form of the letter is supposed to have been suggested by these pillars, so, it is thought by the great antiquary, its later was adopted as a simple and natural-not to say touching-means of keeping the calamity ever in the national memory. It is not known if the name of the letter was altered as an additional mnemonic, or if the name was always Klatch and the destruction one of nature's puns. As each theory seems probable enough, I see no objection to believing both-and Dr. Snedeker arrayed himself on that side of the question.

  KEEP, v.t.

  He willed away his whole estate,

  And then in death he fell asleep,

  Murmuring: "Well, at any rate,

  My name unblemished I shall keep."

  But when upon the tomb 'twas wrought

  Whose was it?-for the dead keep naught.

  Durang Gophel Arn

  KILL, v.t. To create a vacancy without nominating a successor.

  KILT, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland.

  KINDNESS, n. A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.

  KING, n. A male person commonly known in America as a "crowned head," although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of.

  A king, in times long, long gone by,

  Said to his lazy jester:

  "If I were you and you were I

  My moments merrily would fly-

  Nor care nor grief to pester."

  "The reason, Sire, that you would thrive,"

  The fool said-"if you'll hear it-

  Is that of all the fools alive

  Who own you for their sovereign, I've

  The most forgiving spirit."

  Oogum Bem

  KING'S EVIL, n. A malady that was formerly cured by the touch of the sovereign, but has now to be treated by the physicians. Thus "the most pious Edward" of England used to lay his royal hand upon the ailing subjects and make them whole-

  a crowd of wretched souls

  That stay his cure: their malady convinces

  The great essay of art; but at his touch,

  Such sanctity hath Heaven given his hand,

  They presently amend,

  as the "Doctor" in Macbeth hath it. This useful property of the royal hand could, it appears, be transmitted along with other crown properties; for according to "Malcolm,"

  'tis spoken

  To the succeeding royalty he leaves

  The healing benediction.

  But the gift somewhere dropped out of the line of succession: the later sove
reigns of England have not been tactual healers, and the disease once honored with the name "king's evil" now bears the humbler one of "scrofula," from scrofa, a sow. The date and author of the following epigram are known only to the author of this dictionary, but it is old enough to show that the jest about Scotland's national disorder is not a thing of yesterday.

  Ye Kynge his evill in me laye,

  Wh. he of Scottlande charmed awaye.

  He layde his hand on mine and sayd:

  "Be gone!" Ye ill no longer stayd.

  Ye Kynge his evill in me laye,

  Wh. he of Scottlande charmed awaye.

  He layde his hand on mine and sayd:

  "Be gone!" Ye ill no longer stayd.

  But O ye wofull plyght in wh.

  I'm now y-pight: I have ye itche!

  The superstition that maladies can be cured by royal taction is dead, but like many a departed conviction it has left a monument of custom to keep its memory green. The practice of forming a line and shaking the President's hand had no other origin, and when that great dignitary bestows his healing salutation on

  strangely visited people,

  All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,

  The mere despair of surgery,

  he and his patients are handing along an extinguished torch which once was kindled at the altar-fire of a faith long held by all classes of men. It is a beautiful and edifying "survival"-one which brings the sainted past close home in our "business and bosoms."

  KISS, n. A word invented by the poets as a rhyme for "bliss." It is supposed to signify, in a general way, some kind of rite or ceremony appertaining to a good understanding; but the manner of its performance is unknown to this lexicographer.

  KLEPTOMANIAC, n. A rich thief.

  KNIGHT, n.

  Once a warrior gentle of birth,