Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

by Bierce, Ambrose

  In short, the slightest agitation of the intellectual atmosphere sets your average parson into a tempest of pumping like the jointed ligneous youth attached to the eccentric of a boy’s whirligig. His philosophy of life may be boiled down into a single sentence: Carry on and you will be happy.

  Did We Eat One Another?

  There is no doubt of it. The unwelcome truth has long been suppressed by interested parties who find their account in playing sycophant to that self-satisfied tyrant Modern Man; but to the impartial philosopher it is as plain as the nose upon an elephant’s face that our ancestors ate one another. The custom of the Fiji Islanders, which is their only stock-in-trade, their only claim to notoriety, is a relic of barbarism; but it is a, relic of our barbarism.

  Man is naturally a carnivorous animal. This none but greengrocers will dispute. That he was formerly less vegetarian in his diet than at present, is clear from the fact that market-gardening increases in the ratio of civilization. So we may safely assume that at some remote period Man subsisted upon an exclusively flesh diet. Our uniform vanity has given us the human mind as the ne plus ultra of intelligence, the human face and figure as the standard of beauty. Of course we cannot deny to human fat and lean an equal superiority over beef, mutton, and pork. It is plain that our meat-eating ancestors would think in this way, and, being unrestrained by the mawkish sentiment attendant upon high civilization, would act habitually upon the obvious suggestion. A priori, therefore, it is clear that we ate ourselves.

  Philology is about the only thread which connects us with the prehistoric past. By picking up and piecing out the scattered remnants of language, we form a patchwork of wondrous design. Oblige us by considering the derivation of the word “sarcophagus,” and see if it be not suggestive of potted meats. Observe the significance of the phrase “sweet sixteen.” What a world of meaning lurks in the expression “she is sweet as a peach,” and how suggestive of luncheon are the words “tender youth.” A kiss itself is but a modified bite, and when a young girl insists upon making a “strawberry mark” upon the back of your hand, she only gives way to an instinct she has not yet learned to control. The fond mother, when she says her babe is almost “good enough to eat,” merely shows that she herself is only a trifle too good to eat it.

  These evidences might be multiplied ad infinitum; but if enough has been said to induce one human being to revert to the diet of his ancestors, the object of this essay is accomplished.

  Your Friend’s Friend.

  If there is any individual who combines within himself the vices of an entire species it is he. A mother-in-law has usually been thought a rather satisfactory specimen of total depravity; it has been customary to regard your sweetheart’s brother as tolerably vicious for a young man; there is excellent authority for looking upon your business partner as not wholly without merit as a nuisance-but your friend’s friend is as far ahead of these in all that constitutes a healthy disagreeableness as they themselves are in advance of the average reptile or the conventional pestilence.

  We do not propose to illustrate the great truth we have in hand by instances; the experience of the reader will furnish ample evidence in support of our proposition, and any narration of pertinent facts could only quicken into life the dead ghosts of a thousand sheeted annoyances to squeak and gibber through a memory studded thick with the tombstones of happy hours murdered by your friend’s friend.

  Also, the animal is too well known to need a description. Imagine a thing in all essential particulars the exact reverse of a desirable acquaintance, and you have his mental photograph. How your friend could ever admire so hopeless and unendurable a bore is a problem you are ever seeking to solve. Perhaps you may be assisted in it by a previous solution of the kindred problem-how he could ever feel affection for yourself? Perhaps your friend’s friend is equally exercised over that question. Perhaps from his point of view you are your friend’s friend.

  Le Diable est aux Vaches.

  If it be that ridicule is the test of truth, as Shaftesbury is reported to have said and didn’t, the doctrine of Woman Suffrage is the truest of all faiths. The amount of really good ridicule that has been expended upon this thing is appalling, and yet we are compelled to confess that to all appearance “the cause” has been thereby shorn of no material strength, nor bled of its vitality. And shall it be admitted that this potent argument of little minds is as powerless as the dullards of all ages have steadfastly maintained? Forbid it, Heaven! the gimlet is as proper a gimlet as any in all Christendom, but the timber is too hard to pierce! Grant ye that “the movement” is waxing more wondrous with each springing sun, who shall say what it might not have been but for the sharp hatcheting of us wits among its boughs? If the doctor have not cured his patient by to-morrow he may at least claim that without the physic the man would have died to-day.

  And pray who shall search the vitals of a whale with a bodkin-who may reach his jackknife through the superposed bubber? Pachyderm, thy name is Woman! All the king’s horses and all the king’s men shall not bend the bow that can despatch a clothyard shaft through thy pearly hide. The male and female women who nightly howl their social and political grievances into the wide ear of the universe are as insensible to the prickings of ridicule as they are unconscious of logic. An intellectual Goliah of Gath might spear them with an epigram like unto a weaver’s beam, and the sting thereof would be as but the nipping of a red ant. Apollo might speed among them his silver arrows, which erst heaped the Phrygian shores with hecatombs of Argive slain, and they would but complain of the mosquito’s beak. Your female reformer goes smashing through society like a tipsy rhinoceros among the tulip beds, and all the torrent of brickbats rained upon her skin is shed, as globules of mercury might be supposed to run off the back of a dry drake.

  One of the rarest amusements in life is to go about with an icicle suspended by a string, letting it down the necks of the unwary. The sudden shrug, the quick frightened shudder, the yelp of apprehension are sources of a pure, because diabolical, delight. But these women-you may practise your chilling joke upon one of them, and she will calmly wonder where you got your ice, and will pen with deliberate fingers an ungrammatical resolution denouncing congelation as tyrannical and obsolete.

  We despair of ever dispelling these creatures by pungent pleasantries-of routing them by sharp censure. They are, apparently, to go on practically unmolested to the end. Meantime we are cast down with a mighty proneness along the dust; our shapely anatomy is clothed in a jaunty suit of sackcloth liberally embellished with the frippery of ashes; our days are vocal with wailing, our nights melodious with snuffle!

  Brethren, let us pray that the political sceptre may not pass from us into the jewelled hands which were intended by nature for the clouting of babes and sucklings.

  Angels and Angles.

  When abandoned to her own devices, the average female has a tendency to “put on her things,” and to contrive the same, in a manner that is not conducive to patience in the male beholder. Her besetting iniquity in this particular is a fondness for angles, and she is unwavering in her determination to achieve them at whatever cost.

  Now we vehemently affirm that in woman’s apparel an angle is an offence to the male eye, and therefore a crime of no small magnitude. In the masculine garb angles are tolerable-angles of whatever acuteness. The masculine character and life are rigid and angular, and the apparel should, or at least may, proclaim the man. But with the soft, rounded nature of woman, her bending flexibility of temper, angles are absolutely incompatible. In her outward seeming all should be easy and flowing-every fold a nest of graces, and every line a curve.

  By close attention to this great truth, and a conscientious striving after its advantages, woman may hope to become rather comely of exterior, and to find considerable favour in the eyes of man. It is not impossible that, without any abatement of her present usefulness, she may come to be regarded as actually ornamental, and even attractive. If with her angles she will also renounc
e some hundreds of other equally harassing absurdities of attire, she may consider her position assured, and her claim to masculine toleration reasonably well grounded.

  A Wingless Insect.

  It would be profitable in the end if man would take a hint from his lack of wings, and settle down comfortably into the assurance that midair is not his appointed element. The confession is a humiliating one, but there is a temperate balm in the consciousness that his inability to “shave with level wing” the blue empyrean cannot justly be charged upon himself. He has done his endeavour, and done it nobly; but he’ll break his precious neck.

  In Goldsmith’s veracious “History of Animated Nature” is a sprightly account of one Nicolas, who was called, if our memory be not at fault, the man-fish, and who was endowed by his Creator-the late Mr. Goldsmith aforesaid-with the power of conducting an active existence under the sea. That equally veracious and instructive work “The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments,” peoples the bottom of old ocean with powerful nations of similarly gifted persons; while in our own day “the Man–Frog” has taught us what may be done in this line when one has once got the knack of it.

  Some years since (we do not know if he has yet suffered martyrdom at the hand of the fiendish White) there lived a noted Indian chieftain whose name, being translated, signifies “The~Man–Who-Walks–Under-the-Ground,” probably a lineal descendant of the gnomes. We have ourselves walked under the ground in wine cellars.

  With these notable examples in mind, we are not prepared to assert that, though man has as a rule neither the gills of a fish nor the nose of a mole, he may not enjoy a drive at the bottom of the sea, or a morning ramble under the subsoil. But with the exception of Peter Wilkins’ Flying Islanders-whose existence we vehemently dispute-and some similar creatures whom it suits our purpose to ignore, there is no record of any person to whom the name of The–Man-Who–Flies-Over-the-Hills may be justly applied. We make no account of the shallow device of Mongolfier, nor the dubious contrivance of Marriott. A gentleman of proper aspirations would scorn to employ either, as the Man–Frog would reject a diving-bell, or the subterranean chieftain would sneer at the Mont Cenis tunnel. These “weak inventions” only emphasize our impotence to strive with the subtle element about and above. They prove nothing so conclusively as that we can’t fly-a fact still more strikingly proven by the constant thud of people tumbling out of them. To a Titan of comprehensive ear, who could catch the noises of a world upon his single tympanum as Hector caught Argive javelins upon his shield, the patter of dropping aëronauts would sound like the gentle pelting of hailstones upon a dusty highway-so thick and fast they fall.

  It is probable that man is no more eager to float free into space than the earth-if it be sentient-is to shake him off; but it would appear that he and it must, like the Siamese twins, consent to endure the disadvantages of a mutually disagreeable intimacy. We submit that it is hardly worth his while to continue “larding the lean earth” with his carcase in the vain endeavour to emulate angels, whom in no respect he at all resembles.

  Pork on the Hoof.

  The motto aut Cæsar aut nullus is principally nonsense, we take it. If one may not be a man, one may, in most cases, be a hog with equal satisfaction to his mind and heart.

  There is Thompson Washington Smith, for example (his name is not Thompson, nor Washington, nor yet Smith; we call him so to conceal his real name, which is perhaps Smythe). Now Thompson, there is reason to believe, tried earnestly for some years to be a man. Alas! he began while he was a boy, and got exhausted before he arrived at maturity. He could make no further effort, and manhood is not acquired without a mighty struggle, nor maintained without untiring industry. So having fatigued himself before reaching the starting-point, Thompson Washington did not re-enter the race for manhood, but contented his simple soul with achieving a modest swinehood. He became a hog of considerable talent and promise.

  Let it not be supposed that Thompson has anything in common with the typical, ideal hog-him who encrusts his hide with clay, and inhumes his muzzle in garbage. Far from it; he is a cleanly-almost a godly-hog, preternaturally fair of exterior, and eke fastidious of appetite. He is glossy of coat, stainless of shirt, immaculate of trousers. He is shiny of beaver and refulgent of boot. With all, a Hog. Watch him ten minutes under any circumstances and his face shall seem to lengthen and sharpen away, split at the point, and develop an unmistakeable snout. A ridge of bristles will struggle for sunlight under the gloss of his coat. This is your imagination, and that is about as far as it will take you. So long as Thompson Washington, actual, maintains a vertical attitude, Thompson Washington, unreal, will not assume an horizontal one. Your fancy cannot “go the whole hog.”

  It only remains to state explicitly to whom we are alluding. Well, there is a stye in the soul of every one of us, in which abides a porker more or less objectionable. We don’t all let him range at large, like Smith, but he will occasionally exalt his visage above the rails of even the most cleverly constructed pen. The best of us are they who spend most time repressing the beast by rapping him upon the nose.

  The Young Person.

  We are prepared, not perhaps to prove, but to maintain, that civilization would be materially aided and abetted by the offer of a liberal reward for the scalps of Young Persons with the ears attached. Your regular Young Person is a living nuisance, whose every act is a provocation to exterminate her. We say “her,” not because, physically considered, the Y. P. is necesarily of the she sex; more commonly is it an irreclaimable male; but morally and intellectually it is an unmixed female. Her virtues are merely milk-and-morality-her intelligence is pure spiritual whey. Her conversation (to which not even her own virtues and intelligence are in any way related) is three parts rain-water that has stood too long and one part cider that has not stood long enough-a sickening, sweetish compound, one dose of which induces in the mental stomach a colicky qualm, followed, if no correctives be taken, by violent retching, coma, and death.

  The Young Person vegetates best in the atmosphere of parlours and ball-rooms; if she infested the fields and roadsides like the squirrels, lizards, and mud-hens, she would be as ruthlessly exterminated as they. Every passing sportsman would fill her with duck-shot, and every strolling gentleman would step out of his way to smite off her head with his cane, as one decapitates a thistle. But in the drawing-room one lays off his destructiveness with his hat and gloves, and the Young Person enjoys the same immunity that a sleepy mastiff grants to the worthless kitten campaigning against his nose.

  But there is no good reason why the Spider should be destroyed and the Young Person tolerated.

  A Certain Popular Fallacy.

  The world makes few graver mistakes than in supposing a man must necessarily possess all the cardinal virtues because he has a big dog and some dirty children.

  We know a butcher whose children are not merely dirty-they are fearfully and wonderfully besmirched by the hand of an artist. He has, in addition, a big dog with a tendency to dropsy, who flies at you across the street with such celerity that he outruns his bark by a full second, and you are warned of your danger only after his teeth are buried in your leg. And yet the owner of these children and father of this dog is no whit better, to all appearance, than a baker who has clean brats and a mild poodle. He is not even a good butcher; he hacks a rib and lacerates a sirloin. He talks through his nose, which turns up to such an extent that the voice passes right over your head, and you have to get on a table to tell whether he is slandering his dead wife or swearing at yourself.

  If that man possessed a thousand young ones, exaltedly nasty, and dogs enough to make a sub-Atlantic cable of German sausage, you would find it difficult to make us believe in him. In fact, we look upon the big dog test of morality as a venerable mistake-natural but erroneous; and we regard dirty children as indispensable in no other sense than that they are inevitable.

  Pastoral Journalism.

  There shall be joy in the household of the country edit
or what time the rural mind shall no longer crave the unhealthy stimuli afforded by fascinating accounts of corpulent beets, bloated pumpkins, dropsical melons, aspiring maize, and precocious cabbages. Then the bucolic journalist shall have surcease of toil, and may go out upon the meads to frisk with kindred lambs, frolic familiarly with loose-jointed colts, and exchange grave gambollings with solemn cows. Then shall the voice of the press, no longer attuned to the praises of the vegetable kingdom, find a more humble, but not less useful, employment in calling the animal kingdom to the evening meal beneath the sanctum window.

  To the over-worked editor life will have a fresh zest and a new significance. The hills shall hump more greenly upward to a bluer sky, the fields blush with a more tender sunshine. He will go forth at dawn with countless flipflaps of gymnastic joy; and when the white sun shall redden with the blood of dying day, and the hogs shall set up a fine evening hymn of supplication to the Giver of Swill, he will stand upon the editorial head, blissfully conscious that his intellect is a-ripening for the morrow’s work.

  The rural newspaper! We sit with it in hand, running our fingers over the big staring letters, as over the black and white keys of a piano, drumming out of them a mild melody of perfect repose. With what delight do we disport us in the illimitable void of its nothingness, as who should swim in air! Here is nothing to startle-nothing to wound. The very atmosphere is saturated with “the spirit of the rural press;” and even our dog stands by, with pendant tail, slowly dropping the lids over his great eyes; and then, jerking them suddenly up again, tries to look as if he were not sleepy in the least. A pleasant smell of ploughed ground comes strong upon us. The tinkle of ghostly cow-bells falls drowsily upon the ear. Airy figures of phenomenal esculents float dreamily before our half-shut eyes, and vanish ere perfect vision can catch them. About and above are the drone of bees, and the muffled thunder of milk streams shooting into the foaming pail. The gabble of distant geese is faintly marked off by the bark of a distant dog. The city with its noises sinks away from our feet as from one in a balloon, and our senses are steeped in country languor. We slumber.