The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs

by Ambrose Bierce

  FOLLY, n. That “gift and faculty divine” whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man’s mind, guides his actions and adorns his life.

  Folly! although Erasmus praised thee once

  In a thick volume, and all authors known,

  If not thy glory yet thy power have shown,

  Deign to take homage from thy son who hunts

  Through all thy maze his brothers, fool and dunce,

  To mend their lives and to sustain his own,

  However feebly be his arrows thrown,

  Howe’er each hide the flying weapons blunts.

  All-Father Folly! be it mine to raise,

  With lusty lung, here on his western strand

  With all thine offspring thronged from every land,

  Thyself inspiring me, the song of praise.

  And if too weak, I’ll hire, to help me bawl,

  Dick Watson Gilder, gravest of us all.

  Aramis Loto Frope.

  FOOL, n. A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscience, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, the platitude and the circle of the sciences. He created patriotism and taught the nations war—founded theology, philosophy, law, medicine and Chicago. He established monarchical and republican government. He is from everlasting to everlasting—such as creation’s dawn beheld he fooleth now. In the morning of time he sang upon primitive hills, and in the noonday of existence headed the procession of being. His grandmotherly hand was warmly tucked-in the set sun of civilization, and in the twilight he prepares Man’s evening meal of milk-and-morality and turns down the covers of the universal grave. And after the rest of us shall have retired for the night of eternal oblivion he will sit up to write a history of human civilization.

  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 debtors 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.

  FRANKALMOIGN, n. The tenure by which a religious corporation holds lands on condition of praying for the soul of the donor. In mediæval 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 your 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 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 the Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Cæsar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucius, 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 Israelites was a plague of frogs, but Pharaoh, who liked them fricasées, 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 wri
tten by Aristophanes, is brief, simple and effective—“brekekex-koäx”; 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 is 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

  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 medi æval 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.

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

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

  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.

  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 renown,

  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 of 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 grasp 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 and 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 Nort
h-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.