The Devil's Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce (ebook reader for pc and android txt) 📗

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 sovereigns 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.

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,

Then a person of civic worth,

Now a fellow to move our mirth.

Warrior, person, and fellow — no more:

We must knight our dogs to get any lower.

Brave Knights Kennelers then shall be,

Noble Knights of the Golden Flea,

Knights of the Order of St. Steboy,

Knights of St. Gorge and Sir Knights Jawy.

God speed the day when this knighting fad

Shall go to the dogs and the dogs go mad.

 

KORAN, n. A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been

written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a

wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.

L

LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

 

LAND, n. A part of the earth’s surface, considered as property. The

theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control

is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the

superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some

have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own

implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass

are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that

if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will

be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to

exist.

 

A life on the ocean wave,

A home on the rolling deep,

For the spark the nature gave

I have there the right to keep.

 

They give me the cat-o’-nine

Whenever I go ashore.

Then ho! for the flashing brine —

I’m a natural commodore!

 

Dodle

 

LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding

another’s treasure.

 

LAOCOON, n. A famous piece of antique scripture representing a priest

of that name and his two sons in the folds of two enormous serpents.

The skill and diligence with which the old man and lads support the

serpents and keep them up to their work have been justly regarded as

one of the noblest artistic illustrations of the mastery of human

intelligence over brute inertia.

 

LAP, n. One of the most important organs of the female system — an

admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly

useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and

heads of adult males. The male of our species has a rudimentary lap,

imperfectly developed and in no way contributing to the animal’s

substantial welfare.

 

LAST, n. A shoemaker’s implement, named by a frowning Providence as

opportunity to the maker of puns.

 

Ah, punster, would my lot were cast,

Where the cobbler is unknown,

So that I might forget his last

And hear your own.

 

Gargo Repsky

 

LAUGHTER, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the

features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious

and, though intermittent, incurable. Liability to attacks of laughter

is one of the characteristics distinguishing man from the animals —

these being not only inaccessible to the provocation of his example,

but impregnable to the microbes having original jurisdiction in

bestowal of the disease. Whether laughter could be imparted to

animals by inoculation from the human patient is a question that has

not been answered by experimentation. Dr. Meir Witchell holds that

the infection character of laughter is due to the instantaneous

fermentation of sputa diffused in a spray. From this peculiarity he

names the disorder Convulsio spargens.

 

LAUREATE, adj. Crowned with leaves of the laurel. In England the

Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign’s court, acting as

dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal

funeral. Of all incumbents of that high office, Robert Southey had

the most notable knack at drugging the Samson of public joy and

cutting his hair to the quick; and he had an artistic color-sense

which enabled him so to blacken a public grief as to give it the

aspect of a national crime.

 

LAUREL, n. The laurus, a vegetable dedicated to Apollo, and

formerly defoliated to wreathe the brows of victors and such poets as

had influence at court. (_Vide supra._)

 

LAW, n.

 

Once Law was sitting on the bench,

And Mercy knelt a-weeping.

“Clear out!” he cried, “disordered wench!

Nor come before me creeping.

Upon your knees if you appear,

‘Tis plain