The Devil's Dictionary (9 page)

Jamrach Holobom

GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to
the demands of American Socialism.

GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of
the medical student.

Beside a lonely grave I stood—
With brambles 'twas encumbered;
The winds were moaning in the wood,
Unheard by him who slumbered,
A rustic standing near, I said:
"He cannot hear it blowing!"
"'Course not," said he:  "the feller's dead—
He can't hear nowt [sic] that's going."
"Too true," I said; "alas, too true—
No sound his sense can quicken!"
"Well, mister, wot is that to you?—
The deadster ain't a-kickin'."
I knelt and prayed:  "O Father, smile
On him, and mercy show him!"
That countryman looked on the while,
And said:  "Ye didn't know him."

Pobeter Dunko

GRAVITATION, n. The tendency of all bodies to approach one another
with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain—
the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength
of their tendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and
edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B,
makes B the proof of A.

GREAT, adj.

"I'm great," the Lion said—"I reign
The monarch of the wood and plain!"
The Elephant replied:  "I'm great—
No quadruped can match my weight!"
"I'm great—no animal has half
So long a neck!" said the Giraffe.
"I'm great," the Kangaroo said—"see
My femoral muscularity!"
The 'Possum said:  "I'm great—behold,
My tail is lithe and bald and cold!"
An Oyster fried was understood
To say:  "I'm great because I'm good!"
Each reckons greatness to consist
In that in which he heads the list,
And Vierick thinks he tops his class
Because he is the greatest ass.

Arion Spurl Doke

GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders
with good reason.

In his great work on
Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution
, the
learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture
—the shrug—among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles
and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracing the head inside
the shell. It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an
authority, but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth and
enforced in my work entitled
Hereditary Emotions
—lib. II, c. XI)
the shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important a
theory, for previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown. I
have not a doubt that it is directly referable to the terror inspired
by the guillotine during the period of that instrument's activity.

GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the
settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left
unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to
the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it
was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion
seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels. Moreover,
it has the hearty concurrence of the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of
Agriculture.

Secretary Wilson became interested in gunpowder through an event
that occurred on the Government experimental farm in the District of
Columbia. One day, several years ago, a rogue imperfectly reverent of
the Secretary's profound attainments and personal character presented
him with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the sed of the
Flashawful flabbergastor
, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial
value, admirably adapted to this climate. The good Secretary was
instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with
soil. This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line
of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look
backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a
lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point. Contact with the
earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary
saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke and
fierce evolution. He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless,
then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himself
thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators
along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak
prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages,
and audibly refusing to be comforted. "Great Scott! what is that?"
cried a surveyor's chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fading
line of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon. "That,"
said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again
centering his attention upon his instrument, "is the Meridian of
Washington."

HABEAS CORPUS. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when
confined for the wrong crime.

HABIT, n. A shackle for the free.

HADES, n. The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the
place where the dead live.

Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our
Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in
a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves
were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris.
When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of
evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a
majority vote on translating the Greek word "Aides" as "Hell"; but a
conscientious minority member secretly possessed himself of the record
and struck out the objectional word wherever he could find it. At the
next meeting, the Bishop of Salisbury, looking over the work, suddenly
sprang to his feet and said with considerable excitement: "Gentlemen,
somebody has been razing 'Hell' here!" Years afterward the good
prelate's death was made sweet by the reflection that he had been the
means (under Providence) of making an important, serviceable and
immortal addition to the phraseology of the English tongue.

HAG, n. An elderly lady whom you do not happen to like; sometimes
called, also, a hen, or cat. Old witches, sorceresses, etc., were
called hags from the belief that their heads were surrounded by a kind
of baleful lumination or nimbus—hag being the popular name of that
peculiar electrical light sometimes observed in the hair. At one time
hag was not a word of reproach: Drayton speaks of a "beautiful hag,
all smiles," much as Shakespeare said, "sweet wench." It would not
now be proper to call your sweetheart a hag—that compliment is
reserved for the use of her grandchildren.

HALF, n. One of two equal parts into which a thing may be divided, or
considered as divided. In the fourteenth century a heated discussion
arose among theologists and philosophers as to whether Omniscience
could part an object into three halves; and the pious Father
Aldrovinus publicly prayed in the cathedral at Rouen that God would
demonstrate the affirmative of the proposition in some signal and
unmistakable way, and particularly (if it should please Him) upon the
body of that hardy blasphemer, Manutius Procinus, who maintained the
negative. Procinus, however, was spared to die of the bite of a
viper.

HALO, n. Properly, a luminous ring encircling an astronomical body,
but not infrequently confounded with "aureola," or "nimbus," a
somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a head-dress by divinities and
saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by moisture
in the air, in the manner of a rainbow; but the aureola is conferred
as a sign of superior sanctity, in the same way as a bishop's mitre,
or the Pope's tiara. In the painting of the Nativity, by Szedgkin, a
pious artist of Pesth, not only do the Virgin and the Child wear the
nimbus, but an ass nibbling hay from the sacred manger is similarly
decorated and, to his lasting honor be it said, appears to bear his
unaccustomed dignity with a truly saintly grace.

HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and
commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.

HANDKERCHIEF, n. A small square of silk or linen, used in various
ignoble offices about the face and especially serviceable at funerals
to conceal the lack of tears. The handkerchief is of recent
invention; our ancestors knew nothing of it and intrusted its duties
to the sleeve. Shakespeare's introducing it into the play of
"Othello" is an anachronism: Desdemona dried her nose with her skirt,
as Dr. Mary Walker and other reformers have done with their coattails
in our own day—an evidence that revolutions sometimes go backward.

HANGMAN, n. An officer of the law charged with duties of the highest
dignity and utmost gravity, and held in hereditary disesteem by a
populace having a criminal ancestry. In some of the American States
his functions are now performed by an electrician, as in New Jersey,
where executions by electricity have recently been ordered—the
first instance known to this lexicographer of anybody questioning the
expediency of hanging Jerseymen.

HAPPINESS, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the
misery of another.

HARANGUE, n. A speech by an opponent, who is known as an
harangue-outang.

HARBOR, n. A place where ships taking shelter from stores are exposed
to the fury of the customs.

HARMONISTS, n. A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from
Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for
the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.

HASH, x. There is no definition for this word—nobody knows what
hash is.

HATCHET, n. A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.

"O bury the hatchet, irascible Red,
For peace is a blessing," the White Man said.
The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred,
With imposing rites, in the White Man's head.

John Lukkus

HATRED, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
superiority.

HEAD-MONEY, n. A capitation tax, or poll-tax.

In ancient times there lived a king
Whose tax-collectors could not wring
From all his subjects gold enough
To make the royal way less rough.
For pleasure's highway, like the dames
Whose premises adjoin it, claims
Perpetual repairing.  So
The tax-collectors in a row
Appeared before the throne to pray
Their master to devise some way
To swell the revenue.  "So great,"
Said they, "are the demands of state
A tithe of all that we collect
Will scarcely meet them.  Pray reflect:
How, if one-tenth we must resign,
Can we exist on t'other nine?"
The monarch asked them in reply:
"Has it occurred to you to try
The advantage of economy?"
"It has," the spokesman said:  "we sold
All of our gray garrotes of gold;
With plated-ware we now compress
The necks of those whom we assess.
Plain iron forceps we employ
To mitigate the miser's joy
Who hoards, with greed that never tires,
That which your Majesty requires."
Deep lines of thought were seen to plow
Their way across the royal brow.
"Your state is desperate, no question;
Pray favor me with a suggestion."
"O King of Men," the spokesman said,
"If you'll impose upon each head
A tax, the augmented revenue
We'll cheerfully divide with you."
As flashes of the sun illume
The parted storm-cloud's sullen gloom,
The king smiled grimly.  "I decree
That it be so—and, not to be
In generosity outdone,
Declare you, each and every one,
Exempted from the operation
Of this new law of capitation.
But lest the people censure me
Because they're bound and you are free,
'Twere well some clever scheme were laid
By you this poll-tax to evade.
I'll leave you now while you confer
With my most trusted minister."
The monarch from the throne-room walked
And straightway in among them stalked
A silent man, with brow concealed,
Bare-armed—his gleaming axe revealed!

HEARSE, n. Death's baby-carriage.

HEART, n. An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this
useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments—a
very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once
universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments and emotions
reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of
the gastric fluid. The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a
feeling—tender or not, according to the age of the animal from
which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a
caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a
pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a
hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh
of sensibility—these things have been patiently ascertained by M.
Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity. (See, also,
my monograph,
The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and
Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion
—4to, 687 pp.) In a
scientific work entitled, I believe,
Delectatio Demonorum
(John
Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a
striking illustration; and for further light consult Professor Dam's
famous treatise on
Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration
.

HEAT, n.

Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode
Of motion, but I know now how he's proving
His point; but this I know—hot words bestowed
With skill will set the human fist a-moving,
And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
Crede expertum
—I have seen them, child.

Gorton Swope

HEATHEN, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship
something that he can see and feel. According to Professor Howison,
of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.

"The Hebrews are heathens!" says Howison.  He's
A Christian philosopher.  I'm
A scurril agnostical chap, if you please,
Addicted too much to the crime
Of religious discussion in my rhyme.
Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree
On a
modus vivendi
—not they!—
Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,
And I haven't been reared in a way
To joy in the thick of the fray.
For this of my creed is the soul and the gist,
And the truth of it I aver:
Who differs from me in his faith is an 'ist,
And 'ite, an 'ie, or an 'er—
And I'm down upon him or her!
Let Howison urge with perfunctory chin
Toleration—that's all very well,
But a roast is "nuts" to his nostril thin,
And he's running—I know by the smell—
A secret and personal Hell!