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diff --git a/lib/ebooks/devils/E.html b/lib/ebooks/devils/E.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ed43e176 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/devils/E.html @@ -0,0 +1,629 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?> +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "+//ISBN 0-9673008-1-9//DTD OEB 1.0 Document//EN" + "http://openebook.org/dtds/oeb-1.0/oebdoc1.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/x-oeb1-document; charset=utf-8" /> +<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/x-oeb1-css" href="devil.css" /> +<title>The Devil’s Dictionary: E</title> +</head> + +<body lang="en-us"> + +<h1>E</h1> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">eat,</span> <span class="pos">v.i.</span> To perform +successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition.</p> + +<p class="indentpara">“I was in the drawing-room, enjoying my dinner,” said Brillat-Savarin, beginning +an anecdote. “What!” interrupted Rochebriant; “eating dinner in a drawing-room?” “I must beg you to +observe, monsieur,” explained the great gastronome, “that I did not say I was eating my dinner, but enjoying it. I +had dined an hour before.”</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">eavesdrop,</span> <span class="pos">v.i.</span> Secretly +to overhear a catalogue +of the crimes and vices of another or yourself.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">A lady with one of her ears applied<br /> +To an open keyhole heard, inside,<br /> +Two female gossips in converse +free—<br /> +The subject engaging them was she.<br /> +“I think,” said +one, “and my husband thinks<br /> +That she’s a prying, inquisitive minx!”<br /> +As soon as no more of it she could +hear<br /> +The lady, indignant, removed her +ear.<br /> +“I will not stay,” +she said, with a pout,<br /> +“To hear my character lied about!”</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Gopete Sherany.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">eccentricity,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A method of distinction so cheap +that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">economy,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> Purchasing +the barrel of whiskey that you do +not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">edible,</span> <span class="pos">adj.</span> Good to eat, +and wholesome to digest, as a +worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man +to a worm.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">editor,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A person who combines the judicial functions +of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, but is placable with an obolus; a severely +virtuous censor, but so charitable withal that he tolerates the virtues of +others and the vices of himself; who flings about him the splintering lightning +and sturdy thunders of admonition till he resembles a bunch of firecrackers +petulantly uttering his mind at the tail of a dog; then straightway murmurs a +mild, melodious lay, soft as the cooing of a donkey intoning its prayer to the +evening star. Master of mysteries and +lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of thought, his face suffused with +the dim splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue +a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths +to suit. And at intervals from behind +the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches +of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom +and whack up some pathos.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">O, the Lord of Law +on the Throne of Thought,<br /> +<span class="ind1">A gilded impostor is he.</span><br /> +Of shreds and +patches his robes are wrought,<br /> +<span class="ind3"> +His crown is brass,</span><br /> +<span class="ind3"> +Himself an ass,</span><br /> +<span class="ind1"> +And his power is fiddle-dee-dee.</span><br /> +Prankily, crankily prating of +naught,<br /> +Silly old quilly old Monarch of +Thought.<br /> +<span class="ind1"> +Public opinion’s +camp-follower he,</span><br /> +<span class="ind1">Thundering, blundering, plundering free.</span><br /> +<span class="ind3"> +Affected,</span><br /> +<span class="ind6"> +Ungracious,</span><br /> +<span class="ind3"> +Suspected,</span><br /> +<span class="ind6"> +Mendacious,</span><br /> +Respected contemporaree!</p> + +<p class="citeauth">J.H. Bumbleshook.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">education,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> That +which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of +understanding.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">effect,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The second of two phenomena which always +occur together in the same order. The +first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other—which is no more sensible +than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in the pursuit of a +rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of a dog.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">egotist,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A +person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">Megaceph, chosen to serve the State<br /> +In the halls of legislative debate,<br /> +One day with all his credentials +came<br /> +To the capitol’s door and announced +his name.<br /> +The doorkeeper looked, with a +comical twist<br /> +Of the face, at the eminent +egotist,<br /> +And said: “Go away, for we settle here<br /> +All manner of questions, knotty and +queer,<br /> +And we cannot have, when the +speaker demands<br /> +To be told how every member stands,<br /> +A man who to all things under the +sky<br /> +Assents by eternally voting ‘I’.” + </p> + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">ejection,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> An approved remedy for the disease of +garrulity. It is also much used in +cases of extreme poverty.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">elector,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> One who enjoys the sacred privilege of +voting for the man of another man’s choice.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">electricity,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The power that causes all natural +phenomena not known to be caused by something else. It is the same thing as lightning, and its famous attempt to +strike Dr. Franklin is one of the most picturesque incidents in that great and +good man’s career. The memory of Dr. +Franklin is justly held in great reverence, particularly in France, where a +waxen effigy of him was recently on exhibition, bearing the following touching +account of his life and services to science:</p> + +<p class="quote">“Monsieur +Franqulin, inventor of electricity. +This illustrious savant, after having made several voyages around the +world, died on the Sandwich Islands and was devoured by savages, of whom not a +single fragment was ever recovered.”</p> + +<p class="indentpara">Electricity seems +destined to play a most important part in the arts and industries. The question of its economical application +to some purposes is still unsettled, but experiment has already proved that it +will propel a street car better than a gas jet and give more light than a +horse.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">elegy,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A composition in verse, in which, without +employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the +reader’s mind the dampest kind of dejection. +The most famous English example begins somewhat like this:</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">The cur foretells +the knell of parting day;<br /> +<span class="ind1"> +The loafing herd +winds slowly o’er the lea;</span><br /> +The wise man +homeward plods; I only stay<br /> +<span class="ind1"> +To fiddle-faddle +in a minor key.</span> + </p> + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">eloquence,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> +The art of orally persuading fools that white +is the color that it appears to be. It +includes the gift of making any color appear white.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">elysium,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> An imaginary delightful country which the +ancients foolishly believed to be inhabited by the spirits of the good. This ridiculous and mischievous fable was +swept off the face of the earth by the early Christians—may their souls be +happy in Heaven!</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">emancipation,</span> <span class="pos"> +n.</span> A bondman’s change from the tyranny +of another to the despotism of himself.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">He was a +slave: at word he went and came;<br /> +<span class="ind1"> +His iron collar cut +him to the bone.</span><br /> +Then Liberty +erased his owner’s name,<br /> +<span class="ind1"> +Tightened the +rivets and inscribed his own.</span></p> + +<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">embalm,</span> <span class="pos">v.i.</span> To cheat vegetation by locking up the gases +upon which it feeds. By embalming their +dead and thereby deranging the natural balance between animal and vegetable +life, the Egyptians made their once fertile and populous country barren and +incapable of supporting more than a meagre crew. The modern metallic burial casket is a step in the same direction, +and many a dead man who ought now to be ornamenting his neighbor’s lawn as a +tree, or enriching his table as a bunch of radishes, is doomed to a long +inutility. We shall get him after +awhile if we are spared, but in the meantime the violet and rose are +languishing for a nibble at his <i>glutoeus +maximus</i>.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">emotion,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A prostrating disease caused by a +determination of the heart to the head. +It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride +of sodium from the eyes.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">encomiast,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A special (but not particular) kind of liar.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">end,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The position farthest removed on either hand +from the Interlocutor.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">The man was +perishing apace<br /> +<span class="ind1"> +Who played the +tambourine;</span><br /> +The seal of death +was on his face—<br /> +<span class="ind1"> +‘Twas pallid, for +‘twas clean.</span></p> + +<p class="poetry">“This is the end,” +the sick man said<br /> +<span class="ind1"> +In faint and +failing tones.</span><br /> +A moment later he +was dead,<br /> +<span class="ind1"> +And Tambourine was +Bones.</span></p> + +<p class="citeauth">Tinley Roquot.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p></p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">enough,</span> <span class="pos">pro.</span> All there is in the world if you like it.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">Enough is as good +as a feast—for that matter<br /> +Enougher’s as good as a feast for the platter.</p> +<p class="citeauth">Arbely C. Strunk. </p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">entertainment,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> Any kind of amusement whose inroads +stop short of death by injection.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">enthusiasm,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A distemper of youth, curable by +small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of +experience. Byron, who recovered long +enough to call it “entuzy-muzy,” had a relapse, which carried him off—to +Missolonghi.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">envelope,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a +bill; the husk of a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">envy,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">epaulet,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> An ornamented badge, serving to distinguish +a military officer from the enemy—that is to say, from the officer of lower +rank to whom his death would give promotion.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">epicure,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> An opponent of Epicurus, an abstemious +philosopher who, holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted +no time in gratification from the senses.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">epigram,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, +frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom. Following are some of the more notable +epigrams of the learned and ingenious Dr. Jamrach Holobom:</p> + + <blockquote> +<p>We know better the +needs of ourselves than of others. To +serve oneself is economy of administration.</p> +<p>In each human +heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.</p> +<p>There are three +sexes; males, females and girls.</p> +<p>Beauty in women +and distinction in men are alike in this: +they seem to be +the unthinking a kind of credibility.</p> +<p>Women in love are +less ashamed than men. They have less +to be ashamed of.</p> +<p>While your friend +holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch +both his.</p> + </blockquote> + + + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">epitaph,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> An inscription on a tomb, showing that +virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect. Following is a touching example:</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">Here lie the bones of Parson Platt,<br /> +Wise, pious, humble and all that,<br /> +Who showed us life as all should +live it;<br /> +Let that be said—and God forgive +it! </p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">erudition,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> Dust shaken out of a book into an empty +skull.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">So wide his erudition’s mighty +span,<br /> +He knew Creation’s origin and plan<br /> +And only came by accident to grief—<br /> +He thought, poor man, ‘twas right +to be a thief.</p> + +<p></p> + +<p class="citeauth">Romach Pute.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p></p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">esoteric,</span> <span class="pos">adj.</span> Very particularly abstruse and +consummately occult. The ancient +philosophies were of two kinds,<i>—exoteric</i>, +those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and <i>esoteric</i>, those that nobody could +understand. It is the latter that have +most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our +time.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">ethnology,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The science that treats of the various +tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and +ethnologists.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">Eucharist,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A sacred feast of the religious sect of +Theophagi.</p> + +<p class="indentpara">A dispute once +unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they +ate. In this controversy some five +hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">eulogy,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> Praise of a person who has either the +advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">evangelist,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A bearer of good tidings, +particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and +the damnation of our neighbors.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">everlasting,</span> <span class="pos">adj.</span> Lasting forever. It is with no small diffidence that I +venture to offer this brief and elementary definition, for I am not unaware of +the existence of a bulky volume by a sometime Bishop of Worcester, entitled, <i>A +Partial Definition of the Word “Everlasting,” as Used in the Authorized Version +of the Holy Scriptures</i>. His book was +once esteemed of great authority in the Anglican Church, and is still, I +understand, studied with pleasure to the mind and profit of the soul.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">exception,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A thing which takes the liberty to differ +from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc. “The exception proves the rule” is an +expression constantly upon the lips of the ignorant, who parrot it from one +another with never a thought of its absurdity. +In the Latin, “<i>Exceptio probat regulam</i>” means that the exception <i>tests</i> the rule, puts it to the proof, not <i>confirms</i> it. +The malefactor who drew the meaning from this excellent dictum +and substituted a contrary one of his own exerted an evil power which appears +to be immortal.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">excess,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> In morals, an indulgence that enforces by +appropriate penalties the law of moderation.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry"> + +Hail, high +Excess—especially in wine,<br /> +<span class="ind1"> +To thee in worship +do I bend the knee</span><br /> +<span class="ind1"> + Who preach abstemiousness unto me—</span><br /> +My skull thy +pulpit, as my paunch thy shrine.<br /> +Precept on +precept, aye, and line on line,<br /> +<span class="ind1"> +Could ne’er +persuade so sweetly to agree</span><br /> +<span class="ind1"> +With reason as thy +touch, exact and free,</span><br /> +Upon my forehead +and along my spine.<br /> +At thy command +eschewing pleasure’s cup,<br /> +<span class="ind1"> +With the hot grape +I warm no more my wit;</span><br /> +<span class="ind1"> +When on thy stool +of penitence I sit</span><br /> +I’m quite converted, for I can’t +get up.<br /> +Ungrateful he who afterward would +falter<br /> +To make new sacrifices at thine +altar!</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">excommunication,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span></p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">This “excommunication” is a word<br /> +In speech ecclesiastical oft heard,<br /> +And means the +damning, with bell, book and candle,<br /> +Some sinner whose opinions are a scandal—<br /> +A rite permitting +Satan to enslave him<br /> +Forever, and forbidding Christ to save him.</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Gat Huckle.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p></p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">executive,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> An officer of the Government, whose duty it +is to enforce the wishes of the legislative power until such time as the +judicial department shall be pleased to pronounce them invalid and of no +effect. Following is an extract from an +old book entitled, <i>The Lunarian Astonished—</i>Pfeiffer & Co., Boston, +1803:</p> +<blockquote> +<p>Lunarian: Then when your Congress has passed a law it +goes directly to the Supreme Court in order that it may at once be known whether it is constitutional?</p> + +<p>Terrestrain: O no; it does not require the approval of +the Supreme Court until having perhaps been enforced for many years somebody objects to its +operation against himself—I mean his client. +The President, if he approves it, begins to execute it at once.</p> + +<p>Lunarian: Ah, the executive power is a part of the legislative.</p> + +<p>Do your policemen also have to approve the local ordinances that they enforce?</p> + +<p>Terrestrian: Not yet—at least not in their character of constables. +Generally speaking, though, all laws require the approval of those whom they are intended to restrain.</p> + +<p>Lunarian: I see. The death warrant is not valid until signed by the murderer.</p> + +<p>Terrestrian: My friend, you put it too strongly; we are not so consistent.</p> + +<p>Lunarian: But this system of maintaining an expensive +judicial machinery to pass upon the validity of laws only after they have long been executed, and then +only when brought before the court by some private person—does it not cause great confusion?</p> + +<p>Terrestrian: It does.</p> + +<p>Lunarian: Why then should not your laws, previously to +being executed, be validated, not by the signature of your President, but by that of the Chief +Justice of the Supreme Court?</p> + +<p>Terrestrian: There is no precedent for any such course.</p> + +<p>Lunarian: Precedent. What is that?</p> + +<p>Terrestrian: It has been defined by five hundred lawyers +in three volumes each. So how can any one know?</p> +</blockquote> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">exhort,</span> <span class="pos">v.t.</span> In +religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it +to a nut-brown discomfort.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">exile,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> One who serves his country by residing +abroad, yet is not an ambassador.</p> + +<p class="indentpara">An English +sea-captain being asked if he had read “The Exile of Erin,” replied: “No, sir, but I should like to anchor on +it.” Years afterwards, when he had been +hanged as a pirate after a career of unparalleled atrocities, the following +memorandum was found in the ship’s log that he had kept at the time of his +reply:</p> + +<p class="quote">Aug. 3d, +1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly received. War with the whole world!</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">existence,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span></p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">A transient, +horrible, fantastic dream,<br /> +Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem:<br /> +From which we’re +wakened by a friendly nudge<br /> +Of our bedfellow Death, and cry: “O fudge!”</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">experience,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The wisdom that enables us to recognize +as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">To one who, +journeying through night and fog,<br /> +Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog,<br /> +Experience, like the rising of the dawn,<br /> +Reveals the path that he should not +have gone.</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Joel Frad Bink.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">expostulation,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> One of the many methods by which +fools prefer to lose their friends.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">extinction,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The raw material out of which +theology created the future state.</p> + + +</body> + +</html> |