diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'lib/ebooks/devils/F.html')
| -rw-r--r-- | lib/ebooks/devils/F.html | 578 |
1 files changed, 578 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/lib/ebooks/devils/F.html b/lib/ebooks/devils/F.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2760de3d --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/devils/F.html @@ -0,0 +1,578 @@ +<?xml version="1.0"?> +<!DOCTYPE package PUBLIC "+//ISBN 0-9673008-1-9//DTD OEB 1.0 Package//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/css" href="devil.css" /> +<title>The Devil’s Dictionary: F</title> +</head> + +<body lang="en-US"> + +<h1>F</h1> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">fairy,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, +that formerly inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits, +and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children. The fairies +are now believed by naturalist to be extinct, though a clergyman of the Church +of England saw three near Colchester as lately as 1855, while passing through a +park after dining with the lord of the manor. +The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected that his account +of it was incoherent. In the year 1807 +a troop of fairies visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a +peasant, who had been seen to enter it with a bundle of clothing. The son of a wealthy +<i>bourgeois</i> disappeared about the same time, +but afterward returned. He had seen the +abduction been in pursuit of the fairies. +Justinian Gaux, a writer of the fourteenth century, avers that so great +is the fairies’ power of transformation that he saw one change itself into two +opposing armies and fight a battle with great slaughter, and that the next day, +after it had resumed its original shape and gone away, there were seven hundred +bodies of the slain which the villagers had to bury. He does not say if any of the +wounded recovered. In the time of Henry III, of England, a law +was made which prescribed the death penalty for “Kyllynge, wowndynge, or +mamynge” a fairy, and it was universally respected.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">faith,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> Belief without evidence in what is told by +one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.</p> + +<p id="famous" class="entry"><span class="def">famous,</span> <span class="pos">adj.</span> Conspicuously miserable.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">Done to a turn on +the iron, behold<br /> +Him who to be +famous aspired.<br /> +Content? Well, his grill has a plating of gold,<br /> +And his twistings +are greatly admired.</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Hassan Brubuddy.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"> </p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">fashion,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">A king there was +who lost an eye<br /> +In some excess of +passion;<br /> +And straight his +courtiers all did try<br /> +To follow the new +fashion.<br /> +Each dropped one +eyelid when before<br /> +The throne he +ventured, thinking<br /> +‘Twould please the +king. That monarch swore<br /> +He’d slay them all +for winking.<br /> +What should they +do? They were not hot<br /> +To hazard such +disaster;<br /> +They dared not +close an eye—dared not<br /> +See better than +their master.<br /> +Seeing them +lacrymose and glum,<br /> +A leech consoled +the weepers:<br /> +He spread small +rags with liquid gum<br /> +And covered half +their peepers.<br /> +The court all wore +the stuff, the flame<br /> +Of royal anger +dying.<br /> +That’s how +court-plaster got its name<br /> +Unless I’m greatly +lying.</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Naramy Oof.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">feast,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A festival. +A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently +in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness. In the Roman Catholic +Church feasts are +“movable” and “immovable,” but the celebrants are uniformly immovable until +they are full. In their earliest +development these entertainments took the form of feasts for the dead; such +were held by the Greeks, under the name <i>Nemeseia</i>, +by the Aztecs and Peruvians, as in modern times they are popular with the +Chinese; though it is believed that the ancient dead, like the modern, were +light eaters. Among the many feasts of +the Romans was the <i>Novemdiale</i>, +which was held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">felon,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A person of greater enterprise than +discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate +attachment.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">female,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">The Maker, at Creation’s birth,<br /> +With living things had stocked the +earth.<br /> +From elephants to bats and snails,<br /> +They all were good, for all were +males.<br /> +But when the Devil came and saw<br /> +He said: “By Thine eternal law<br /> +Of growth, maturity, decay,<br /> +These all must quickly pass away<br /> +And leave untenanted the earth<br /> +Unless Thou dost establish birth”—<br /> +Then tucked his head beneath his +wing<br /> +To laugh—he had no sleeve—the thing<br /> +With deviltry did so accord,<br /> +That he’d suggested to the Lord.<br /> +The Master pondered this advice,<br /> +Then shook and threw the fateful +dice<br /> +Wherewith all matters here below<br /> +Are ordered, and observed the +throw;<br /> +Then bent His head in awful state,<br /> +Confirming the decree of Fate.<br /> +From every part of earth anew<br /> +The conscious dust consenting flew,<br /> +While rivers from their courses rolled<br /> +To make it plastic for the mould.<br /> +Enough collected (but no more,<br /> +For niggard Nature hoards her store)<br /> +He kneaded it to flexible clay,<br /> +While Nick unseen threw some away.<br /> +And then the various forms He cast,<br /> +Gross organs first and finer last;<br /> +No one at once evolved, but all<br /> +By even touches grew and small<br /> +Degrees advanced, till, shade by shade,<br /> +To match all living things He’d made<br /> +Females, complete in all their parts<br /> +Except (His clay gave out) thec hearts.<br /> +“No matter,” Satan cried; “with speed<br /> +I’ll fetch the very hearts they need”—<br /> +So flew away and soon brought back<br /> +The number needed, in a sack.<br /> +That night earth range with sounds of strife—<br /> +Ten million males each had a wife;<br /> +That night sweet Peace her pinions spread<br /> +O’er Hell—ten million devils dead!</p> + +<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p> + + + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + + + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">fib,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar’s +nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">When David said: “All men are liars,” Dave,<br /> +Himself a liar, fibbed like any thief.<br /> +Perhaps he thought to weaken disbelief<br /> +By proof that even himself was not a slave<br /> +To Truth; though I suspect the aged knave<br /> +Had been of all her servitors the chief<br /> +Had he but known a fig’s reluctant leaf<br /> +Is more than e’er she wore on land or wave.<br /> +No, David served not Naked Truth when he<br /> +Struck that sledge-hammer blow at all his race;<br /> +Nor did he hit the nail upon the head:<br /> +For reason shows that it could never be,<br /> +And the facts contradict him to his face.<br /> +Men are not liars all, for some are dead.</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Bartle Quinker.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">fickleness,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The iterated satiety of an +enterprising affection.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">fiddle,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> An instrument to tickle human ears by +friction of a horse’s tail on the entrails of a cat.</p> + +<p class="quote">To Rome said +Nero: “If to smoke you turn I shall not +cease to fiddle while you burn.” To Nero Rome replied: “Pray do your worst, +‘Tis my excuse that you were fiddling first.”—<i>Orm Pludge</i></p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">fidelity,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A virtue peculiar to those who are about to +be betrayed.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">finance,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The art or science of managing revenues and resources +for the best advantage of the manager. +The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the +first syllable is one of America’s most precious discoveries and possessions.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">flag,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted +on forts and ships. It appears to serve +the same purpose as certain signs that one sees and vacant lots in +London—“Rubbish may be shot here.”</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">flesh,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The Second Person of the secular Trinity.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">flop,</span> <span class="pos"> v.</span> Suddenly to change one’s opinions and go +over to another party. The most notable +flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as +a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">fly-speck,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The prototype of punctuation. It is observed by +Garvinus that the systems +of punctuation in use by the various literary nations depended originally upon +the social habits and general diet of the flies infesting the several +countries. These creatures, which have +always been distinguished for a neighborly and companionable familiarity with +authors, liberally or niggardly embellish the manuscripts in process of growth +under the pen, according to their bodily habit, bringing out the sense of the +work by a species of interpretation superior to, and independent of, the +writer’s powers. The “old masters” of +literature—that is to say, the early writers whose work is so esteemed by later +scribes and critics in the same language—never punctuated at all, but worked +right along free-handed, without that abruption of the thought which comes from +the use of points. (We observe the same +thing in children to-day, whose usage in this particular is a striking and +beautiful instance of the law that the infancy of individuals reproduces the +methods and stages of development characterizing the infancy of races.) +In the work of these primitive scribes all +the punctuation is found, by the modern investigator with his optical +instruments and chemical tests, to have been inserted by the writers’ ingenious +and serviceable collaborator, the common house-fly—<i>Musca maledicta</i>. +In transcribing these ancient MSS, for the purpose of either +making the work their own or preserving what they naturally regard as divine +revelations, later writers reverently and accurately copy whatever marks they +find upon the papyrus or parchment, to the unspeakable enhancement of the +lucidity of the thought and value of the work. +Writers contemporary with the copyists naturally avail themselves of the +obvious advantages of these marks in their own work, and with such assistance +as the flies of their own household may be willing to grant, frequently rival +and sometimes surpass the older compositions, in respect at least of +punctuation, which is no small glory. +Fully to understand the important services that flies perform to +literature it is only necessary to lay a page of some popular novelist +alongside a saucer of cream-and-molasses in a sunny room and observe “how the +wit brightens and the style refines” in accurate proportion to the duration of +exposure.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">folly,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> That “gift and faculty divine” whose +creative and controlling energy inspires Man’s mind, guides his actions and +adorns his life.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">Folly! although Erasmus praised thee once<br /> +In a thick volume, and all authors known,<br /> +If not thy glory yet thy power have shown,<br /> +Deign to take homage from thy son who hunts<br /> +Through all thy maze his brothers, fool and dunce,<br /> +To mend their lives and to sustain his own,<br /> +However feebly be his arrows thrown,<br /> +Howe’er each hide the flying weapons blunts.<br /> +All-Father Folly! be it mine to raise,<br /> +With lusty lung, here on his western strand<br /> +With all thine offspring thronged from every land,<br /> +Thyself inspiring me, the song of praise.<br /> +And if too weak, I’ll hire, to help me bawl,<br /> +Dick Watson Gilder, gravest of us all.</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Aramis Loto Frope.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p id="fool" class="entry"><span class="def">fool,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">force,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span></p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">“Force is but might,” the teacher said—<br /> +“That definition’s just.”<br /> +The boy said naught but through instead,<br /> +Remembering his pounded head:<br /> +“Force is not might but must!”</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">forefinger,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The finger commonly used in pointing out two malefactors.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">foreordination,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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,𔃐recalling 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.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">forgetfulness,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A gift of God bestowed upon doctors +in compensation for their destitution of conscience.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">fork,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">forma pauperis.</span> <span class="pos"> [Latin]</span> In the character of a poor person—a method +by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to +lose his case.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">When Adam long ago in Cupid’s awful court<br /> +(For Cupid ruled ere Adam was invented)<br /> +Sued for Eve’s favor, says an ancient law report,<br /> +He stood and pleaded unhabilimented.<br /> +“You sue <i>in forma pauperis</i>, I see,” Eve cried;<br /> +“Actions can’t here be that way prosecuted.”<br /> +So all poor Adam’s motions coldly were denied:<br /> +He went away—as he had come—nonsuited.</p> + +<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">Frankalmoigne,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The tenure by which a religious +corporation holds lands on condition of praying for the soul of the donor. +In mediaeval 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 you 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.”</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">freebooter,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A conqueror in a small way of +business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">freedom,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,<br /> +Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;<br /> +On every wind, indeed, that blows<br /> +I hear her yell.<br /> +She screams whenever monarchs meet,<br /> +And parliaments as well,<br /> +To bind the chains about her feet<br /> +And toll her knell.<br /> +And when the sovereign people cast<br /> +The votes they cannot spell,<br /> +Upon the pestilential blast<br /> +Her clamors swell.<br /> +For all to whom the power’s given<br /> +To sway or to compel,<br /> +Among themselves apportion Heaven<br /> +And give her Hell.</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Blary O’Gary.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">Freemasons,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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 +Formless Void. The order was founded at +different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, +Confucious, 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.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">friendless,</span> <span class="pos"> adj.</span> Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. +Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense. </p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">friendship,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">The sea was calm and the sky was blue;<br /> +Merrily, merrily sailed we two.<br /> +(High barometer maketh glad.)<br /> +On the tipsy ship, with a dreadful shout,<br /> +The tempest descended and we fell out.<br /> +(O the walking is nasty bad!)</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Armit Huff Bettle.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">frog,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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 Israelities was a plague of +frogs, but Pharaoh, who liked them <i>fricasees</i>, +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 written by Aristophanes, is brief, simple and +effective—“brekekex-koax”; 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.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">frying-pan,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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:</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">Old Nick was summoned to the skies.<br /> +Said Peter: “Your intentions<br /> +Are good, but you lack enterprise<br /> +Concerning new inventions.<br /> +“Now, broiling in an ancient plan<br /> +Of torment, but I hear it<br /> +Reported that the frying-pan<br /> +Sears best the wicked spirit.<br /> +“Go get one—fill it up with fat—<br /> +Fry sinners brown and good in’t.”<br /> +“I know a trick worth two o’ that,”<br /> +Said Nick—“I’ll cook their food in’t.”</p> + +<p class="citeauth"> </p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p id="funeral" class="entry"><span class="def">funeral,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.</p> + + <table align="center" border="0"> + <tr> + <td valign="top" align="left"> + +<p class="poetry">The savage dies—they sacrifice a horse<br /> +To bear to happy hunting-grounds the corse.<br /> +Our friends expire—we make the money fly<br /> +In +hope their souls will chase it to the sky.</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Jex Wopley.</p> + + </td> + </tr> + </table> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">future,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> That period of time in which our affairs +prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.</p> + +</body> + +</html>
\ No newline at end of file |