diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'lib/ebooks/devils/G.html')
| -rw-r--r-- | lib/ebooks/devils/G.html | 313 |
1 files changed, 313 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/lib/ebooks/devils/G.html b/lib/ebooks/devils/G.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9f16f5bc --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/devils/G.html @@ -0,0 +1,313 @@ +<?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/x-oeb1-css" href="devil.css" /> +<title>The Devil’s Dictionary: D</title> +</head> +<body lang="en-US"> + +<h1>G</h1> + + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">gallows</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> 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.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">Whether on the gallows high</p> +<p class="poetry">Or where blood flows the reddest, The noblest place for man to die—</p> +<p class="poetry">Is where he died the deadest.</p> +<p class="citeauth">(Old play)</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">gargoyle</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A rain-pout projecting from the eaves of mediaeval 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.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">garther</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and +desolating the country.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">generous</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> 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.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">genealogy</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An account of one’s descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">genteel</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Refined, after the fashion of a gent.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">Observe with care, my son, the distinction I reveal:</p> +<p class="poetry">A gentleman is gentle and a gent genteel.</p> +<p class="poetry">Heed not the definitions your “Unabridged” presents,</p> +<p class="poetry">For dictionary makers are generally gents.</p> +<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">geographer</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between the outside of the world and the inside.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">Habeam, geographer of wide reknown,</p> +<p class="poetry">Native of Abu-Keber’s ancient town,</p> +<p class="poetry">In passing thence along the river Zam</p> +<p class="poetry">To the adjacent village of Xelam,</p> +<p class="poetry">Bewildered by the multitude of roads,</p> +<p class="poetry">Got lost, lived long on migratory toads,</p> +<p class="poetry">Then from exposure miserably died,</p> +<p class="poetry">And grateful travelers bewailed their guide.</p> +<p class="citeauth">Henry Haukhorn</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">geology</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> 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 or 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.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">ghost</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">He saw a ghost.</p> +<p class="poetry">It occupied—that dismal thing!—</p> +<p class="poetry">The path that he was following.</p> +<p class="poetry">Before he’d time to stop and fly,</p> +<p class="poetry">An earthquake trifled with the eye</p> +<p class="poetry">That saw a ghost.</p> +<p class="poetry">He fell as fall the early good;</p> +<p class="poetry">Unmoved that awful vision stood.</p> +<p class="poetry">The stars that danced before his ken</p> +<p class="poetry">He wildly brushed away, and then</p> +<p class="poetry">He saw a post.</p> +<p class="citeauth">Jared Macphester</p> +</div> + +<p class="indentpara">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.</p> + +<p class="indentpara">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 grip on +the very tap-root of this flourishing faith.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">ghoul</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> 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 an 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.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">glutton</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A person who escapes the evils of moderation by committing dyspepsia.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">gnome</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> In North-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.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">gnostics</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early +Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the +combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">gnu</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state resembles a horse, a buffalo +and a stag. In its wild condition it is something like a thunderbolt, an +earthquake and a cyclone.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">A hunter from Kew caught a distant view</p> +<p class="poetry">Of a peacefully meditative gnu,</p> +<p class="poetry">And he said: “I’ll pursue, and my hands imbrue</p> +<p class="poetry">In its blood at a closer interview.”</p> +<p class="poetry">But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw</p> +<p class="poetry">O’er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;</p> +<p class="poetry">And he said as he flew: “It is well I withdrew</p> +<p class="poetry">Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew That really meritorious gnu.”</p> +<p class="citeauth">Jarn Leffer</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">good</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Sensible, madam, +to the worth of this present writer.</p> + +<p>Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">goose</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are +penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird’s intellectual +energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically +across paper by a person called an “author,” there results a very fair and +accurate transcript of the fowl’s thought and feeling. The difference in geese, +as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have +only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese +indeed.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">gorgon</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span></p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">The Gorgon was a maiden bold</p> +<p class="poetry">Who turned to stone the Greeks of old</p> +<p class="poetry">That looked upon her awful brow.</p> +<p class="poetry">We dig them out of ruins now,</p> +<p class="poetry">And swear that workmanship so bad</p> +<p class="poetry">Proves all the ancient sculptors mad.</p> +</div> +<p class="entry"><span class="def">gout</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A physician’s name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">graces</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne, who attended upon Venus, +serving without salary. They were at no expense for board and clothing, for +they ate nothing to speak of and dressed according to the weather, wearing +whatever breeze happened to be blowing.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">grammar</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, +along the path by which he advances to distinction.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">grape</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span></p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">Hail noble fruit!—by Homer sung,</p> +<p class="poetry">Anacreon and Khayyam;</p> +<p class="poetry">Thy praise is ever on the tongue</p> +<p class="poetry">Of better men than I am.</p> +<p class="poetry">The lyre in my hand has never swept,</p> +<p class="poetry">The song I cannot offer:</p> +<p class="poetry">My humbler service pray accept—</p> +<p class="poetry">I’ll help to kill the scoffer.</p> +<p class="poetry">The water-drinkers and the cranks</p> +<p class="poetry">Who load their skins with liquor—</p> +<p class="poetry">I’ll gladly bear their belly-tanks</p> +<p class="poetry">And tap them with my sticker.</p> +<p class="poetry">Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools</p> +<p class="poetry">When e’er we let the wine rest.</p> +<p class="poetry">Here’s death to Prohibition’s fools,</p> +<p class="poetry">And every kind of vine-pest!</p> +<p class="citeauth">Jamrach Holobom</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">grapeshot</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">grave</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">Beside a lonely grave I stood—</p> +<p class="poetry">With brambles ‘twas encumbered;</p> +<p class="poetry">The winds were moaning in the wood,</p> +<p class="poetry">Unheard by him who slumbered,</p> +<p class="poetry">A rustic standing near, I said:</p> +<p class="poetry">“He cannot hear it blowing!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“’Course not,” said he: “the feller’s dead—</p> +<p class="poetry">He can’t hear nowt [sic] that’s going.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Too true,” I said; “alas, too true—</p> +<p class="poetry">No sound his sense can quicken!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Well, mister, wot is that to you?—</p> +<p class="poetry">The deadster ain’t a-kickin’.”</p> +<p class="poetry">I knelt and prayed: “O Father, smile</p> +<p class="poetry">On him, and mercy show him!”</p> +<p class="poetry">That countryman looked on the while,</p> +<p class="poetry">And said: “Ye didn’t know him.”</p> +<p class="citeauth">Pobeter Dunko</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">gravitation</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> 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.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">great</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span></p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">“I’m great,” the Lion said—“I reign</p> +<p class="poetry">The monarch of the wood and plain!”</p> +<p class="poetry">The Elephant replied: “I’m great—</p> +<p class="poetry">No quadruped can match my weight!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“I’m great—no animal has half</p> +<p class="poetry">So long a neck!” said the Giraffe.</p> +<p class="poetry">“I’m great,” the Kangaroo said—“see</p> +<p class="poetry">My femoral muscularity!”</p> +<p class="poetry">The ‘Possum said: “I’m great—behold,</p> +<p class="poetry">My tail is lithe and bald and cold!”</p> +<p class="poetry">An Oyster fried was understood</p> +<p class="poetry">To say: “I’m great because I’m good!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Each reckons greatness to consist</p> +<p class="poetry">In that in which he heads the list,</p> +<p class="poetry">And Vierick thinks he tops his class</p> +<p class="poetry">Because he is the greatest ass.</p> +<p class="citeauth">Arion Spurl Doke</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">guillotine</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.</p> + +<p>In his great work on <i>Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution</i>, +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 <i>Hereditary Emotions</i>—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.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">gunpowder</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Flashawful flabbergastor</i>, 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.”</p> + + +</body> +</html>
\ No newline at end of file |