From 46439007cf417cbd9ac8049bb4122c890097a0fa Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Charles.Forsyth" Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2006 20:52:35 +0000 Subject: 20060303-partial --- lib/ebooks/devils/F.html | 578 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 578 insertions(+) create mode 100644 lib/ebooks/devils/F.html (limited to 'lib/ebooks/devils/F.html') 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 @@ + + + + + + +The Devil’s Dictionary: F + + + + +

F

+ +

fairy, n. 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 +bourgeois 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.

+ +

faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by +one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

+ +

famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

+ + + + + +

+ +

Done to a turn on +the iron, behold
+Him who to be +famous aspired.
+Content? Well, his grill has a plating of gold,
+And his twistings +are greatly admired.

+ +

Hassan Brubuddy.

+ +

fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.

+ + + + + +

+ +

A king there was +who lost an eye
+In some excess of +passion;
+And straight his +courtiers all did try
+To follow the new +fashion.
+Each dropped one +eyelid when before
+The throne he +ventured, thinking
+‘Twould please the +king. That monarch swore
+He’d slay them all +for winking.
+What should they +do? They were not hot
+To hazard such +disaster;
+They dared not +close an eye—dared not
+See better than +their master.
+Seeing them +lacrymose and glum,
+A leech consoled +the weepers:
+He spread small +rags with liquid gum
+And covered half +their peepers.
+The court all wore +the stuff, the flame
+Of royal anger +dying.
+That’s how +court-plaster got its name
+Unless I’m greatly +lying.

+ +

Naramy Oof.

+ +

feast, n. 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 Nemeseia, +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 Novemdiale, +which was held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven.

+ +

felon, n. A person of greater enterprise than +discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate +attachment.

+ +

female, n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.

+ + + + + +

+ +

The Maker, at Creation’s birth,
+With living things had stocked the +earth.
+From elephants to bats and snails,
+They all were good, for all were +males.
+But when the Devil came and saw
+He said: “By Thine eternal law
+Of growth, maturity, decay,
+These all must quickly pass away
+And leave untenanted the earth
+Unless Thou dost establish birth”—
+Then tucked his head beneath his +wing
+To laugh—he had no sleeve—the thing
+With deviltry did so accord,
+That he’d suggested to the Lord.
+The Master pondered this advice,
+Then shook and threw the fateful +dice
+Wherewith all matters here below
+Are ordered, and observed the +throw;
+Then bent His head in awful state,
+Confirming the decree of Fate.
+From every part of earth anew
+The conscious dust consenting flew,
+While rivers from their courses rolled
+To make it plastic for the mould.
+Enough collected (but no more,
+For niggard Nature hoards her store)
+He kneaded it to flexible clay,
+While Nick unseen threw some away.
+And then the various forms He cast,
+Gross organs first and finer last;
+No one at once evolved, but all
+By even touches grew and small
+Degrees advanced, till, shade by shade,
+To match all living things He’d made
+Females, complete in all their parts
+Except (His clay gave out) thec hearts.
+“No matter,” Satan cried; “with speed
+I’ll fetch the very hearts they need”—
+So flew away and soon brought back
+The number needed, in a sack.
+That night earth range with sounds of strife—
+Ten million males each had a wife;
+That night sweet Peace her pinions spread
+O’er Hell—ten million devils dead!

+ +

G. J.

+ + + +

fib, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar’s +nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.

+ + + + + +

+ +

When David said: “All men are liars,” Dave,
+Himself a liar, fibbed like any thief.
+Perhaps he thought to weaken disbelief
+By proof that even himself was not a slave
+To Truth; though I suspect the aged knave
+Had been of all her servitors the chief
+Had he but known a fig’s reluctant leaf
+Is more than e’er she wore on land or wave.
+No, David served not Naked Truth when he
+Struck that sledge-hammer blow at all his race;
+Nor did he hit the nail upon the head:
+For reason shows that it could never be,
+And the facts contradict him to his face.
+Men are not liars all, for some are dead.

+ +

Bartle Quinker.

+ +

fickleness, n. The iterated satiety of an +enterprising affection.

+ +

fiddle, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by +friction of a horse’s tail on the entrails of a cat.

+ +

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.”—Orm Pludge

+ +

fidelity, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to +be betrayed.

+ +

finance, n. 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.

+ +

flag, n. 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.”

+ +

flesh, n. The Second Person of the secular Trinity.

+ +

flop, v. 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.

+ +

fly-speck, n. 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—Musca maledicta. +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.

+ +

folly, n. That “gift and faculty divine” whose +creative and controlling energy inspires Man’s mind, guides his actions and +adorns his life.

+ + + + + +

+ +

Folly! although Erasmus praised thee once
+In a thick volume, and all authors known,
+If not thy glory yet thy power have shown,
+Deign to take homage from thy son who hunts
+Through all thy maze his brothers, fool and dunce,
+To mend their lives and to sustain his own,
+However feebly be his arrows thrown,
+Howe’er each hide the flying weapons blunts.
+All-Father Folly! be it mine to raise,
+With lusty lung, here on his western strand
+With all thine offspring thronged from every land,
+Thyself inspiring me, the song of praise.
+And if too weak, I’ll hire, to help me bawl,
+Dick Watson Gilder, gravest of us all.

+ +

Aramis Loto Frope.

+ +

fool, n. 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.

+ +

force, n.

+ + + + + +

+ +

“Force is but might,” the teacher said—
+“That definition’s just.”
+The boy said naught but through instead,
+Remembering his pounded head:
+“Force is not might but must!”

+ +

forefinger, n. The finger commonly used in pointing out two malefactors.

+ +

foreordination, n. 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.

+ +

forgetfulness, n. A gift of God bestowed upon doctors +in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

+ +

fork, n. 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.

+ +

forma pauperis. [Latin] In the character of a poor person—a method +by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to +lose his case.

+ + + + + +

+ +

When Adam long ago in Cupid’s awful court
+(For Cupid ruled ere Adam was invented)
+Sued for Eve’s favor, says an ancient law report,
+He stood and pleaded unhabilimented.
+“You sue in forma pauperis, I see,” Eve cried;
+“Actions can’t here be that way prosecuted.”
+So all poor Adam’s motions coldly were denied:
+He went away—as he had come—nonsuited.

+ +

G. J.

+ +

Frankalmoigne, n. 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.”

+ +

freebooter, n. A conqueror in a small way of +business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.

+ +

freedom, n. 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.

+ + + + + +

+ +

Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,
+Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
+On every wind, indeed, that blows
+I hear her yell.
+She screams whenever monarchs meet,
+And parliaments as well,
+To bind the chains about her feet
+And toll her knell.
+And when the sovereign people cast
+The votes they cannot spell,
+Upon the pestilential blast
+Her clamors swell.
+For all to whom the power’s given
+To sway or to compel,
+Among themselves apportion Heaven
+And give her Hell.

+ +

Blary O’Gary.

+ +

Freemasons, n. 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.

+ +

friendless, adj. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. +Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.

+ +

friendship, n. A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.

+ + + + + +

+ +

The sea was calm and the sky was blue;
+Merrily, merrily sailed we two.
+(High barometer maketh glad.)
+On the tipsy ship, with a dreadful shout,
+The tempest descended and we fell out.
+(O the walking is nasty bad!)

+ +

Armit Huff Bettle.

+ +

frog, n. 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 fricasees, +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.

+ +

frying-pan, n. 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:

+ + + + + +

+ +

Old Nick was summoned to the skies.
+Said Peter: “Your intentions
+Are good, but you lack enterprise
+Concerning new inventions.
+“Now, broiling in an ancient plan
+Of torment, but I hear it
+Reported that the frying-pan
+Sears best the wicked spirit.
+“Go get one—fill it up with fat—
+Fry sinners brown and good in’t.”
+“I know a trick worth two o’ that,”
+Said Nick—“I’ll cook their food in’t.”

+ +

funeral, n. 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.

+ + + + + +

+ +

The savage dies—they sacrifice a horse
+To bear to happy hunting-grounds the corse.
+Our friends expire—we make the money fly
+In +hope their souls will chase it to the sky.

+ +

Jex Wopley.

+ +

future, n. That period of time in which our affairs +prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

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