Ambrose Bierce - The Unabridged Devils Dictionary

AB : Ambrose Bierce

Am : New York American

Ar : Argonaut

AHD : The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (3rd ed., 1992)

C : The Cynics Word Book (1906)

Co : Cosmopolitan

CW : The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce (12 vols., 1909-12)

D : The Devils Dictionary (vol. 7 of CW, 1911)

Dx : typesetting copy of D

E : San Francisco Examiner

FD : The Fiends Delight (1873)

Fi : Figaro

Fu : Fun

J : New York Journal

ND : Nuggets and Dust (1873)

NL : San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser

NYPL : New York Public Library

OED : Oxford English Dictionary (1933 ed.)

SS : A Sole Survivor (1998)

W : Wasp

WR : Write It Right (1909)

We conducted most of our research at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Huntington Library and Art Gallery; Los Angeles Public Library; New York Public Library; New York University Library; Princeton University Library; San Francisco Public Library; and O. Meredith Wilson Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. We are grateful to librarians at the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Public Library; Arizona State University (Tempe); St. Cloud (Minnesota) State University; and New York Public Library for their assistance. Leslie Crabtree and Alan Gullette assisted in obtaining some of the material used in preparing this volume. John D. Beatty, Lawrence I. Berkove, Jonathan Johnson, and Gary Pokorny provided information for some of the annotations.

We are grateful to the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, for permission to print extracts from From which to select and prepare additions to The Devils Dictionary if needed; and to the Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California, for permission to quote extracts from the typesetting copy of The Devils Dictionary.

The items in this section are from an envelope found among the Ambrose Bierce Papers at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, labeled in Bierces hand, From which to select and prepare additions to The Devils Dictionary if needed. All the clippings except nine have names of definitions to which they might apply (Bierce supplied names to items not previously published originally as definitions). Because the intent of this edition of The Devils Dictionary is to include all uncollected definitions, the clippings extracted from Bierces Devils Dictionary and Cynics Dictionary columns are found in the text proper and are not reprinted below. They are Chase Sport (verses only in clipping from The Devils Dictionary; in text with Hunt as originally published), Covet, Crest, Etiquette, Fly, Free-trade, Griffin, Grime, Horse, Incubate, Innocence, Insolvent, Inspiration, Logic (verses only in clipping from The Cynics Dictionary), and Platter. Sources are identified in the Bibliography.

AI. Ambition.

David Alexander Hogshead has petitioned the Superior Court for a change of name to David Alexander Hodghead.Local Item.

David Alexander Hogshead,

Once a discontented frog said:

I will be a frog no more

Call me a bird. But still in flying

He would light, despite his trying,

Quite as quickly as before.

Still his toes were joined by leathers:

Im a duck, said he; but feathers,

On his body,

Cold and poddy,

Sprouted not to coat him oer;

And his head was still a frogs head,

David Alexander Hogshead.

A2. Blasphemy.

Listen while the tale I tell

Of a judgment and disaster

Which but recently befell

One Lemay, who cursed his master.

In New Haven lived Lemay,

And in divers other places,

And his name another way

Frequently the story graces.

One short year ago twas Brown.

In the previous December

He resided in the town

Of Topeka, I remember.

But Lemay, as I explained,

Met with a divine disaster;

For religion he disdained

Cared not for it one piastre.

For one hundred years or more

He in sundry press dispatches

Hes been scoffing, oer and oer

Incurring Heavens slaps and scratches!

Sometimes (see above) by name

One thing, sometimes quite another;

All depends upon the dame

Who may chance to be his mother.

Fifty cities claim his birth

Or at least he has his dwelling

In them while upon the earth

Hes blaspheming and rebelling.

So, as Ive already said,

Tuesday last (twas in New Haven)

This human chestnut reared his head,

Croaking curses like a raven!

Blasphemies were on his tongue,

Dreadful, horrible, unlawful;

And the way that sinner flung

Insults at the Church was awful!

One would think he would have learned

Long ago that nothing worse is

Than disaster that is earned

By impenitential curses.

But he didnt, and the wire

Tells again the same old story:

How his damnatory fire

He flung round him con amore;

How his curses were like flames,

As he hurled them at religion

And in all the devils names

Scorched it like a roasted pigeon.

Then, approaching as he spoke,

Paralysis without resistance

Struck him a terrific stroke,

Audible at quite a distance.

Never since, so runs the tale

(All the versions here agreeing),

Has the man had speech to rail

Like a normal human being.

But Im told the wicked cuss

Lately is engaged in writing

Books on books so blasphemous

That they truly are affrighting!

A3. Broker.

A lady, so the papers say

They tell it, though, another way

Was following her little feet

The other morning down the street,

Scanning the gilded figures oer

Each honest brokers open door.

At last she found the web she sought,

Stretched hospitably broad and taut,

And flew against itpardon: I

Forgot; a ladys not a fly.

I meant to say she did not shun

The place, but entered, saying to one

Who sat behind a sparkling pin:

Good morning. Is the broker in?

Suspending civilly his work

Upon his nails, that gorgeous clerk

(Indulge me, though, in the remark

That it is English to say clark)

Said Nope, and pointed to a chair,

With the politeness of a bear.

Good manners (Tis a saying old

And wise) are worth their weight in gold.

The lady stood with absent mind

Against the counter, while behind

Her, all unheeded, passed the rout

Of clients, going in and out

All kinds of persons: fat and lean,

Renowned, obscure, unthrifty, mean.

One was a Justice of the Peace,

And one was known to the police.

Ah! what a bitter cry arose!

The ladysee how pale she grows.

O Lord! she clamored in high C;

Ive lost my purse. O goodness me!

I had it in my hand when I

Came in. Theyve stolen it. O my!

Then growing calmer by the flow

Of tears that dampened down her woe,

She ceased the shriek and smiled instead,

A bitter, bitter smile and said

To him behind the sparkling pin:

You said the broker wasnt in!

A4. Chaplain.

That recalls another anecdote. Soon after the close of the Civil War the nameless commander of a regiment without a number was accosted in New York by a sleek-looking person who introduced himself and shook hands with effusion. And have we met before? the Colonel asked. I was Chaplain of the Eleventieth Pennsyltucky, was the reply; we were under fire together at Fishfield. Ah, yes, I recollect the incident, said the other. Thank you for setting me right. I have always believed you to be a rabbit.