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The fiend's delight

Bierce, Ambrose (1842-1914?)
  
[half-title]
  
[title page]
  
[dedication]
  
PREFACE.

collapse section1. 
SOME FICTION.
 1. 
“One More Unfortunate.”
 2. 
The Strong Young Man of Colusa.
 3. 
The Glad New Year.
 4. 
The Late Dowling, Senior.
 5. 
“Love's Labour Lost.”
 6. 
A Comforter.
 7. 
Little Isaac.
 8. 
The Heels of Her.
 9. 
A Tale of Two Feet.
 10. 
The Scolliver Pig.
 11. 
Mr. Hunker's Mourner.
 12. 
A Bit of Chivalry.
 13. 
The Head of the Family.
 14. 
Deathbed Repentance.
 15. 
The New Church that was not Built.
 16. 
A Tale of the Great Quake.
 17. 
Johnny.
 18. 
The Child's Provider.
 19. 
Boys who Began Wrong.
 20. 
A Kansas Incident.
 21. 
Mr. Grile's Girl.
 22. 
His Railway.
 23. 
Mr. Gish Makes a Present.
 24. 
A Cow-County Pleasantry.
 25. 
The Optimist, and What He Died Of.
 26. 
The Root of Education.
 27. 
Retribution.
 28. 
The Faithful Wife.
 29. 
Margaret the Childless.
 30. 
The Discomfited Demon.
 31. 
The Mistake of a Life.
 32. 
L. S.
 33. 
The Baffled Asian.
collapse section2. 
TALL TALK.
 1. 
A Call to Dinner.
 2. 
On Death and Immortality.
 3. 
Music—Muscular and Mechanical.
 4. 
The Good Young Man.
 5. 
The Average Parson.
 6. 
Did We Eat One Another?
 7. 
Your Friend's Friend.
 8. 
Le Diable est aux Vaches.
 9. 
Angels and Angles.
 10. 
A Wingless Insect.
 11. 
Pork on the Hoof.
 12. 
The Young Person.
 13. 
A Certain Popular Fallacy.
 14. 
Pastoral Journalism.
 15. 
Mendicity's Mistake.
 16. 
Insects.
 17. 
Picnicking considered as a Mistake.
 18. 
Thanksgiving Day.
 19. 
Flogging.
 20. 
Reflections upon the Beneficent Influence of the Press.
 21. 
Charity.
 22. 
The Study of Human Nature.
collapse section23. 
Additional Talk—Done in the Country.
  
I.
  
II.
  
III.
  
IV.
  
V.
  
VI.
  
VII.
  
VIII.
  
IX.
 3. 
CURRENT JOURNALINGS.
collapse section4. 
OBITUARY NOTICES.
 1. 
CHRISTIANS.
 2. 
PAGANS.
collapse section5. 
MUSINGS, PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL.
 1. 
I.
 2. 
II.
 3. 
III.
 4. 
IV.
 5. 
V.
 6. 
VI.
 7. 
VII.
 8. 
VIII.
 9. 
IX.
 10. 
X.
 11. 
XI.
 12. 
XII.
 13. 
XIII.
 14. 
XIV.
 15. 
XV.
 16. 
XVI.
 17. 
XVII.
 18. 
XVIII.
 19. 
XIX.
 20. 
XX.
 21. 
XXI.
 22. 
XXII.
 23. 
XXIII.
 24. 
XXIV.
 25. 
XXV.
 26. 
XXVI.
 27. 
XXVII.
 28. 
XXVIII.
 29. 
XXIX.
 30. 
XXX.
 31. 
XXXI.
 32. 
XXXII.
 33. 
XXXIII.
 34. 
XXXIV.
 35. 
[chapter]
 6. 
LAUGHORISMS.
 7. 
“ITEMS” FROM THE PRESS OF INTERIOR CALIFORNIA.
collapse section8. 
POESY.
 1. 
Ye Idyll of Ye Hippopopotamus.
 2. 
Epitaph on George Francis Train.
 3. 
Jerusalem, Old and New.
 4. 
Communing with Nature.
 5. 
Conservatism and Progress.
 6. 
Inter Arma Silent Leges.
 7. 
Quintessence.
 8. 
Resurgam.

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Conservatism and Progress.

Old Zephyr, dawdling in the West,
Looked down upon the sea,
Which slept unfretted at his feet,
And balanced on its breast a fleet
That seemed almost to be
Suspended in the middle air,
As if a magnet held it there,
Eternally at rest.
Then, one by one, the ships released
Their folded sails, and strove
Against the empty calm to press
North, South, or West, or East,
In vain; the subtle nothingness
Was impotent to move.
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Page 194
Then Zephyr laughed aloud to see:-
“No vessel moves except by me,
And, heigh-ho! I shall sleep.”
But lo! from out the troubled North
A tempest strode impatient forth,
And trampled white the deep;
The sloping ships flew glad away,
Laving their heated sides in spray.
The West then turned him red with wrath,
And to the North he shouted:
“Hold there! How dare you cross my path,
As now you are about it?”
The North replied with laboured breath—
His speed no moment slowing:-
“My friend, you'll never have a path,
Unless you take to blowing.”
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