 | The collected works of Ambrose Bierce |  |
F
Famous, adj.
[Done to a turn on the iron, behold]
Done to a turn on the iron, beholdHim who to be famous aspired.
Content? Well, his grill has a plating of gold,
And his twistings are greatly admired.
Fashion, n.
[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.
The throne he ventured, thinking
'Twould please the king. That monarch swore
He'd slay them all for winking.
To hazard such disaster;
They dared not close an eye—dared not
See better than their master.
A leech consoled the weepers:
He spread small rags with liquid gum
And covered half their peepers.
Of royal anger dying.
That's how court-plaster got its name
Unless I'm greatly lying.
Female, n.
[The Maker, at Creation's birth]
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
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 flexile 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) the hearts.
“No matter,” Satan cried; “with speed
I'll fetch the very hearts they need”—
The number needed, in a sack.
That night earth rang with sounds of strife—
Ten million males had each a wife;
That night sweet Peace her pinions spread
O'er Hell—ten million devils dead!
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]
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.
Fiddle, n.
[To Rome said Nero: “If to smoke you turn]
To Rome said Nero: “If to smoke you turnI shall not cease to fiddle while you burn.”
To Nero Rome replied: “Pray do your worst,
'Tis my excuse that you were fiddling first.”
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,
All-Father Folly! be it mine to raise,
With lusty lung, here on this 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.
Force, n.
[“Force is but might,” the teacher said]
“Force is but might,” the teacher said—“That definition's just.”
The boy said naught but thought instead,
“Force is not might but must!”
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.
“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.
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.
And parliaments as well,
To bind the chains about her feet
And toll her knell.
The votes they cannot spell,
Upon the pestilential blast
Her clamors swell.
To sway or to compel,
Among themselves apportion Heaven
And give her Hell.
Friendship, n.
[The sea was calm and the sky was blue]
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,
(O the walking is nasty bad!)
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.
Of torment, but I hear it
Reported that the frying-pan
Sears best the wicked spirit.
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]
The savage dies—they sacrifice a horseTo 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.
| The collected works of Ambrose Bierce | |