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<title>The Devil’s Dictionary: F</title>
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<h1>F</h1>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">fairy,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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
<i>bourgeois</i> 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.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">faith,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> Belief without evidence in what is told by
one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.</p>
<p id="famous" class="entry"><span class="def">famous,</span> <span class="pos">adj.</span> Conspicuously miserable.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">Done to a turn on
the iron, behold<br />
Him who to be
famous aspired.<br />
Content? Well, his grill has a plating of gold,<br />
And his twistings
are greatly admired.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Hassan Brubuddy.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"> </p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">fashion,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
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<p class="poetry">A king there was
who lost an eye<br />
In some excess of
passion;<br />
And straight his
courtiers all did try<br />
To follow the new
fashion.<br />
Each dropped one
eyelid when before<br />
The throne he
ventured, thinking<br />
‘Twould please the
king. That monarch swore<br />
He’d slay them all
for winking.<br />
What should they
do? They were not hot<br />
To hazard such
disaster;<br />
They dared not
close an eye—dared not<br />
See better than
their master.<br />
Seeing them
lacrymose and glum,<br />
A leech consoled
the weepers:<br />
He spread small
rags with liquid gum<br />
And covered half
their peepers.<br />
The court all wore
the stuff, the flame<br />
Of royal anger
dying.<br />
That’s how
court-plaster got its name<br />
Unless I’m greatly
lying.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Naramy Oof.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">feast,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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 <i>Nemeseia</i>,
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 <i>Novemdiale</i>,
which was held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">felon,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A person of greater enterprise than
discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate
attachment.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">female,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">The Maker, at Creation’s birth,<br />
With living things had stocked the
earth.<br />
From elephants to bats and snails,<br />
They all were good, for all were
males.<br />
But when the Devil came and saw<br />
He said: “By Thine eternal law<br />
Of growth, maturity, decay,<br />
These all must quickly pass away<br />
And leave untenanted the earth<br />
Unless Thou dost establish birth”—<br />
Then tucked his head beneath his
wing<br />
To laugh—he had no sleeve—the thing<br />
With deviltry did so accord,<br />
That he’d suggested to the Lord.<br />
The Master pondered this advice,<br />
Then shook and threw the fateful
dice<br />
Wherewith all matters here below<br />
Are ordered, and observed the
throw;<br />
Then bent His head in awful state,<br />
Confirming the decree of Fate.<br />
From every part of earth anew<br />
The conscious dust consenting flew,<br />
While rivers from their courses rolled<br />
To make it plastic for the mould.<br />
Enough collected (but no more,<br />
For niggard Nature hoards her store)<br />
He kneaded it to flexible clay,<br />
While Nick unseen threw some away.<br />
And then the various forms He cast,<br />
Gross organs first and finer last;<br />
No one at once evolved, but all<br />
By even touches grew and small<br />
Degrees advanced, till, shade by shade,<br />
To match all living things He’d made<br />
Females, complete in all their parts<br />
Except (His clay gave out) thec hearts.<br />
“No matter,” Satan cried; “with speed<br />
I’ll fetch the very hearts they need”—<br />
So flew away and soon brought back<br />
The number needed, in a sack.<br />
That night earth range with sounds of strife—<br />
Ten million males each had a wife;<br />
That night sweet Peace her pinions spread<br />
O’er Hell—ten million devils dead!</p>
<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">fib,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar’s
nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">When David said: “All men are liars,” Dave,<br />
Himself a liar, fibbed like any thief.<br />
Perhaps he thought to weaken disbelief<br />
By proof that even himself was not a slave<br />
To Truth; though I suspect the aged knave<br />
Had been of all her servitors the chief<br />
Had he but known a fig’s reluctant leaf<br />
Is more than e’er she wore on land or wave.<br />
No, David served not Naked Truth when he<br />
Struck that sledge-hammer blow at all his race;<br />
Nor did he hit the nail upon the head:<br />
For reason shows that it could never be,<br />
And the facts contradict him to his face.<br />
Men are not liars all, for some are dead.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Bartle Quinker.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">fickleness,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The iterated satiety of an
enterprising affection.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">fiddle,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> An instrument to tickle human ears by
friction of a horse’s tail on the entrails of a cat.</p>
<p class="quote">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.”—<i>Orm Pludge</i></p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">fidelity,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A virtue peculiar to those who are about to
be betrayed.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">finance,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">flag,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.”</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">flesh,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The Second Person of the secular Trinity.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">flop,</span> <span class="pos"> v.</span> 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.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">fly-speck,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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—<i>Musca maledicta</i>.
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.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">folly,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> That “gift and faculty divine” whose
creative and controlling energy inspires Man’s mind, guides his actions and
adorns his life.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">Folly! although Erasmus praised thee once<br />
In a thick volume, and all authors known,<br />
If not thy glory yet thy power have shown,<br />
Deign to take homage from thy son who hunts<br />
Through all thy maze his brothers, fool and dunce,<br />
To mend their lives and to sustain his own,<br />
However feebly be his arrows thrown,<br />
Howe’er each hide the flying weapons blunts.<br />
All-Father Folly! be it mine to raise,<br />
With lusty lung, here on his western strand<br />
With all thine offspring thronged from every land,<br />
Thyself inspiring me, the song of praise.<br />
And if too weak, I’ll hire, to help me bawl,<br />
Dick Watson Gilder, gravest of us all.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Aramis Loto Frope.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p id="fool" class="entry"><span class="def">fool,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">force,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span></p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">“Force is but might,” the teacher said—<br />
“That definition’s just.”<br />
The boy said naught but through instead,<br />
Remembering his pounded head:<br />
“Force is not might but must!”</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">forefinger,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The finger commonly used in pointing out two malefactors.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">foreordination,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">forgetfulness,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A gift of God bestowed upon doctors
in compensation for their destitution of conscience.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">fork,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">forma pauperis.</span> <span class="pos"> [Latin]</span> In the character of a poor person—a method
by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to
lose his case.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">When Adam long ago in Cupid’s awful court<br />
(For Cupid ruled ere Adam was invented)<br />
Sued for Eve’s favor, says an ancient law report,<br />
He stood and pleaded unhabilimented.<br />
“You sue <i>in forma pauperis</i>, I see,” Eve cried;<br />
“Actions can’t here be that way prosecuted.”<br />
So all poor Adam’s motions coldly were denied:<br />
He went away—as he had come—nonsuited.</p>
<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">Frankalmoigne,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.”</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">freebooter,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A conqueror in a small way of
business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">freedom,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,<br />
Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;<br />
On every wind, indeed, that blows<br />
I hear her yell.<br />
She screams whenever monarchs meet,<br />
And parliaments as well,<br />
To bind the chains about her feet<br />
And toll her knell.<br />
And when the sovereign people cast<br />
The votes they cannot spell,<br />
Upon the pestilential blast<br />
Her clamors swell.<br />
For all to whom the power’s given<br />
To sway or to compel,<br />
Among themselves apportion Heaven<br />
And give her Hell.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Blary O’Gary.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">Freemasons,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">friendless,</span> <span class="pos"> adj.</span> Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune.
Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense. </p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">friendship,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">The sea was calm and the sky was blue;<br />
Merrily, merrily sailed we two.<br />
(High barometer maketh glad.)<br />
On the tipsy ship, with a dreadful shout,<br />
The tempest descended and we fell out.<br />
(O the walking is nasty bad!)</p>
<p class="citeauth">Armit Huff Bettle.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">frog,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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 <i>fricasees</i>,
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.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">frying-pan,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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:</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">Old Nick was summoned to the skies.<br />
Said Peter: “Your intentions<br />
Are good, but you lack enterprise<br />
Concerning new inventions.<br />
“Now, broiling in an ancient plan<br />
Of torment, but I hear it<br />
Reported that the frying-pan<br />
Sears best the wicked spirit.<br />
“Go get one—fill it up with fat—<br />
Fry sinners brown and good in’t.”<br />
“I know a trick worth two o’ that,”<br />
Said Nick—“I’ll cook their food in’t.”</p>
<p class="citeauth"> </p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p id="funeral" class="entry"><span class="def">funeral,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> 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.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">The savage dies—they sacrifice a horse<br />
To bear to happy hunting-grounds the corse.<br />
Our friends expire—we make the money fly<br />
In
hope their souls will chase it to the sky.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Jex Wopley.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">future,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> That period of time in which our affairs
prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.</p>
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