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by Ambrose Bierce

　　CAABA,n. A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the patriarch Abraham,and preserved at Mecca. The patriarch had perhaps asked the archangel forbread.CABBAGE, n. A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as largeand wise as a man's head. The cabbage is so called from Cabagius, a princewho on ascending thethrone issued a decree appointing a High Council ofEmpire consisting of the members of his predecessor's Ministry and thecabbages in the royal garden. When any of his Majesty's measures of statepolicy miscarried conspicuously it was gravely announced that severalmembers of the High Council had been beheaded, and his murmuring subjectswere appeased.

　　CALAMITY, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminderthat the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamitiesare of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

　　CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflictinganother. When Zeno was told that one of his enemies was no more he wasobserved to be deeply moved. "What!" said one of his disciples,"you weep at the death of an enemy?" "Ah, 'tis true,"replied the great Stoic; "but you should see me smile at the deathof afriend."

　　CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal.

　　CAMEL, n. A quadruped (the _Splaypes humpidorsus_) of great valueto the show business. There are two kinds of camels -- the camel properand the camel improper. It is the latter that is always exhibited.

　　CANNIBAL, n. A gastronome of the old school who preserves thesimple tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period.

　　CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of nationalboundaries.

　　CANONICALS, n. The motley worm by Jesters of the Court of Heaven.

　　CAPITAL, n. The seat of misgovernment. That which provides thefire, the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the anarchist;the part of the repast that himself supplies is the disgrace before meat._Capital Punishment_, a penalty regarding the justice and expediency ofwhich many worthy persons -- including all the assassins -- entertaingrave misgivings.

　　CARMELITE, n. A mendicant friar of the order of Mount Carmel.

　　As Death was a-rising out one day,

　　Across Mount Camel he took his way,

　　Where he met a mendicant monk,

　　Some three or four quarters drunk,

　　With a holy leer and a pious grin,

　　Ragged and fat and as saucy as sin,

　　Who held out his hands and cried:

　　"Give, give in Charity's name, I pray.

　　Give in the name of the Church. O give,

　　Give that her holy sons may live!"

　　And Death replied,

　　Smiling long and wide:

　　"I'll give, holy father, I'll give thee -- a ride."

　　With a rattle and bang

　　Of his bones, he sprang

　　From his famous Pale Horse, with his spear;

　　By the neck and the foot

　　Seized the fellow, and put

　　Him astride with his face to the rear.

　　The Monarch laughed loud with a sound that fell

　　Like clods on the coffin's sounding shell:

　　"Ho, ho! A beggar on horseback, they say,

　　Will ride to the devil!" -- and _thump_

　　Fell the flat of his dart on the rump

　　Of the charger, which galloped away.

　　Faster and faster and faster it flew,

　　Till the rocks and the flocks and the trees that grew

　　By the road were dim and blended and blue

　　To the wild, wild eyes

　　Of the rider -- in size

　　Resembling a couple of blackberry pies.

　　Death laughed again, as a tomb might laugh

　　At a burial service spoiled,

　　And the mourners' intentions foiled

　　By the body erecting

　　Its head and objecting

　　To further proceedings in its behalf.

　　Many a year and many a day

　　Have passed since these events away.

　　The monk has long been a dusty corse,

　　And Death has never recovered his horse.

　　For the friar got hold of its tail,

　　And steered it within the pale

　　Of the monastery gray,

　　Where the beast was stabled and fed

　　With barley and oil and bread

　　Till fatter it grew than the fattest friar,

　　And so in due course was appointed Prior.

　　G.J.

　　CARNIVOROUS, adj. Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorousvegetarian, his heirs and assigns.

　　CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, authorof the celebrated dictum, _Cogito ergo sum_ -- whereby he was pleasedto suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictummight be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum-- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as closean approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

　　CAT, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature tobe kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

　　This is a dog,

　　This is a cat.

　　This is a frog,

　　This is a rat.

　　Run, dog, mew, cat.

　　Jump, frog, gnaw, rat.

　　Elevenson

　　CAVILER, n. A critic of our own work.

　　CEMETERY, n. An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies,poets writeat a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager. The inscriptionsfollowing willserve to illustrate the success attained in these Olympiangames:

　　His virtues were so conspicuous that his enemies, unable to overlookthem, denied them, and his friends, to whose loose lives they were a rebuke,represented them as vices. They are here commemorated by his family, whoshared them.

　　In the earth we here prepare a

　　Place to lay our little Clara.

　　Thomas M. and Mary Frazer

　　P.S. -- Gabriel will raise her.

　　CENTAUR, n. One of a race of persons who lived before the divisionof labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and whofollowed the primitive economic maxim, "Every man his own horse."The best of the lot was Chiron, who to the wisdom and virtues of the horseadded the fleetness of man. The scripture story of the head of John theBaptist on a charger shows that pagan myths have somewhat sophisticatedsacred history.

　　CERBERUS, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guardthe entrance -- against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody,sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance.Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the poets havecredited him with as many as a hundred. Professor Graybill, whose clerkyerudition and profound knowledge of Greek give his opinion great weight,has averaged all the estimates, and makes the number twenty-seven -- ajudgment that would be entirely conclusive is Professor Graybill had known(a) something about dogs, and (b) something about arithmetic.

　　CHILDHOOD, n. The period of human life intermediate between theidiocy of infancy and the folly of youth -- two removes from the sin ofmanhood and three from the remorse of age.

　　CHRISTIAN, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinelyinspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistentwith a life of sin.

　　I dreamed I stood upon a hill, and, lo!

　　The godly multitudes walked to and fro

　　Beneath, in Sabbath garments fitly clad,

　　With pious mien, appropriately sad,

　　While all the church bells made a solemn din --

　　A fire-alarm to those who lived in sin.

　　Then saw I gazing thoughtfully below,

　　With tranquil face, upon that holy show

　　A tall, spare figure in a robe of white,

　　Whose eyes diffused a melancholy light.

　　"God keep you, strange," I exclaimed. "You are

　　No doubt (your habit shows it) from afar;

　　And yet I entertain the hope that you,

　　Like these good people, are a Christian too."

　　He raised his eyes and with a look so stern

　　It made me with a thousand blushes burn

　　Replied -- his manner with disdain was spiced:

　　"What! I a Christian? No, indeed! I'm Christ."

　　G.J.

　　CIRCUS, n. A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permittedto see men, women and children acting the fool.

　　CLAIRVOYANT, n. A person, commonly a woman, who has the powerof seeing that which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is ablockhead.

　　CLARIONET, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person withcotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet-- two clarionets.

　　CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritualaffairs as a method of better his temporal ones.

　　CLIO, n. One of the nine Muses. Clio's function was to presideover history -- which she did with great dignity, many of the prominentcitizens of Athens occupying seats on the platform, the meetings beingaddressed by Messrs. Xenophon, Herodotus and other popular speakers.

　　CLOCK, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying hisconcern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains tohim.

　　A busy man complained one day:

　　"I get no time!" "What's that you say?"

　　Cried out his friend, a lazy quiz;

　　"You have, sir, all the time there is.

　　There's plenty, too, and don't you doubt it --

　　We're never for an hour without it."

　　Purzil Crofe

　　CLOSE-FISTED, adj. Unduly desirous of keeping that which manymeritorious persons wish to obtain.

　　"Close-fisted Scotchman!" Johnson cried

　　To thrifty J. Macpherson;

　　"See me -- I'm ready to divide

　　With any worthy person."

　　Sad Jamie: "That is very true --

　　The boast requires no backing;

　　And all are worthy, sir, to you,

　　Who have what you are lacking."

　　Anita M. Bobe

　　COENOBITE, n. A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate uponthe sin of wickedness; and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhoodof awful examples.

　　O Coenobite, O coenobite,

　　Monastical gregarian,

　　You differ from the anchorite,

　　That solitudinarian:

　　With vollied prayers you wound Old Nick;

　　With dropping shots he makes him sick.

　　Quincy Giles

　　COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor'suneasiness.

　　COMMENDATION, n. The tribute that we pay to achievements thatresembles, but do not equal, our own.

　　COMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from Bthe goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of moneybelonging to E.

　　COMMONWEALTH, n. An administrative entity operated by an incalculablemultitude of political parasites, logically active but fortuitously efficient.

　　This commonwealth's capitol's corridors view,

　　So thronged with a hungry and indolent crew

　　Of clerks, pages, porters and all attaches

　　Whom rascals appoint and the populace pays

　　That a cat cannot slip through the thicket of shins

　　Nor hear its own shriek for the noise of their chins.

　　On clerks and on pages, and porters, and all,

　　Misfortune attend and disaster befall!

　　May life be to them a succession of hurts;

　　May fleas by the bushel inhabit their shirts;

　　May aches and diseases encamp in their bones,

　　Their lungs full of tubercles, bladders of stones;

　　May microbes, bacilli, their tissues infest,

　　And tapeworms securely their bowels digest;

　　May corn-cobs be snared without hope in their hair,

　　And frequent impalement their pleasure impair.

　　Disturbed be their dreams by the awful discourse

　　Of audible sofas sepulchrally hoarse,

　　By chairs acrobatic and wavering floors --

　　The mattress that kicks and the pillow that snores!

　　Sons of cupidity, cradled in sin!

　　Your criminal ranks may the death angel thin,

　　Avenging the friend whom I couldn't work in.

　　K.Q.

　　COMPROMISE, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests asgives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he oughtnot to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.

　　COMPULSION, n. The eloquence of power.

　　CONDOLE, v.i. To show that bereavement is a smaller evil thansympathy.

　　CONFIDANT, CONFIDANTE, n. One entrusted by A with the secretsof B, confided by him to C.

　　CONGRATULATION, n. The civility of envy.

　　CONGRESS, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.

　　CONNOISSEUR, n. A specialist who knows everything about somethingand nothing about anything else. An old wine-bibber having been smashedin a railway collision, some wine was pouted on his lips to revive him."Pauillac, 1873," he murmured and died.

　　CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils,as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

　　CONSOLATION, n. The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunatethan yourself.

　　CONSUL, n. In American politics, a person who having failed tosecure and office from the people is given one by the Administration oncondition that he leave the country.

　　CONSULT, v.i. To seek another's disapproval of a course alreadydecided on.

　　CONTEMPT, n. The feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who istoo formidable safely to be opposed.

　　CONTROVERSY, n. A battle in which spittle or ink replaces theinjurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.

　　In controversy with the facile tongue --

　　That bloodless warfare of the old and young --

　　So seek your adversary to engage

　　That on himself he shall exhaust his rage,

　　And, like a snake that's fastened to the ground,

　　With his own fangs inflict the fatal wound.

　　You ask me how this miracle is done?

　　Adopt his own opinions, one by one,

　　And taunt him to refute them; in his wrath

　　He'll sweep them pitilessly from his path.

　　Advance then gently all you wish to prove,

　　Each proposition prefaced with, "As you've

　　So well remarked," or, "As you wisely say,

　　And I cannot dispute," or, "By the way,

　　This view of it which, better far expressed,

　　Runs through your argument." Then leave the rest

　　To him, secure that he'll perform his trust

　　And prove your views intelligent and just.

　　Conmore Apel Brune

　　CONVENT, n. A place of retirement for woman who wish for leisureto meditate upon the vice of idleness.

　　CONVERSATION, n. A fair to the display of the minor mental commodities,each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own waresto observe those of his neighbor.

　　CORONATION, n. The ceremony of investing a sovereign with theoutward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh witha dynamite bomb.

　　CORPORAL, n. A man who occupies the lowest rung of the militaryladder.

　　Fiercely the battle raged and, sad to tell,

　　Our corporal heroically fell!

　　Fame from her height looked down upon the brawl

　　And said: "He hadn't very far to fall."

　　Giacomo Smith

　　CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profitwithout individual responsibility.

　　CORSAIR, n. A politician of the seas.

　　COURT FOOL, n. The plaintiff.

　　COWARD, n. One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

　　CRAYFISH, n. A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster,but less indigestible.

　　In this small fish I take it that human wisdom is admirably

　　figured and symbolized; for whereas the crayfish doth move only

　　backward, and can have only retrospection, seeing naught but the

　　perils already passed, so the wisdom of man doth not enable him to

　　avoid the follies that beset his course, but only to apprehend

　　their nature afterward.

　　Sir James Merivale

　　CREDITOR, n. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the FinancialStraits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.

　　CREMONA, n. A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.

　　CRITIC, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please becausenobody tries to please him.

　　There is a land of pure delight,

　　Beyond the Jordan's flood,

　　Where saints, apparelled all in white,

　　Fling back the critic's mud.

　　And as he legs it through the skies,

　　His pelt a sable hue,

　　He sorrows sore to recognize

　　The missiles that he threw.

　　Orrin Goof

　　CROSS, n. An ancient religious symbol erroneously supposed toowe its significance to the most solemn event in the history of Christianity,but really antedating it by thousands of years. By many it has been believedto be identical with the _crux ansata_ of the ancient phallic worship,but it has been traced even beyond all that we know of that, to the ritesof primitive peoples. We have to-day the White Cross as a symbol of chastity,and the Red Cross as a badge of benevolent neutrality in war. Having inmind the former, the reverend Father Gassalasca Jape smites the lyre tothe effect following:

　　"Be good, be good!" the sisterhood

　　Cry out in holy chorus,

　　And, to dissuade from sin, parade

　　Their various charms before us.

　　But why, O why, has ne'er an eye

　　Seen her of winsome manner

　　And youthful grace and pretty face

　　Flaunting the White Cross banner?

　　Now where's the need of speech and screed

　　To better our behaving?

　　A simpler plan for saving man

　　(But, first, is he worth saving?)

　　Is, dears, when he declines to flee

　　From bad thoughts that beset him,

　　Ignores the Law as 't were a straw,

　　And wants to sin -- don't let him.

　　CUI BONO? [Latin] What good would that do me?

　　CUNNING, n. The faculty that distinguishes a weak animal or personfrom a strong one. It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction andgreat material adversity. An Italian proverb says: "The furrier getsthe skins of more foxes than asses."

　　CUPID, n. The so-called god of love. This bastard creation ofa barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins ofits deities. Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this isthe most reasonless and offensive. The notion of symbolizing sexual loveby a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the woundsof an arrow -- of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art grossly tomaterialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work -- this is eminentlyworthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on the doorstep of prosperity.

　　CURIOSITY, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. Thedesire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is oneof the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.

　　CURSE, v.t. Energetically to belabor with a verbal slap-stick.This is an operation which in literature, particularly in the drama, iscommonly fatal to the victim. Nevertheless, the liability to a cursingis a risk that cuts but a small figure in fixing the rates of life insurance.

　　CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as theyare, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians ofplucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.