W

by Ambrose Bierce

　　W(double U) has, of all the letters in our alphabet, the only cumbrous name,the names of the others being monosyllabic. This advantage of the Romanalphabet over the Grecian is the more valued after audibly spelling outsome simple Greek word, like epixoriambikos. Still, it is now thoughtby the learned that other agencies than the difference of the two alphabetsmay have been concerned in the decline of "the glory that was Greece"and the rise of "the grandeur that was Rome." There can be nodoubt, however, that by simplifying the name of W (calling it "wow,"for example) our civilization could be, if not promoted, at least betterendured.WALL STREET, n. A symbol for sin for every devil to rebuke. ThatWall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessfulthief in place of a hope in Heaven. Even the great and good Andrew Carnegiehas made his profession of faith in the matter.

　　Carnegie the dauntless has uttered his call

　　To battle: "The brokers are parasites all!"

　　Carnegie, Carnegie, you'll never prevail;

　　Keep the wind of your slogan to belly your sail,

　　Go back to your isle of perpetual brume,

　　Silence your pibroch, doff tartan and plume:

　　Ben Lomond is calling his son from the fray --

　　Fly, fly from the region of Wall Street away!

　　While still you're possessed of a single baubee

　　(I wish it were pledged to endowment of me)

　　'Twere wise to retreat from the wars of finance

　　Lest its value decline ere your credit advance.

　　For a man 'twixt a king of finance and the sea,

　　Carnegie, Carnegie, your tongue is too free!

　　Anonymus Bink

　　WAR, n. A by-product of the arts of peace. The most menacing politicalcondition is a period of international amity. The student of history whohas not been taught to expect the unexpected may justly boast himselfinaccessible to the light. "In time of peace prepare for war"has a deeper meaning than is commonly discerned; it means, not merelythat all things earthly have an end -- that change is the one immutableand eternal law -- but that the soil of peace is thickly sown with theseeds of war and singularly suited to their germination and growth. Itwas when Kubla Khan had decreed his "stately pleasure dome"-- when, that is to say, there were peace and fat feasting in Xanadu --that he heard from afar Ancestral voices prophesying war.

　　One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men,and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have alittle less of "hands across the sea," and a little more ofthat elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves tocome like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide thenight.

　　WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilegeof

　　governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice tohim it should be said that he did not want to.

　　They took away his vote and gave instead

　　The right, when he had earned, to eat his bread.

　　In vain -- he clamors for his "boss," pour soul,

　　To come again and part him from his roll.

　　Offenbach Stutz

　　WEAKNESSES, n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewithshe holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the serviceof her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.

　　WEATHER, n. The climate of the hour. A permanent topic of conversationamong persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendencyto chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned.The setting up official weather bureaus and their maintenance in mendacityprove that even governments are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathersof the jungle.

　　Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,

　　And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be --

　　Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,

　　With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.

　　While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incadescent youth,

　　From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.

　　He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote

　　On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote --

　　For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:

　　"Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."

　　Halcyon Jones

　　WEDDING, n. A ceremony at which two persons undertake to becomeone, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to becomesupportable.

　　WEREWOLF, n. A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man. Allwerewolves are of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to gratifya beastial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are as humane andis consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.Some Bavarian peasantshaving caught a wolf one evening, tied it to a post by the tail and wentto bed. The next morning nothing was there! Greatly perplexed, they consultedthe local priest, who told them that their captive was undoubtedly a werewolfand had resumed its human for during the night. "The next time thatyou take a wolf," the good man said, "see that you chain itby the leg, and in the morning you will find a Lutheran."

　　WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpectedaffliction that strikes hard.

　　Should you ask me whence this laughter,

　　Whence this audible big-smiling,

　　With its labial extension,

　　With its maxillar distortion

　　And its diaphragmic rhythmus

　　Like the billowing of an ocean,

　　Like the shaking of a carpet,

　　I should answer, I should tell you:

　　From the great deeps of the spirit,

　　From the unplummeted abysmus

　　Of the soul this laughter welleth

　　As the fountain, the gug-guggle,

　　Like the river from the canon [sic],

　　To entoken and give warning

　　That my present mood is sunny.

　　Should you ask me further question --

　　Why the great deeps of the spirit,

　　Why the unplummeted abysmus

　　Of the soule extrudes this laughter,

　　This all audible big-smiling,

　　I should answer, I should tell you

　　With a white heart, tumpitumpy,

　　With a true tongue, honest Injun:

　　William Bryan, he has Caught It,

　　Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

　　Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank,

　　Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,

　　Standing silent in the kneedeep

　　With his wing-tips crossed behind him

　　And his neck close-reefed before him,

　　With his bill, his william, buried

　　In the down upon his bosom,

　　With his head retracted inly,

　　While his shoulders overlook it?

　　Does the sandhill crane, the shankank,

　　Shiver grayly in the north wind,

　　Wishing he had died when little,

　　As the sparrow, the chipchip, does?

　　No 'tis not the Shankank standing,

　　Standing in the gray and dismal

　　Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep.

　　No, 'tis peerless William Bryan

　　Realizing that he's Caught It,

　　Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

　　WHEAT, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can withsome difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread. The Frenchare said to eat more bread per capita of population than any otherpeople, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.

　　WHITE, adj. and n. Black.

　　WIDOW, n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreedto take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was oneof the most marked features of his character.

　　WINE, n. Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's ChristianUnion as "liquor," sometimes as "rum." Wine, madam,is God's next best gift to man.

　　WIT, n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectualcookery by leaving it out.

　　WITCH, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked leaguewith the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickednessa league beyond the devil.

　　WITTICISM, n. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldomnoted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a "joke."

　　WOMAN, n.

　　An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a

　　rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. It is credited by

　　many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility

　　acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the

　　postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion,

　　deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld,

　　it roareth now. The species is the most widely distributed of all

　　beasts of prey, infesting all habitable parts of the globe, from

　　Greeland's spicy mountains to India's moral strand. The popular

　　name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind.

　　The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the

　　American variety (felis pugnans), is omnivorous and can be

　　taught not to talk.

　　Balthasar Pober

　　WORMS'-MEAT, n. The finished product of which we are the raw material.The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the Granitarium.Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that houses it, but"this too must pass away." Probably the silliest work in whicha human being can engage is construction of a tomb for himself. The solemnpurpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by

　　contrast the foreknown futility.

　　Ambitious fool! so mad to be a show!

　　How profitless the labor you bestow

　　Upon a dwelling whose magnificence

　　The tenant neither can admire nor know.

　　Build deep, build high, build massive as you can,

　　The wanton grass-roots will defeat the plan

　　By shouldering asunder all the stones

　　In what to you would be a moment's span.

　　Time to the dead so all unreckoned flies

　　That when your marble is all dust, arise,

　　If wakened, stretch your limbs and yawn --

　　You'll think you scarcely can have closed your eyes.

　　What though of all man's works your tomb alone

　　Should stand till Time himself be overthrown?

　　Would it advantage you to dwell therein

　　Forever as a stain upon a stone?

　　Joel Huck

　　WORSHIP, n. Homo Creator's testimony to the sound constructionand fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having anelement of pride.

　　WRATH, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriateto exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, "the wrath ofGod," "the day of wrath," etc. Amongst the ancients thewrath of kings was deemed sacred, for it could usually command the agencyof some god for its fit manifestation, as could also that of a priest.The Greeks before Troy were so harried by Apollo that they jumped outof the frying-pan of the wrath of Cryses into the fire of the wrath ofAchilles, though Agamemnon, the sole offender, was neither fried nor roasted.A similar noted immunity was that of David when he incurred the wrathof Yahveh by numbering his people, seventy thousand of whom paid the penaltywith their lives. God is now Love, and a director of the census performshis work without apprehension of disaster.