The Cynic's Word Book

ENTHUSIASM, n. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience. Byron, who recovered long enough to call it "entuzy-muzy," had a relapse which carried him off – to Missolonghi.

ENVELOPE, n. The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a bill; the husk of a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.

ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.

EPAULET, n. An ornamented badge, serving to distinguish a military officer from the enemy – that is to say, from the officer of lower rank to whom his death would give promotion.

EPICURE, n. An opponent of Epicurus, an abstemious philosopher who, holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted no time in gratification of the senses.

EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterized by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom. Following are some of the more notable epigrams of the learned and ingenious Dr. Jamrach Holobom:

We know better the needs of ourselves than of others. To serve oneself is economy of administration.

In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass, and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.

There are three sexes: males, females, and girls.

Beauty in women and distinction in men are alike in this: they seem to the unthinking a kind of credibility.

Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.

While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both his.

Woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.

Think not to atone for wealth by apology: you must make restitution by a loan to the accuser.

Study good women and ignore the rest, For he best knows the sex who knows the best.

Before undergoing a surgical operation arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.

Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom.

"Who art thou?" said Saint Peter at the Gate.

"I am known as Memory."

"What presumption! – go back to Hell. And who, perspiring friend, art thou?"

"My name is Satan. I am looking for – "

"Take your penal apparatus and be off."

And Satan, laying hold of Memory, said: "Come along, you scoundrel; you make happiness wherever you are not."

Self-denial is the weak indulgence of a propensity to forego.

Men talk of selecting a wife; horses of selecting an owner.

You are not permitted to kill a woman that has injured you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute. You are avenged 1440 times a day.

A sweetheart is a bottle of wine. A wife is a wine bottle.

He gets on best with women who best knows how to get on without them.

"Who am I?" asked an awakened soul.

"That is the only knowledge that is denied to you here," answered a smiling angel. "This is Heaven."

Woman's courage is ignorance of danger; man's is hope of escape.

Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures, and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.

The heels of Detection are sore from the toes of Remorse.

Twice we see Paradise. In youth we name it Life; in age, Youth.

There are but ten Commandments, true, But that's no hardship, friend, to you; The unmentioned sins that tax your wit You 're not commanded to commit.

Fear of the darkness is more than an inherited superstition – it is at night, mostly, that the king thinks.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, but a multitude is as wise as its wisest member if it obeys him.

     "Who art thou?" said Mercy.     "Revenge, the father of Justice."     "Thou wearest thy son's clothing."     "One must be clad."     "Farewell – I go to attend thy son."     "Thou wilt find him hiding in yonder jungle."    When God had finished this terrestrial frame    And all things else, with or without a name,    The nothing that remained within his hand    Said: "Make me into something fine and grand,    Thine angels to amuse and entertain."

God heard and made it into human brain.

If you wish to slay your enemy make haste, O make haste, for already Nature's knife is at his throat and yours.

To most persons a sense of obligation is insupportable; beware upon whom you inflict it.

     Bear me, good oceans, to some isle     Where I may never fear     The snake alurk in woman's smile,     The tiger in her tear.     Yet bear not with me one, O deeps,     Who never smiles and never weeps.

The ninety-and-nine who most loudly demand opportunity most bitterly revile the one who has made good use of it.

Life and Death threw dice for a child.

"I win!" cried Life.

"True," said Death, "but you need a nimbler tongue to proclaim your luck. The child is already dead of age."

     How blind is he who, powerless to discern     The glories that about his pathway burn,     Walks unaware the avenues of Dream,     Nor sees the domes of Paradise agleam!     O Golden Age, to him more nobly planned     Thy light lies ever upon sea and land.     From sordid scenes he lifts his soul at will,     And sees a Grecian god on every hill!

In childhood we expect, in youth demand, in manhood hope, and in age beseech.

EPITAPH, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect. Following is a touching example:

     Here lie the bones of Parson Platt,     Wise, pious, humble, and all that,     Who showed us life as all should live it;     Let that be said – and God forgive it!

ERUDITION, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

     So wide his erudition's mighty span,     He knew by heart the laws of God and man,     And only came by accident to grief     He thought, poor man, 't was right to be a thief,     Romach Pute.

ESOPHAGUS, n. That part of the alimentary canal that lies between pleasure and business.

ESOTERIC, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient philosophies were of two kinds, —exoteric, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and esoteric, those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our time.

ESSENTIAL, adj. Pertaining to the essence, or that which determines the distinctive character of a thing. Persons who, because they do not know the English language, are driven to the unprofitable vocation of writing for American newspapers, commonly use this word in the sense of necessary, as, "April rains are essential to June harvests."

ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots, and ethnologists.

EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi.

A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.

EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation, and the damnation of our neighbors.

EVERLASTING, adj. Lasting forever. It is with no small diffidence that I venture to offer this brief and elementary definition, for I am not unaware of the existence of a bulky volume by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Sprowle, sometime Bishop of Worcester, entitled, A Partial Definition of the Word "Everlasting" as Used in the Authorised Version of the Holy Scriptures. His book was once esteemed of great authority in the Anglican Church, and is still, I understand, studied with pleasure to the mind and profit to the soul.

EXCEPTION, n. A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc. "The exception proves the rule" is an expression constantly upon the lips of the ignorant, who parrot it from one another with never a thought of its absurdity. In the Latin, "Exceptio probat regulam" means that the exception tests the rule, puts it to the proof, not confirms meaning from this excellent dictum and substituted a contrary one of his own, exerted an evil power which appears to be immortal.

EXCESS, n. In morals, an indulgence that enforces by appropriate penalties the law of moderation.

     Hail high Excess! – especially in wine.     To thee in worship do I bend the knee     Who preach abstemiousness unto me —     My skull thy pulpit, as my paunch thy shrine.     Precept on precept, aye, and line on line,     Could ne'er persuade so sweetly to agree     With reason as thy touch, exact and free,     Upon my forehead and along my spine.     At thy command eschewing pleasure's cup,     With the hot grape I warm no more my wit;     When on thy stool of penitence I sit     I'm quite converted, for I can't get up.     Ungrateful he who afterward would falter     To make new sacrifices at thine altar!

EXCOMMUNICATION, n.

     This "excommunication" is a word     In speech ecclesiastical oft heard,     And means the damning, with bell, book, and candle,     Some sinner whose opinions are a scandal —     A rite permitting Satan to enslave him     Forever, and forbidding Christ to save him.

Gat Huckle,

EXECUTIVE, n. An officer of the Government whose duty it is to enforce the wishes of the legislative power until such time as the judicial department shall be pleased to pronounce them mischievous and of no effect. Following is an extract from an old book entitled, The Lunarian Astonished

– Pfeiffer & Co., Boston, 1803:

"Lunarian: Then when your Congress has passed a law it goes directly to the Supreme Court in order that it may at once be known whether it is constitutional.

"Terrestrian: O no; it does not require the approval of the Supreme Court until having perhaps been enforced for many years somebody objects to its operation against himself – I mean his client. The President, if he approves it, begins to execute it at once.

"Lunarian: Then the executive power is a part of the legislative. Do your policemen also have to approve the local ordinances that they enforce?

"Terrestrian: Not yet – at least not in their capacity of constables. Generally speaking though, all laws require the approval of those whom they are intended to restrain.

"Lunarian: Ah, I see. The death warrant is not valid until signed by the murderer.

"Terrestrian: My friend, you put it too strongly; we are not so consistent.

"Lunarian: But this system of maintaining an expensive judicial machinery to pass upon the validity of laws only after they have long been executed, and then only when brought before the court by some private person – does it not cause great confusion?

"Terrestrian: It does.

"Lunarian: Why then should not your laws, previously to being executed, be validated, not by the signature of your President, but by that of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?

"Terrestrian: There is no precedent for any such course.

"Lunarian: Precedent? What is that?

"Terrestrian: It has been defined by five hundred lawyers in three volumes each. So how can any one know?"

EXHORT, v. t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.

EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador.

An English sea-captain being asked if he had read "The Exile of Erin," replied: "No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it." Years afterward, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the ship's log that he had kept at the time of his reply:

"Aug. 3d, 1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly received. War with the whole world!"

EXISTENCE, n.

     A transient, horrible, fantastic dream,     Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem;     From which we're wakened by a friendly nudge     Of our bedfellow Death, and cry: "O fudge!"

EXPERIENCE, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

     To one who, journeying through night and fog,     Is mired waist deep in an unwholesome bog,     Experience, like the rising of the dawn,     Shows him the path he never should have gone.     Joel Frad Bink.

EXPOSTULATION, n. One of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose their friends.

EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the future state.

F

FAIRY, n. 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 theft of children. The fairies are now believed by naturalists 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 bourgeois disappeared about the same time, but afterward returned. He had seen the abduction and 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.

FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.

FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

     Done to a turn on the iron, behold     Him who to be famous aspired.     Content? Well, his grill has a plating of gold,     And his twistings are greatly admired.     Hassan Brubuddy.

FASHION, n. A deity whom the wise ridicule, yet the discreet obey.

     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.     Each dropped one eyelid when before     The throne he ventured, thinking     'T would please the king. That monarch swore     He'd slay them all for winking.     What should they do? They were not hot     To hazard such disaster;     They dared not close an eye – dared not     See better than their master.     Seeing them lacrymose and glum,     A leech consoled the weepers:     He spread small rags with liquid gum     And covered half their peepers.     The court all wore the stuff, the flame     Of royal anger dying.     That 's how court-plaster got its name     Unless I'm greatly lying.     Naramy Oof.

FEAST, n. A festival. A religious celebration 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 of Nemeseia, 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. Feasts on the dead are celebrated with great éclat in Fiji. Among the many feasts of the Romans was the Novemdiale, which was held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven. Of all the feast days of the various Christian churches none has any sanction in the gospel. Men make gods of their bellies, and then these gods ordain festivals.

FELON, n. A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.

FEMALE, n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.

     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     Of growth, maturity, decay,     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 fine the 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" —     So flew to Hell and soon brought back     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!     G.J.

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,     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 the 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.     Bartle Quinker.

FICKLENESS, n. The iterated satiety of an enterprising affection.

FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.

     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,     'T is my excuse that you were fiddling first."     Orm Pludge.

FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

FINANCE, n. 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.

FLAG, n. 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 on vacant lots in London – "Rubbish may be shot here."

FLESH, n. The Second Person of the secular Trinity.

FLOP, v. 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 by some of our partisan journals.

FLY-SPECK, 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 —Musca maledicta. In transcribing these ancient MSS, for the purpose either of 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-molassess in a sunny room and observe "how the wit brightens and the style refines" in accurate proportion to the duration of exposure.

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,     Their lives to mend and to sustain his own,     However feebly be his arrows thrown,     Howe'er each hide the flying weapon blunts.     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.     Aramis Loto Frope

FOOL, n. A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscient, 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 San Francisco. 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 has warmly tucked-in the set sun of civilization, and in the twilight he prepares Man's evening meal of milkand-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.

FORCE, n.

     "Force is but might," the teacher said —     "That definition 's just."     The boy said naught but thought instead,     Remembering his pounded head:     "Force is not might but must!"

FOREFINGER, n. The finger commonly used in pointing out two malefactors.