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The Devil's Dictionary - G
GALLOWS, n.
A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which
the leading actor is translated to heaven. In this country the
gallows is chiefly remarkable for the number of persons who escape it.
Whether on the gallows high
Or where blood flows the reddest,
The noblest place for man to die --
Is where he died the deadest.
(Old play)
GARGOYLE, n.
A rain-spout projecting from the eaves of mediaeval
buildings, commonly fashioned into a grotesque caricature of some
personal enemy of the architect or owner of the building. This was
especially the case in churches and ecclesiastical structures
generally, in which the gargoyles presented a perfect rogues' gallery
of local heretics and controversialists. Sometimes when a new dean
and chapter were installed the old gargoyles were removed and others
substituted having a closer relation to the private animosities of the
new incumbents.
GARTHER, n.
An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out
of her stockings and desolating the country.
GENEROUS, adj.
Originally this word meant noble by birth and was
rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble
by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.
GENEALOGY, n.
An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did
not particularly care to trace his own.
GENTEEL, adj.
Refined, after the fashion of a gent.
Observe with care, my son, the distinction I reveal:
A gentleman is gentle and a gent genteel.
Heed not the definitions your "Unabridged" presents,
For dictionary makers are generally gents.
G.J.
GEOGRAPHER, n.
A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between
the outside of the world and the inside.
Habeam, geographer of wide reknown,
Native of Abu-Keber's ancient town,
In passing thence along the river Zam
To the adjacent village of Xelam,
Bewildered by the multitude of roads,
Got lost, lived long on migratory toads,
Then from exposure miserably died,
And grateful travelers bewailed their guide.
Henry Haukhorn
GEOLOGY, n.
The science of the earth's crust -- to which, doubtless,
will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come up
garrulous out of a well. The geological formations of the globe
already noted are catalogued thus: The Primary, or lower one,
consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners' tools,
antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors. The
Secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles. The Tertiary
comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy
boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage,
anarchists, snap-dogs and fools.
GHOST, n.
The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.
He saw a ghost.
It occupied -- that dismal thing! --
The path that he was following.
Before he'd time to stop and fly,
An earthquake trifled with the eye
That saw a ghost.
He fell as fall the early good;
Unmoved that awful vision stood.
The stars that danced before his ken
He wildly brushed away, and then
He saw a post.
Jared Macphester
Accounting for the uncommon behavior of ghosts, Heine mentions
somebody's ingenious theory to the effect that they are as much
afraid of us as we of them. Not quite, if I may judge from such
tables of comparative speed as I am able to compile from memories of
my own experience.
There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts. A ghost
never comes naked: he appears either in a winding-sheet or "in his
habit as he lived." To believe in him, then, is to believe that not
only have the dead the power to make themselves visible after there is
nothing left of them, but that the same power inheres in textile
fabrics. Supposing the products of the loom to have this ability,
what object would they have in exercising it? And why does not the
apparition of a suit of clothes sometimes walk abroad without a ghost
in it? These be riddles of significance. They reach away down and
get a convulsive grip on the very tap-root of this flourishing faith.
GHOUL, n.
A demon addicted to the reprehensible habit of devouring
the dead. The existence of ghouls has been disputed by that class of
controversialists who are more concerned to deprive the world of
comforting beliefs than to give it anything good in their place. In
1640 Father Secchi saw one in a cemetery near Florence and frightened
it away with the sign of the cross. He describes it as gifted with
many heads an an uncommon allowance of limbs, and he saw it in more
than one place at a time. The good man was coming away from dinner at
the time and explains that if he had not been "heavy with eating" he
would have seized the demon at all hazards. Atholston relates that a
ghoul was caught by some sturdy peasants in a churchyard at Sudbury
and ducked in a horsepond. (He appears to think that so distinguished
a criminal should have been ducked in a tank of rosewater.) The water
turned at once to blood "and so contynues unto ys daye." The pond has
since been bled with a ditch. As late as the beginning of the
fourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the crypt of the cathedral
at Amiens and the whole population surrounded the place. Twenty armed
men with a priest at their head, bearing a crucifix, entered and
captured the ghoul, which, thinking to escape by the stratagem, had
transformed itself to the semblance of a well known citizen, but was
nevertheless hanged, drawn and quartered in the midst of hideous
popular orgies. The citizen whose shape the demon had assumed was so
affected by the sinister occurrence that he never again showed himself
in Amiens and his fate remains a mystery.
GLUTTON, n.
A person who escapes the evils of moderation by committing dyspepsia.
GNOME, n.
In North-European mythology, a dwarfish imp inhabiting the
interior parts of the earth and having special custody of mineral
treasures. Bjorsen, who died in 1765, says gnomes were common enough
in the southern parts of Sweden in his boyhood, and he frequently saw
them scampering on the hills in the evening twilight. Ludwig
Binkerhoof saw three as recently as 1792, in the Black Forest, and
Sneddeker avers that in 1803 they drove a party of miners out of a
Silesian mine. Basing our computations upon data supplied by these
statements, we find that the gnomes were probably extinct as early as
1764.
GNOSTICS, n.
A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion
between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not
go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin
of the fusion managers.
GNU, n.
An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state
resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag. In its wild condition it is
something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.
A hunter from Kew caught a distant view
Of a peacefully meditative gnu,
And he said: "I'll pursue, and my hands imbrue
In its blood at a closer interview."
But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw
O'er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;
And he said as he flew: "It is well I withdrew
Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew
That really meritorious gnu."
Jarn Leffer
GOOD, adj.
Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer.
Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.
GOOSE, n.
A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some
occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various
degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character,
so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person
called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript
of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as
discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found
to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be
very great geese indeed.
GORGON, n.
The Gorgon was a maiden bold
Who turned to stone the Greeks of old
That looked upon her awful brow.
We dig them out of ruins now,
And swear that workmanship so bad
Proves all the ancient sculptors mad.
GOUT, n.
A physician's name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.
GRACES, n.
Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne,
who attended upon Venus, serving without salary. They were at no
expense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and
dressed according to the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened to
be blowing.
GRAMMAR, n.
A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet
for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to
distinction.
GRAPE, n.
Hail noble fruit! -- by Homer sung,
Anacreon and Khayyam;
Thy praise is ever on the tongue
Of better men than I am.
The lyre in my hand has never swept,
The song I cannot offer:
My humbler service pray accept --
I'll help to kill the scoffer.
The water-drinkers and the cranks
Who load their skins with liquor --
I'll gladly bear their belly-tanks
And tap them with my sticker.
Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools
When e'er we let the wine rest.
Here's death to Prohibition's fools,
And every kind of vine-pest!
Jamrach Holobom
GRAPESHOT, n.
An
argument which the future is preparing in answer to
the demands of
American Socialism.
GRAVE, n.
A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of
the
medical student.
Beside a lonely grave I stood --
With brambles 'twas encumbered;
The winds were moaning in the wood,
Unheard by him who slumbered,
A rustic standing near, I said:
"He cannot hear it blowing!"
"'Course not," said he: "the feller's dead --
He can't hear nowt [sic] that's going."
"Too true," I said; "alas, too true --
No sound his sense can quicken!"
"Well, mister, wot is that to you? --
The deadster ain't a-kickin'."
I knelt and prayed: "O Father, smile
On him, and mercy show him!"
That countryman looked on the while,
And said: "Ye didn't know him."
Pobeter Dunko
GRAVITATION, n.
The tendency of all bodies to approach one another
with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain --
the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength
of their tendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and
edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B,
makes B the proof of A.
GREAT, adj.
"I'm great," the Lion said -- "I reign
The monarch of the wood and plain!"
The Elephant replied: "I'm great --
No quadruped can match my weight!"
"I'm great -- no animal has half
So long a neck!" said the Giraffe.
"I'm great," the Kangaroo said -- "see
My femoral muscularity!"
The 'Possum said: "I'm great -- behold,
My tail is lithe and bald and cold!"
An Oyster fried was understood
To say: "I'm great because I'm good!"
Each reckons greatness to consist
In that in which he heads the list,
And Vierick thinks he tops his class
Because he is the greatest ass.
Arion Spurl Doke
GUILLOTINE, n.
A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders
with good reason.
In his great work on Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution, the
learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture
-- the shrug -- among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles
and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracing the head inside
the shell. It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an
authority, but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth and
enforced in my work entitled Hereditary Emotions -- lib. II, c. XI)
the shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important a
theory, for previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown. I
have not a doubt that it is directly referable to the terror inspired
by the guillotine during the period of that instrument's activity.
GUNPOWDER, n.
An agency employed by civilized nations for the
settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left
unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to
the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it
was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion
seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels. Moreover,
it has the hearty concurrence of the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of
Agriculture.
Secretary Wilson became interested in gunpowder through an event
that occurred on the Government experimental farm in the District of
Columbia. One day, several years ago, a rogue imperfectly reverent of
the Secretary's profound attainments and personal character presented
him with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the sed of the
Flashawful flabbergastor, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial
value, admirably adapted to this climate. The good Secretary was
instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with
soil. This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line
of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look
backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a
lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point. Contact with the
earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary
saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke and
fierce evolution. He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless,
then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himself
thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators
along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak
prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages,
and audibly refusing to be comforted. "Great Scott! what is that?"
cried a surveyor's chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fading
line of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon. "That,"
said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again
centering his attention upon his instrument, "is the Meridian of
Washington."