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<title>The Devil’s Dictionary: E</title>
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<h1>E</h1>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">eat,</span> <span class="pos">v.i.</span> To perform
successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition.</p>
<p class="indentpara">“I was in the drawing-room, enjoying my dinner,” said Brillat-Savarin, beginning
an anecdote. “What!” interrupted Rochebriant; “eating dinner in a drawing-room?” “I must beg you to
observe, monsieur,” explained the great gastronome, “that I did not say I was eating my dinner, but enjoying it. I
had dined an hour before.”</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">eavesdrop,</span> <span class="pos">v.i.</span> Secretly
to overhear a catalogue
of the crimes and vices of another or yourself.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">A lady with one of her ears applied<br />
To an open keyhole heard, inside,<br />
Two female gossips in converse
free—<br />
The subject engaging them was she.<br />
“I think,” said
one, “and my husband thinks<br />
That she’s a prying, inquisitive minx!”<br />
As soon as no more of it she could
hear<br />
The lady, indignant, removed her
ear.<br />
“I will not stay,”
she said, with a pout,<br />
“To hear my character lied about!”</p>
<p class="citeauth">Gopete Sherany.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">eccentricity,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A method of distinction so cheap
that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">economy,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> Purchasing
the barrel of whiskey that you do
not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">edible,</span> <span class="pos">adj.</span> Good to eat,
and wholesome to digest, as a
worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man
to a worm.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">editor,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A person who combines the judicial functions
of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, but is placable with an obolus; a severely
virtuous censor, but so charitable withal that he tolerates the virtues of
others and the vices of himself; who flings about him the splintering lightning
and sturdy thunders of admonition till he resembles a bunch of firecrackers
petulantly uttering his mind at the tail of a dog; then straightway murmurs a
mild, melodious lay, soft as the cooing of a donkey intoning its prayer to the
evening star. Master of mysteries and
lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of thought, his face suffused with
the dim splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue
a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths
to suit. And at intervals from behind
the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches
of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom
and whack up some pathos.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">O, the Lord of Law
on the Throne of Thought,<br />
<span class="ind1">A gilded impostor is he.</span><br />
Of shreds and
patches his robes are wrought,<br />
<span class="ind3">
His crown is brass,</span><br />
<span class="ind3">
Himself an ass,</span><br />
<span class="ind1">
And his power is fiddle-dee-dee.</span><br />
Prankily, crankily prating of
naught,<br />
Silly old quilly old Monarch of
Thought.<br />
<span class="ind1">
Public opinion’s
camp-follower he,</span><br />
<span class="ind1">Thundering, blundering, plundering free.</span><br />
<span class="ind3">
Affected,</span><br />
<span class="ind6">
Ungracious,</span><br />
<span class="ind3">
Suspected,</span><br />
<span class="ind6">
Mendacious,</span><br />
Respected contemporaree!</p>
<p class="citeauth">J.H. Bumbleshook.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">education,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> That
which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of
understanding.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">effect,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The second of two phenomena which always
occur together in the same order. The
first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other—which is no more sensible
than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in the pursuit of a
rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of a dog.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">egotist,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A
person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">Megaceph, chosen to serve the State<br />
In the halls of legislative debate,<br />
One day with all his credentials
came<br />
To the capitol’s door and announced
his name.<br />
The doorkeeper looked, with a
comical twist<br />
Of the face, at the eminent
egotist,<br />
And said: “Go away, for we settle here<br />
All manner of questions, knotty and
queer,<br />
And we cannot have, when the
speaker demands<br />
To be told how every member stands,<br />
A man who to all things under the
sky<br />
Assents by eternally voting ‘I’.”
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">ejection,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> An approved remedy for the disease of
garrulity. It is also much used in
cases of extreme poverty.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">elector,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> One who enjoys the sacred privilege of
voting for the man of another man’s choice.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">electricity,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The power that causes all natural
phenomena not known to be caused by something else. It is the same thing as lightning, and its famous attempt to
strike Dr. Franklin is one of the most picturesque incidents in that great and
good man’s career. The memory of Dr.
Franklin is justly held in great reverence, particularly in France, where a
waxen effigy of him was recently on exhibition, bearing the following touching
account of his life and services to science:</p>
<p class="quote">“Monsieur
Franqulin, inventor of electricity.
This illustrious savant, after having made several voyages around the
world, died on the Sandwich Islands and was devoured by savages, of whom not a
single fragment was ever recovered.”</p>
<p class="indentpara">Electricity seems
destined to play a most important part in the arts and industries. The question of its economical application
to some purposes is still unsettled, but experiment has already proved that it
will propel a street car better than a gas jet and give more light than a
horse.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">elegy,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A composition in verse, in which, without
employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the
reader’s mind the dampest kind of dejection.
The most famous English example begins somewhat like this:</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">The cur foretells
the knell of parting day;<br />
<span class="ind1">
The loafing herd
winds slowly o’er the lea;</span><br />
The wise man
homeward plods; I only stay<br />
<span class="ind1">
To fiddle-faddle
in a minor key.</span>
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">eloquence,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span>
The art of orally persuading fools that white
is the color that it appears to be. It
includes the gift of making any color appear white.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">elysium,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> An imaginary delightful country which the
ancients foolishly believed to be inhabited by the spirits of the good. This ridiculous and mischievous fable was
swept off the face of the earth by the early Christians—may their souls be
happy in Heaven!</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">emancipation,</span> <span class="pos">
n.</span> A bondman’s change from the tyranny
of another to the despotism of himself.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">He was a
slave: at word he went and came;<br />
<span class="ind1">
His iron collar cut
him to the bone.</span><br />
Then Liberty
erased his owner’s name,<br />
<span class="ind1">
Tightened the
rivets and inscribed his own.</span></p>
<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">embalm,</span> <span class="pos">v.i.</span> To cheat vegetation by locking up the gases
upon which it feeds. By embalming their
dead and thereby deranging the natural balance between animal and vegetable
life, the Egyptians made their once fertile and populous country barren and
incapable of supporting more than a meagre crew. The modern metallic burial casket is a step in the same direction,
and many a dead man who ought now to be ornamenting his neighbor’s lawn as a
tree, or enriching his table as a bunch of radishes, is doomed to a long
inutility. We shall get him after
awhile if we are spared, but in the meantime the violet and rose are
languishing for a nibble at his <i>glutoeus
maximus</i>.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">emotion,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A prostrating disease caused by a
determination of the heart to the head.
It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride
of sodium from the eyes.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">encomiast,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A special (but not particular) kind of liar.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">end,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The position farthest removed on either hand
from the Interlocutor.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">The man was
perishing apace<br />
<span class="ind1">
Who played the
tambourine;</span><br />
The seal of death
was on his face—<br />
<span class="ind1">
‘Twas pallid, for
‘twas clean.</span></p>
<p class="poetry">“This is the end,”
the sick man said<br />
<span class="ind1">
In faint and
failing tones.</span><br />
A moment later he
was dead,<br />
<span class="ind1">
And Tambourine was
Bones.</span></p>
<p class="citeauth">Tinley Roquot.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p></p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">enough,</span> <span class="pos">pro.</span> All there is in the world if you like it.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">Enough is as good
as a feast—for that matter<br />
Enougher’s as good as a feast for the platter.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Arbely C. Strunk. </p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">entertainment,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> Any kind of amusement whose inroads
stop short of death by injection.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">enthusiasm,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> 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.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">envelope,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a
bill; the husk of a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">envy,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">epaulet,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> 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.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">epicure,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> An opponent of Epicurus, an abstemious
philosopher who, holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted
no time in gratification from the senses.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">epigram,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A short, sharp saying in prose or verse,
frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom. Following are some of the more notable
epigrams of the learned and ingenious Dr. Jamrach Holobom:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We know better the
needs of ourselves than of others. To
serve oneself is economy of administration.</p>
<p>In each human
heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.</p>
<p>There are three
sexes; males, females and girls.</p>
<p>Beauty in women
and distinction in men are alike in this:
they seem to be
the unthinking a kind of credibility.</p>
<p>Women in love are
less ashamed than men. They have less
to be ashamed of.</p>
<p>While your friend
holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch
both his.</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">epitaph,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> An inscription on a tomb, showing that
virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect. Following is a touching example:</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">Here lie the bones of Parson Platt,<br />
Wise, pious, humble and all that,<br />
Who showed us life as all should
live it;<br />
Let that be said—and God forgive
it! </p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">erudition,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> Dust shaken out of a book into an empty
skull.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">So wide his erudition’s mighty
span,<br />
He knew Creation’s origin and plan<br />
And only came by accident to grief—<br />
He thought, poor man, ‘twas right
to be a thief.</p>
<p></p>
<p class="citeauth">Romach Pute.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p></p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">esoteric,</span> <span class="pos">adj.</span> Very particularly abstruse and
consummately occult. The ancient
philosophies were of two kinds,<i>—exoteric</i>,
those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and <i>esoteric</i>, those that nobody could
understand. It is the latter that have
most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our
time.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">ethnology,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The science that treats of the various
tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and
ethnologists.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">Eucharist,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A sacred feast of the religious sect of
Theophagi.</p>
<p class="indentpara">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.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">eulogy,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> Praise of a person who has either the
advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">evangelist,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> A bearer of good tidings,
particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and
the damnation of our neighbors.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">everlasting,</span> <span class="pos">adj.</span> 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 a sometime Bishop of Worcester, entitled, <i>A
Partial Definition of the Word “Everlasting,” as Used in the Authorized Version
of the Holy Scriptures</i>. 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 of the soul.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">exception,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> 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, “<i>Exceptio probat regulam</i>” means that the exception <i>tests</i> the rule, puts it to the proof, not <i>confirms</i> it.
The malefactor who drew the meaning from this excellent dictum
and substituted a contrary one of his own exerted an evil power which appears
to be immortal.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">excess,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> In morals, an indulgence that enforces by
appropriate penalties the law of moderation.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">
Hail, high
Excess—especially in wine,<br />
<span class="ind1">
To thee in worship
do I bend the knee</span><br />
<span class="ind1">
Who preach abstemiousness unto me—</span><br />
My skull thy
pulpit, as my paunch thy shrine.<br />
Precept on
precept, aye, and line on line,<br />
<span class="ind1">
Could ne’er
persuade so sweetly to agree</span><br />
<span class="ind1">
With reason as thy
touch, exact and free,</span><br />
Upon my forehead
and along my spine.<br />
At thy command
eschewing pleasure’s cup,<br />
<span class="ind1">
With the hot grape
I warm no more my wit;</span><br />
<span class="ind1">
When on thy stool
of penitence I sit</span><br />
I’m quite converted, for I can’t
get up.<br />
Ungrateful he who afterward would
falter<br />
To make new sacrifices at thine
altar!</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">excommunication,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span></p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">This “excommunication” is a word<br />
In speech ecclesiastical oft heard,<br />
And means the
damning, with bell, book and candle,<br />
Some sinner whose opinions are a scandal—<br />
A rite permitting
Satan to enslave him<br />
Forever, and forbidding Christ to save him.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Gat Huckle.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p></p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">executive,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> 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 invalid and of no
effect. Following is an extract from an
old book entitled, <i>The Lunarian Astonished—</i>Pfeiffer & Co., Boston,
1803:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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?</p>
<p>Terrestrain: 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.</p>
<p>Lunarian: Ah, the executive power is a part of the legislative.</p>
<p>Do your policemen also have to approve the local ordinances that they enforce?</p>
<p>Terrestrian: Not yet—at least not in their character of constables.
Generally speaking, though, all laws require the approval of those whom they are intended to restrain.</p>
<p>Lunarian: I see. The death warrant is not valid until signed by the murderer.</p>
<p>Terrestrian: My friend, you put it too strongly; we are not so consistent.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>Terrestrian: It does.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>Terrestrian: There is no precedent for any such course.</p>
<p>Lunarian: Precedent. What is that?</p>
<p>Terrestrian: It has been defined by five hundred lawyers
in three volumes each. So how can any one know?</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">exhort,</span> <span class="pos">v.t.</span> In
religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it
to a nut-brown discomfort.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">exile,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> One who serves his country by residing
abroad, yet is not an ambassador.</p>
<p class="indentpara">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 afterwards, 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:</p>
<p class="quote">Aug. 3d,
1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly received. War with the whole world!</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">existence,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span></p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">A transient,
horrible, fantastic dream,<br />
Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem:<br />
From which we’re
wakened by a friendly nudge<br />
Of our bedfellow Death, and cry: “O fudge!”</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">experience,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The wisdom that enables us to recognize
as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.</p>
<table align="center" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left">
<p class="poetry">To one who,
journeying through night and fog,<br />
Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog,<br />
Experience, like the rising of the dawn,<br />
Reveals the path that he should not
have gone.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Joel Frad Bink.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">expostulation,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> One of the many methods by which
fools prefer to lose their friends.</p>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">extinction,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> The raw material out of which
theology created the future state.</p>
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