The Devil's Dictionary

HEART, n. An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the esat of emotions and sentiments — a very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of the gastric fluid. The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a feeling — tender or not, according to the age of the animal from which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh of sensibility — these things have been patiently ascertained by M. Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity. (See, also, my monograph, The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion — 4to, 687 pp.) In a scientific work entitled, I believe, Delectatio Demonorum (John Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a striking illustration; and for further light consult Professor Dam’s famous treatise on Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration.

HEAT, n.

Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode

Of motion, but I know now how he’s proving

His point; but this I know — hot words bestowed

With skill will set the human fist a-moving,

And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.

Crede expertum — I have seen them, child.

Gorton Swope

HEATHEN, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel. According to Professor Howison, of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.

“The Hebrews are heathens!” says Howison. He’s

A Christian philosopher. I’m

A scurril agnostical chap, if you please,

Addicted too much to the crime

Of religious discussion in my rhyme.

Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree

On a modus vivendi — not they! —

Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,

And I haven’t been reared in a way

To joy in the thick of the fray.

For this of my creed is the soul and the gist,

And the truth of it I aver:

Who differs from me in his faith is an ‘ist,

And ‘ite, an ‘ie, or an ‘er —

And I’m down upon him or her!

Let Howison urge with perfunctory chin

Toleration — that’s all very well,

But a roast is “nuts” to his nostril thin,

And he’s running — I know by the smell —

A secret and personal Hell!

Bissell Gip

HEAVEN, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.

HEBREW, n. A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an altogether superior creation.

HELPMATE, n. A wife, or bitter half.

“Now, why is yer wife called a helpmate, Pat?”

Says the priest. “Since the time ‘o yer wooin’

She’s niver [sic] assisted in what ye were at —

For it’s naught ye are ever doin’.”

“That’s true of yer Riverence [sic],” Patrick replies,

And no sign of contrition envices;

“But, bedad, it’s a fact which the word implies,

For she helps to mate the expinses [sic]!”

Marley Wottel

HEMP, n. A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.

HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.

HERS, pron. His.

HIBERNATE, v.i. To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion. There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of various animals. Many believe that the bear hibernates during the whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking its paws. It is admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so lean that it had to try twice before it can cast a shadow. Three or four centuries ago, in England, no fact was better attested than that swallows passed the winter months in the mud at the bottom of their brooks, clinging together in globular masses. They have apparently been compelled to give up the custom and account of the foulness of the brooks. Sotus Ecobius discovered in Central Asia a whole nation of people who hibernate. By some investigators, the fasting of Lent is supposed to have been originally a modified form of hibernation, to which the Church gave a religious significance; but this view was strenuously opposed by that eminent authority, Bishop Kip, who did not wish any honors denied to the memory of the Founder of his family.

HIPPOGRIFF, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, a one-quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises.

HISTORIAN, n. A broad-gauge gossip.