The Devil's Dictionary

HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

Of Roman history, great Niebuhr’s shown

‘Tis nine-tenths lying. Faith, I wish ‘twere known,

Ere we accept great Niebuhr as a guide,

Wherein he blundered and how much he lied.

Salder Bupp

HOG, n. A bird remarkable for the catholicity of its appetite and serving to illustrate that of ours. Among the Mahometans and Jews, the hog is not in favor as an article of diet, but is respected for the delicacy and the melody of its voice. It is chiefly as a songster that the fowl is esteemed; the cage of him in full chorus has been known to draw tears from two persons at once. The scientific name of this dicky-bird is Porcus Rockefelleri. Mr. Rockefeller did not discover the hog, but it is considered his by right of resemblance.

HOMOEOPATHIST, n. The humorist of the medical profession.

HOMOEOPATHY, n. A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and Christian Science. To the last both the others are distinctly inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they can not.

HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homocide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another — the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.

HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.

So skilled the parson was in homiletics

That all his normal purges and emetics

To medicine the spirit were compounded

With a most just discrimination founded

Upon a rigorous examination

Of tongue and pulse and heart and respiration.

Then, having diagnosed each one’s condition,

His scriptural specifics this physician

Administered — his pills so efficacious

And pukes of disposition so vivacious

That souls afflicted with ten kinds of Adam

Were convalescent ere they knew they had ‘em.

But Slander’s tongue — itself all coated — uttered

Her bilious mind and scandalously muttered

That in the case of patients having money

The pills were sugar and the pukes were honey.

Biography of Bishop Potter

HONORABLE, adj. Afflicted with an impediment in one’s reach. In legislative bodies it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, “the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur.”

HOPE, n. Desire and expectation rolled into one.

Delicious Hope! when naught to man it left —

Of fortune destitute, of friends bereft;

When even his dog deserts him, and his goat

With tranquil disaffection chews his coat

While yet it hangs upon his back; then thou,

The star far-flaming on thine angel brow,

Descendest, radiant, from the skies to hint

The promise of a clerkship in the Mint.

Fogarty Weffing

HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.

HOSTILITY, n. A peculiarly sharp and specially applied sense of the earth’s overpopulation. Hostility is classified as active and passive; as (respectively) the feeling of a woman for her female friends, and that which she entertains for all the rest of her sex.

HOURI, n. A comely female inhabiting the Mohammedan Paradise to make things cheery for the good Mussulman, whose belief in her existence marks a noble discontent with his earthly spouse, whom he denies a soul. By that good lady the Houris are said to be held in deficient esteem.

HOUSE, n. A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beelte, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus and microbe. House of Correction, a place of reward for political and personal service, and for the detention of offenders and appropriations. House of God, a building with a steeple and a mortgage on it. House-dog, a pestilent beast kept on domestic premises to insult persons passing by and appal the hardy visitor. House-maid, a youngerly person of the opposing sex employed to be variously disagreeable and ingeniously unclean in the station in which it has pleased God to place her.

HOUSELESS, adj. Having paid all taxes on household goods.

HOVEL, n. The fruit of a flower called the Palace.

Twaddle had a hovel,

Twiddle had a palace;

Twaddle said: “I’ll grovel

Or he’ll think I bear him malice” —

A sentiment as novel

As a castor on a chalice.

Down upon the middle

Of his legs fell Twaddle

And astonished Mr. Twiddle,

Who began to lift his noddle.

Feed upon the fiddle—

Faddle flummery, unswaddle

A new-born self-sufficiency and think himself a [mockery.]

G.J.

HUMANITY, n. The human race, collectively, exclusive of the anthropoid poets.

HUMORIST, n. A plague that would have softened down the hoar austerity of Pharaoh’s heart and persuaded him to dismiss Israel with his best wishes, cat-quick.

Lo! the poor humorist, whose tortured mind

See jokes in crowds, though still to gloom inclined —

Whose simple appetite, untaught to stray,