The Devil's Dictionary

Phisicians was in vain,

Till Deth released the dear deceased

And left her a remain.

Gone to join Ananias in the regions of bliss.”

“The clay that rests beneath this stone

As Silas Wood was widely known.

Now, lying here, I ask what good

It was to let me be S. Wood.

O Man, let not ambition trouble you,

Is the advice of Silas W.”

“Richard Haymon, of Heaven. Fell to Earth Jan. 20, 1807, and had the dust brushed off him Oct. 3, 1874.”

INSECTIVORA, n.

“See,” cries the chorus of admiring preachers,

“How Providence provides for all His creatures!”

“His care,” the gnat said, “even the insects follows:

For us He has provided wrens and swallows.”

Sempen Railey

INSURANCE, n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

INSURANCE AGENT: My dear sir, that is a fine house — pray let me

insure it.

HOUSE OWNER: With pleasure. Please make the annual premium so

low that by the time when, according to the tables of your

actuary, it will probably be destroyed by fire I will have

paid you considerably less than the face of the policy.

INSURANCE AGENT: O dear, no — we could not afford to do that.

We must fix the premium so that you will have paid more.

HOUSE OWNER: How, then, can I afford that?

INSURANCE AGENT: Why, your house may burn down at any time.

There was Smith’s house, for example, which —

HOUSE OWNER: Spare me — there were Brown’s house, on the

contrary, and Jones’s house, and Robinson’s house, which —

INSURANCE AGENT: Spare me!

HOUSE OWNER: Let us understand each other. You want me to pay

you money on the supposition that something will occur

previously to the time set by yourself for its occurrence. In

other words, you expect me to bet that my house will not last

so long as you say that it will probably last.

INSURANCE AGENT: But if your house burns without insurance it

will be a total loss.

HOUSE OWNER: Beg your pardon — by your own actuary’s tables I

shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I

would otherwise have paid to you — amounting to more than the

face of the policy they would have bought. But suppose it to

burn, uninsured, before the time upon which your figures are

based. If I could not afford that, how could you if it were

insured?

INSURANCE AGENT: O, we should make ourselves whole from our

luckier ventures with other clients. Virtually, they pay your

loss.

HOUSE OWNER: And virtually, then, don’t I help to pay their

losses? Are not their houses as likely as mine to burn before

they have paid you as much as you must pay them? The case

stands this way: you expect to take more money from your

clients than you pay to them, do you not?

INSURANCE AGENT: Certainly; if we did not —

HOUSE OWNER: I would not trust you with my money. Very well

then. If it is certain, with reference to the whole body of

your clients, that they lose money on you it is probable,

with reference to any one of them, that he will. It is

these individual probabilities that make the aggregate

certainty.

INSURANCE AGENT: I will not deny it — but look at the figures in

this pamph —

HOUSE OWNER: Heaven forbid!

INSURANCE AGENT: You spoke of saving the premiums which you would

otherwise pay to me. Will you not be more likely to squander

them? We offer you an incentive to thrift.

HOUSE OWNER: The willingness of A to take care of B’s money is

not peculiar to insurance, but as a charitable institution you

command esteem. Deign to accept its expression from a

Deserving Object.

INSURRECTION, n. An unsuccessful revolution. Disaffection’s failure to substitute misrule for bad government.

INTENTION, n. The mind’s sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.

INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter’s advantage for the other to have said.

INTERREGNUM, n. The period during which a monarchical country is governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne. The experiment of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to make it warm again.

INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.

Two Seidlitz powders, one in blue

And one in white, together drew

And having each a pleasant sense

Of t’other powder’s excellence,

Forsook their jackets for the snug

Enjoyment of a common mug.

So close their intimacy grew

One paper would have held the two.

To confidences straight they fell,

Less anxious each to hear than tell;

Then each remorsefully confessed

To all the virtues he possessed,

Acknowledging he had them in

So high degree it was a sin.

The more they said, the more they felt

Their spirits with emotion melt,

Till tears of sentiment expressed

Their feelings. Then they effervesced!

So Nature executes her feats

Of wrath on friends and sympathetes