The Devil's Dictionary

To me my fair and rightful prey

And keep their own in shape to pay;

The preachers by example teach

What, scorning to perform, I teach;

And statesmen, aping me, all make

More promises than they can break.

Against such competition I

Lift up a disregarded cry.

Since all ignore my just complaint,

By Hokey-Pokey! I’ll turn saint!”

Now, the Republicans, who all

Are saints, began at once to bawl

Against his competition; so

There was a devil of a go!

They locked horns with him, tete-a-tete

In acrimonious debate,

Till Democrats, forlorn and lone,

Had hopes of coming by their own.

That evil to avert, in haste

The two belligerents embraced;

But since ‘twere wicked to relax

A tittle of the Sacred Tax,

‘Twas finally agreed to grant

The bold Insurgent-protestant

A bounty on each soul that fell

Into his ineffectual Hell.

Edam Smith

TECHNICALITY, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused his neighbor of murder. His exact words were: “Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder.” The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference.

TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source — the first words of the ancient Latin hymn Te Deum Laudamus. In this apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens.

TEETOTALER, n. One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally, sometimes tolerably totally.

TELEPHONE, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

TELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice.

TENACITY, n. A certain quality of the human hand in its relation to the coin of the realm. It attains its highest development in the hand of authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in politics. The following illustrative lines were written of a Californian gentleman in high political preferment, who has passed to his accounting:

Of such tenacity his grip

That nothing from his hand can slip.

Well-buttered eels you may o’erwhelm

In tubs of liquid slippery-elm

In vain — from his detaining pinch

They cannot struggle half an inch!

‘Tis lucky that he so is planned

That breath he draws not with his hand,

For if he did, so great his greed

He’d draw his last with eager speed.

Nay, that were well, you say. Not so

He’d draw but never let it go!

THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science. The modern Theosophist holds, with the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to wish to become. To be absolutely wise and good — that is perfection; and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection. Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem neither wiser nor better than they were last year. The greatest and fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had no cat.