The Devil's Dictionary (12 page)

INFLUENCE, n. In politics, a visionary
quo
given in exchange for a
substantial
quid
.

INFRALAPSARIAN, n. One who ventures to believe that Adam need not have
sinned unless he had a mind to—in opposition to the Supralapsarians,
who hold that that luckless person's fall was decreed from the
beginning. Infralapsarians are sometimes called Sublapsarians without
material effect upon the importance and lucidity of their views about
Adam.

Two theologues once, as they wended their way
To chapel, engaged in colloquial fray—
An earnest logomachy, bitter as gall,
Concerning poor Adam and what made him fall.
"'Twas Predestination," cried one—"for the Lord
Decreed he should fall of his own accord."
"Not so—'twas Free will," the other maintained,
"Which led him to choose what the Lord had ordained."
So fierce and so fiery grew the debate
That nothing but bloodshed their dudgeon could sate;
So off flew their cassocks and caps to the ground
And, moved by the spirit, their hands went round.
Ere either had proved his theology right
By winning, or even beginning, the fight,
A gray old professor of Latin came by,
A staff in his hand and a scowl in his eye,
And learning the cause of their quarrel (for still
As they clumsily sparred they disputed with skill
Of foreordination freedom of will)
Cried:  "Sirrahs! this reasonless warfare compose:
Atwixt ye's no difference worthy of blows.
The sects ye belong to—I'm ready to swear
Ye wrongly interpret the names that they bear.
You
—Infralapsarian son of a clown!—
Should only contend that Adam slipped down;
While
you
—you Supralapsarian pup!—
Should nothing aver but that Adam slipped up.
It's all the same whether up or down
You slip on a peel of banana brown.
Even Adam analyzed not his blunder,
But thought he had slipped on a peal of thunder!

INGRATE, n. One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise
an object of charity.

"All men are ingrates," sneered the cynic.  "Nay,"
The good philanthropist replied;
"I did great service to a man one day
Who never since has cursed me to repay,
Nor vilified."
"Ho!" cried the cynic, "lead me to him straight—
With veneration I am overcome,
And fain would have his blessing."  "Sad your fate—
He cannot bless you, for AI grieve to state
This man is dumb."

Ariel Selp

INJURY, n. An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight.

INJUSTICE, n. A burden which of all those that we load upon others
and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the
back.

INK, n. A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic and
water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
intellectual crime. The properties of ink are peculiar and
contradictory: it may be used to make reputations and unmake them; to
blacken them and to make them white; but it is most generally and
acceptably employed as a mortar to bind together the stones of an
edifice of fame, and as a whitewash to conceal afterward the rascal
quality of the material. There are men called journalists who have
established ink baths which some persons pay money to get into, others
to get out of. Not infrequently it occurs that a person who has paid
to get in pays twice as much to get out.

INNATE, adj. Natural, inherent—as innate ideas, that is to say,
ideas that we are born with, having had them previously imparted to
us. The doctrine of innate ideas is one of the most admirable faiths
of philosophy, being itself an innate idea and therefore inaccessible
to disproof, though Locke foolishly supposed himself to have given it
"a black eye." Among innate ideas may be mentioned the belief in
one's ability to conduct a newspaper, in the greatness of one's
country, in the superiority of one's civilization, in the importance
of one's personal affairs and in the interesting nature of one's
diseases.

IN'ARDS, n. The stomach, heart, soul and other bowels. Many eminent
investigators do not class the soul as an in'ard, but that acute
observer and renowned authority, Dr. Gunsaulus, is persuaded that the
mysterious organ known as the spleen is nothing less than our
important part. To the contrary, Professor Garrett P. Servis holds
that man's soul is that prolongation of his spinal marrow which forms
the pith of his no tail; and for demonstration of his faith points
confidently to the fact that no tailed animals have no souls.
Concerning these two theories, it is best to suspend judgment by
believing both.

INSCRIPTION, n. Something written on another thing. Inscriptions are
of many kinds, but mostly memorial, intended to commemorate the fame
of some illustrious person and hand down to distant ages the record of
his services and virtues. To this class of inscriptions belongs the
name of John Smith, penciled on the Washington monument. Following
are examples of memorial inscriptions on tombstones: (See EPITAPH.)

"In the sky my soul is found,
And my body in the ground.
By and by my body'll rise
To my spirit in the skies,
Soaring up to Heaven's gate.
1878."
"Sacred to the memory of Jeremiah Tree.  Cut down May 9th, 1862,
aged 27 yrs. 4 mos. and 12 ds.  Indigenous."
"Affliction sore long time she boar,
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
The good old rule who don't apply,
That you are you and I am I.

INTRODUCTION, n. A social ceremony invented by the devil for the
gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies. The
introduction attains its most malevolent development in this century,
being, indeed, closely related to our political system. Every
American being the equal of every other American, it follows that
everybody has the right to know everybody else, which implies the
right to introduce without request or permission. The Declaration of
Independence should have read thus:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right to
make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an
incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly the
liberty to introduce persons to one another without first
ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies; and
the pursuit of another's happiness with a running pack of
strangers."

INVENTOR, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels,
levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

IRRELIGION, n. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.

ITCH, n. The patriotism of a Scotchman.

J is a consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel—
than which nothing could be more absurd. Its original form, which has
been but slightly modified, was that of the tail of a subdued dog, and
it was not a letter but a character, standing for a Latin verb,
jacere
, "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the
dog's tail assumes that shape. This is the origin of the letter, as
expounded by the renowned Dr. Jocolpus Bumer, of the University of
Belgrade, who established his conclusions on the subject in a work of
three quarto volumes and committed suicide on being reminded that the
j in the Roman alphabet had originally no curl.

JEALOUS, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which
can be lost only if not worth keeping.

JESTER, n. An officer formerly attached to a king's household, whose
business it was to amuse the court by ludicrous actions and
utterances, the absurdity being attested by his motley costume. The
king himself being attired with dignity, it took the world some
centuries to discover that his own conduct and decrees were
sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of
all mankind. The jester was commonly called a fool, but the poets and
romancers have ever delighted to represent him as a singularly wise
and witty person. In the circus of to-day the melancholy ghost of the
court fool effects the dejection of humbler audiences with the same
jests wherewith in life he gloomed the marble hall, panged the
patrician sense of humor and tapped the tank of royal tears.

The widow-queen of Portugal
Had an audacious jester
Who entered the confessional
Disguised, and there confessed her.
"Father," she said, "thine ear bend down—
My sins are more than scarlet:
I love my fool—blaspheming clown,
And common, base-born varlet."
"Daughter," the mimic priest replied,
"That sin, indeed, is awful:
The church's pardon is denied
To love that is unlawful.
"But since thy stubborn heart will be
For him forever pleading,
Thou'dst better make him, by decree,
A man of birth and breeding."
She made the fool a duke, in hope
With Heaven's taboo to palter;
Then told a priest, who told the Pope,
Who damned her from the altar!