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THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY Ambrose Bierce - Sunny Hills High School

THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY Ambrose Bierce - Sunny Hills High School

THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY Ambrose Bierce - Sunny Hills High School

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Of a peacefully meditative gnu,<br />

And he said: "I'll pursue, and my hands imbrue<br />

In its blood at a closer interview."<br />

But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw<br />

O'er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;<br />

And he said as he flew: "It is well I withdrew<br />

Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew<br />

That really meritorious gnu."<br />

Jarn Leffer<br />

<strong>Ambrose</strong> <strong>Bierce</strong> The Devil’s Dictionary<br />

GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer.<br />

Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.<br />

GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some<br />

occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various<br />

degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character,<br />

so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person<br />

called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript<br />

of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as<br />

discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found<br />

to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be<br />

very great geese indeed.<br />

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