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

G.J.
Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary
LORE, n. Learning‐‐particularly that sort which is not derived from
a regular course of instruction but comes of the reading of occult
books, or by nature. This latter is commonly designated as folk‐lore
and embraces popularly myths and superstitions. In Baring‐Gould's
_Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_ the reader will find many of these
traced backward, through various people son converging lines, toward a
common origin in remote antiquity. Among these are the fables of
"Teddy the Giant Killer," "The Sleeping John Sharp Williams," "Little
Red Riding Hood and the Sugar Trust," "Beauty and the Brisbane," "The
Seven Aldermen of Ephesus," "Rip Van Fairbanks," and so forth. The
fable with Goethe so affectingly relates under the title of "The
Erl‐King" was known two thousand years ago in Greece as "The Demos and
the Infant Industry." One of the most general and ancient of these
myths is that Arabian tale of "Ali Baba and the Forty Rockefellers."
LOSS, n. Privation of that which we had, or had not. Thus, in the
latter sense, it is said of a defeated candidate that he "lost his
election"; and of that eminent man, the poet Gilder, that he has "lost
his mind." It is in the former and more legitimate sense, that the
word is used in the famous epitaph:
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