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

Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary
invested with a certain sanctity, but when they have been long
tenanted it is considered no sin to break them open and rifle them,
the famous Egyptologist, Dr. Huggyns, explaining that a tomb may be
innocently "glened" as soon as its occupant is done "smellynge," the
soul being then all exhaled. This reasonable view is now generally
accepted by archaeologists, whereby the noble science of Curiosity has
been greatly dignified.
TOPE, v. To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig.
In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping
nations are in the forefront of civilization and power. When pitted
against the hard‐drinking Christians the abstemious Mahometans go down
like grass before the scythe. In India one hundred thousand
beef‐eating and brandy‐and‐soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two
hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race.
With what an easy grace the whisky‐loving American pushed the temperate
Spaniard out of his possessions! From the time when the Berserkers
ravaged all the coasts of western Europe and lay drunk in every
conquered port it has been the same way: everywhere the nations that
drink too much are observed to fight rather well and not too
righteously. Wherefore the estimable old ladies who abolished the
canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially
augmented the nation's military power.
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