FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest
approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.
When David said: "All men are liars," Dave,
Himself a liar, fibbed like any thief.
Perhaps he thought to weaken disbelief
By proof that even himself was not a slave
To Truth; though I suspect the aged knave
Had been of all her servitors the chief
Had he but known a fig's reluctant leaf
Is more than e'er she wore on land or wave.
No, David served not the Naked Truth when he
Struck that sledge-hammer blow at all his race;
Nor did he hit the nail upon the head:
For reason shows that it could never be,
And the facts contradict him to his face.
Men are not liars all, for some are dead.
Bartle Quinker.
FICKLENESS, n. The iterated satiety of an enterprising affection.
FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's
tail on the entrails of a cat.
To Rome said Nero: "If to smoke you turn
I shall not cease to fiddle while you burn."
To Nero Rome replied: "Pray do your worst,
'T is my excuse that you were fiddling first."
Orm Pludge.
FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
FINANCE, n. The art or science of managing revenues and resources for
the best advantage of the manager. The pronunciation of this word with
the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America's most
precious discoveries and possessions.
FLAG, n. A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and
ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one
sees on vacant lots in London--"Rubbish may be shot here."
FLESH, n. The Second Person of the secular Trinity.
FLOP, v. Suddenly to change one's opinions and go over to another party.
The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been
severely criticised by some of our partisan journals.
FLY-SPECK, The prototype of punctuation. It is observed by Garvinus
that the systems of punctuation in use by the various literary nations
depended originally upon the social habits and general diet of the flies
infesting the several countries. These creatures, which have always
been distinguished for a neighborly and companionable familiarity with
authors, liberally or niggardly embellish the manuscripts in process of
growth under the pen, according to their bodily habit, bringing out
the sense of the work by a species of interpretation superior to,
and independent of, the writer's powers. The "old masters" of
literature--that is to say, the early writers whose work is so esteemed
by later scribes and critics in the same language--never punctuated at
all, but worked right along free-handed, without that abruption of' the
thought which comes from the use of points. (We observe the same thing
in children to-day, whose usage in this particular is a striking and
beautiful instance of the law that the infancy of individuals reproduces
the methods and stages of development characterizing the infancy of
races.) In the work of these primitive scribes all the punctuation
is found, by the modern investigator with his optical instruments and
chemical tests, to have been inserted by the writers' ingenious and
serviceable collaborator, the common house-fly--Musca maledicta. In
transcribing these ancient MSS, for the purpose either of making the
work their own or preserving what they naturally regard as divine
revelations, later writers reverently and accurately copy whatever marks
they find upon the papyrus or parchment, to the unspeakable enhancement
of the lucidity of the thought and value of the work. Writers
contemporary with the copyists naturally avail themselves of the obvious
advantages of these marks in their own work, and with such assistance
as the flies of their own household may be willing to grant, frequently
rival and sometimes surpass the older compositions, in respect at
least of punctuation, which is no small glory. Fully to understand the
important services that flies perform to literature it is only
necessary to lay a page of some popular novelist alongside a saucer of
cream-and-molassess in a sunny room and observe "how the wit brightens
and the style refines" in accurate proportion to the duration of
exposure.
FOLLY, n. That "gift and faculty divine" whose creative and controlling
energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions, and adorns his life.
Folly! although Erasmus praised thee once
In a thick volume, and all authors known,
If not thy glory yet thy power have shown,
Deign to take homage from thy son who hunts
Through all thy maze his brothers, fool and dunce,
Their lives to mend and to sustain his own,
However feebly be his arrows thrown,
Howe'er each hide the flying weapon blunts.
All-Father Folly! be it mine to raise,
With lusty lung, here on this western strand
With all thine offspring thronged from every land,
Thyself inspiring me, the song of praise.
And if too weak, I 'll hire, to help me bawl,
Dick Watson Gilder, gravest of us all.