The Devil's Dictionary

And blushingly said to him:

“This boot, I’m sure, is too high to endure,

It hurts my — hurts my — limb.”

The salesman smiled in a manner mild,

Like an artless, undesigning child;

Then, checking himself, to his face he gave

A look as sorrowful as the grave,

Though he didn’t care two figs

For her paints and throes,

As he stroked her toes,

Remarking with speech and manner just

Befitting his calling: “Madam, I trust

That it doesn’t hurt your twigs.”

B. Percival Dike

LINEN, n. “A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp.” — Calcraft the Hangman.

LITIGANT, n. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.

LITIGATION, n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

LIVER, n. A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. The sentiments and emotions which every literary anatomist now knows to haunt the heart were anciently believed to infest the liver; and even Gascoygne, speaking of the emotional side of human nature, calls it “our hepaticall parte.” It was at one time considered the seat of life; hence its name — liver, the thing we live with. The liver is heaven’s best gift to the goose; without it that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg pate.

LL.D. Letters indicating the degree Legumptionorum Doctor, one learned in laws, gifted with legal gumption. Some suspicion is cast upon this derivation by the fact that the title was formerly LL.d., and conferred only upon gentlemen distinguished for their wealth. At the date of this writing Columbia University is considering the expediency of making another degree for clergymen, in place of the old D.D. — Damnator Diaboli. The new honor will be known as Sanctorum Custus, and written $$c. The name of the Rev. John Satan has been suggested as a suitable recipient by a lover of consistency, who points out that Professor Harry Thurston Peck has long enjoyed the advantage of a degree.

LOCK-AND-KEY, n. The distinguishing device of civilization and enlightenment.

LODGER, n. A less popular name for the Second Person of that delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.

LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion — thus:

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.

Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore —

Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.

LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem — a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.

‘Tis said by divers of the scholar-men

That poor Salmasius died of Milton’s pen.

Alas! we cannot know if this is true,

For reading Milton’s wit we perish too.

LOGANIMITY, n. The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance while maturing a plan of revenge.

LONGEVITY, n. Uncommon extension of the fear of death.

LOOKING-GLASS, n. A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man’s disillusion given.

The King of Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso looked saw, not his own image, but only that of the king. A certain courtier who had long enjoyed the king’s favor and was thereby enriched beyond any other subject of the realm, said to the king: “Give me, I pray, thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of thine august presence I may yet do homage before thy visible shadow, prostrating myself night and morning in the glory of thy benign countenance, as which nothing has so divine splendor, O Noonday Sun of the Universe!”

Please with the speech, the king commanded that the mirror be conveyed to the courtier’s palace; but after, having gone thither without apprisal, he found it in an apartment where was naught but idle lumber. And the mirror was dimmed with dust and overlaced with cobwebs. This so angered him that he fisted it hard, shattering the glass, and was sorely hurt. Enraged all the more by this mischance, he commanded that the ungrateful courtier be thrown into prison, and that the glass be repaired and taken back to his own palace; and this was done. But when the king looked again on the mirror he saw not his image as before, but only the figure of a crowned ass, having a bloody bandage on one of its hinder hooves — as the artificers and all who had looked upon it had before discerned but feared to report. Taught wisdom and charity, the king restored his courtier to liberty, had the mirror set into the back of the throne and reigned many years with justice and humility; and one day when he fell asleep in death while