The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 / Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales

hoary and moss-grown truths.

As parlor-soldiers, graced with fancy-scars,Rehearse their bravery in imagined wars;As paupers, gathered in congenial flocks,Babble of banks, insurances, and stocks;As each if oft'nest eloquent of whatHe hates or covets, but possesses not;As cowards talk of pluck; misers of waste;Scoundrels of honor; country clowns of taste;Ladies of logic; devotees of sin;Topers of water; temperance men of gin—

my lord Byron sang of waltzing. Let us forgive and—remembering his poor foot—pity him. Yet the opinions of famous persons possess an interest that is akin, in the minds of many plain folk, to weight. Let us, then, incline an ear to another: 'Laura was fond of waltzing, as every brisk and innocent young girl should be,' wrote he than who none has written more nobly in our time—he who 'could appreciate good women and describe them; and draw them more truly than any novelist in the language, except Miss Austen.' The same sentiment with reference to dancing appears in many places in his immortal pages. In his younger days as attache of legation in Germany, Mr. Thackeray became a practiced waltzer. As a censor he thus possesses over Lord Byron whatever advantage may accrue from knowledge of the subject whereof he wrote.

We are happily not called upon to institute a comparison of character between the two distinguished moralists, though the same, drawn masterly, might not be devoid of entertainment and instruction. But two or three other points of distinction should be kept in mind as having sensible relation to the question of competency to bear witness. Byron wrote of the women of a corrupted court; Thackeray of the women of that society indicated by the phrase 'Persons whom one meets'—and meets now. Byron wrote of an obsolete dance, described by Irving in terms of decided strength; Thackeray wrote of our own waltz. In turning off his brilliant and witty verses it is unlikely that any care as to their truthfulness disturbed the glassy copiousness of the Byronic utterance; this child of nature did never consider too curiously of justice, moderation and such inventions of the schools. The key-note of all the other wrote is given by his faithful pen when it avers that it never 'signed the page that registered a lie.' Byron was a 'gentleman of wit and pleasure about town'; Thackeray the father of daughters. However, all this is perhaps little to the purpose. We owe no trifling debt to Lord Byron for his sparkling and spirited lines, and by no good dancer would they be 'willingly let die.' Poetry, music, dancing—they are one art. The muses are sisters, yet they do not quarrel. Of a truth, even as was Laura, so every brisk and innocent young girl should be. And it is safe to predict that she will be. If she would enjoy the advantage of belonging to Our Set she must be.

As a rule, the ideas of the folk who cherish a prejudice against dancing are crude rather than unclean—the outcome much more of ignorance than salacity. Of course there are exceptions. In my great work on The Prude all will be attended to with due discrimination in apportionment of censure. At present the spirit of the dance makes merry with my pen, for from yonder 'stately pleasure-dome' (decreed by one Kubla Khan, formerly of The Big Bonanza Mining Company) the strains of the Blue Danube float out upon the night. Avaunt, miscreants! lest we chase ye with flying feet and do our little dance upon your unwholesome carcasses. Already the toes of our partners begin to twiddle beneath their petticoats. Come, then, Stoopid—can't you move? No!—they change it to a galop—and eke the good old Sturm. Firm and steady, now, fair partner mine, whiles we run that gobemouche down and trample him miserably. There: light and softly again—the servants will remove the remains.

And hark! that witching strain once more:

EPIGRAMS

If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike hypocrites of Canada.

To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil, and to pictures of the latter it appends a tail to represent the note of interrogation.

'Immoral' is the judgment of the stalled ox on the gamboling lamb.

In forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be construed as indifference.

True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.

Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.

Reason is fallible and virtue vincible; the winds vary and the needle forsakes the pole, but stupidity never errs and never intermits. Since it has been found that the axis of the earth wabbles, stupidity is indispensable as a standard of constancy.

In order that the list of able women may be memorized for use at meetings of the oppressed sex, Heaven has considerately made it brief.

Firmness is my persistency; obstinacy is yours.

A little heap of dust,
A little streak of rust,
A stone without a name—
Lo! hero, sword and fame.

Our vocabulary is defective; we give the same name to woman's lack of temptation and man's lack of opportunity.

'You scoundrel, you have wronged me,' hissed the philosopher. 'May you live forever!'

The man who thinks that a garnet can be made a ruby by setting it in brass is writing 'dialect' for publication.

'Who art thou, stranger, and what dost thou seek?'