SHERIFF, n. In America the chief executive office of a country, whose most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.John Elmer Pettibone Cajee(I write of him with little glee) Was just as bad as he could be.'Twas frequently remarked I swon The sun has never looked upon So bad a man as Neighbor John.A sinner through and through, he had This added fault it made him mad To know another man was bad.In such a case he thought it right To rise at any hour of night And quench that wicked person's light.Despite the town's entreaties, he Would hale him to the nearest tree And leave him swinging wide and free.Or sometimes, if the humor came, A luckless wight's reluctant frame Was given to the cheerful flame.While it was turning nice and brown, All unconcerned John met the frown Of that austere and righteous town.How sad, his neighbors said, that he So scornful of the law should be -- An anar c, h, i, s, t.(That is the way that they preferred To utter the abhorrent word, So strong the aversion that it stirred.)Resolved, they said, continuing,That Badman John must cease this thing Of having his unlawful fling.Now, by these sacred relics --here Each man had out a souvenir Got at a lynching yesteryear --By these we swear he shall forsake His ways, nor cause our hearts to ache By sins of rope and torch and stake.We'll tie his red right hand until He'll have small freedom to fulfil The mandates of his lawless will.So, in convention then and there, They named him Sheriff. The affair Was opened, it is said, with prayer. --J. Milton Sloluck
More Quotes from Ambrose Gwinett Bierce:
ABRACADABRA. By Abracadabra we signify An infinite number of things.'Tis the answer to What and How and Why And Whence and Whither --a word whereby The Truth (with the comfort it brings) Is open to all who grope in night, Crying for Wisdom's holy light. Whether the word is a verb or a noun Is knowledge beyond my reach. I only know that 'tis handed down. From sage to sage, From age to age -- An immortal part of speech; Of an ancient man the tale is told That he lived to be ten centuries old, In a cave on a mountain side.(True, he finally died.) The fame of his wisdom filled the land, For his head was bald, and you'll understand His beard was long and white And his eyes uncommonly bright. Philosophers gathered from far and near To sit at his feat and hear and hear, Though he never was heard To utter a word But Abracadabra, abracadab, Abracada, abracad, Abraca, abrac, abra, ab'Twas all he had,'Twas all they wanted to hear, and each Made copious notes of the mystical speech, Which they published next -- A trickle of text In the meadow of commentary. Mighty big books were these, In a number, as leaves of trees In learning, remarkably --very; He's dead, As I said, And the books of the sages have perished, But his wisdom is sacredly cherished. In Abracadabra it solemnly rings, Like an ancient bell that forever swings. O, I love to hear That word make clear Humanity's General Sense of Things. --Jamrach Holobom.Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
EXPERIENCE, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced. To one who, journeying through night and fog, Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog, Experience, like the rising of the dawn, Reveals the path that he should not have gone. --Joel Frad Bink.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
ALLIGATOR, n. The crocodile of America, superior in every detail to the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World. Herodotus says the Indus is, with one exception, the only river that produces crocodiles, but they appear to have gone West and grown up with the other rivers. From the notches on his back the alligator is called a sawrian.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Capital Punishment, a penalty regarding the justice and expediency of which many worthy persons - including all the assassins - entertain grave misgivings
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
FAIRY, n. A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, that formerly inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits, and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children. The fairies are now believed by naturalist to be extinct, though a clergyman of the Church of England saw three near Colchester as lately as 1855, while passing through a park after dining with the lord of the manor. The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected that his account of it was incoherent. In the year 1807 a troop of fairies visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a peasant, who had been seen to enter it with a bundle of clothing. The son of a wealthy bourgeois disappeared about the same time, but afterward returned. He had seen the abduction been in pursuit of the fairies. Justinian Gaux, a writer of the fourteenth century, avers that so great is the fairies' power of transformation that he saw one change itself into two opposing armies and fight a battle with great slaughter, and that the next day, after it had resumed its original shape and gone away, there were seven hundred bodies of the slain which the villagers had to bury. He does not say if any of the wounded recovered. In the time of Henry III, of England, a law was made which prescribed the death penalty for Kyllynge, wowndynge, or mamynge a fairy, and it was universally respected.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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