The Fiend's Delight
The Fiend's Delight
The atrocities constituting this "cold collation" of diabolisms are taken mainly from various Californian journals. They are cast in the American language, and liberally enriched with unintelligibility. If they shall prove incomprehensible on this side of the Atlantic, the reader can pass to the other side at a moderately extortionate charge. In the pursuit of my design I think I have killed a good many people in one way and another; but the reader will please to observe that they were not people worth the trouble of leaving alive. Besides, I had the interests of my collaborator to consult. In writing, as in compiling, I have been ably assisted by my scholarly friend Mr. Satan; and to this worthy gentleman must be attributed most of the views herein set forth. While the plan of the work is partly my own, its spirit is wholly his; and this illustrates the ascendancy of the creative over the merely imitative mind. Palmam qui meruit ferat-I shall be content with the profit.
Book Excerpt
-but it
must be told by the conscientious novelist. William repaid all this
affectionate solicitude-all this womanly devotion, all this trust,
confidence, and abnegation in a manner that needs not be
particularly specified.
A short, sharp curve in the middle of that iron fire-poker is eloquent of a wrong redressed. Little Isaac.
Mr. Gobwottle came home from a meeting of the Temperance Legion extremely drunk. He went to the bed, piled himself loosely atop of it and forgot his identity. About the middle of the night, his wife, who was sitting up darning stockings, heard a voice from the profoundest depths of the bolster: "Say, Jane?"
Jane gave a vicious stab with the needle, impaling one of her fingers, and continued her work. There was a long silence, faintly punctuated by the bark of a distant dog. Again that voice--"Say-Jane!"
The lady laid aside her work and wearily, replied: "Isaac, do go to sleep; they are off."
Another and longer pause, during which the ticking of the clock became painful
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