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    The Fiend’s Delight by Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)
    The Fiend’s Delight by Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)
    The Fiend’s Delight by Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)
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    The Fiend’s Delight by Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

    By Ambrose Bierce

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    About this ebook

    This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘The Fiend’s Delight’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce’.

    Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Bierce includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

    eBook features:
    * The complete unabridged text of ‘The Fiend’s Delight’
    * Beautifully illustrated with images related to Bierce’s works
    * Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
    * Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateJul 17, 2017
    ISBN9781786564283
    The Fiend’s Delight by Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)
    Author

    Ambrose Bierce

    Ambrose Bierce was an American writer, critic and war veteran. Bierce fought for the Union Army during the American Civil War, eventually rising to the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army following an 1866 expedition across the Great Plains. Bierce’s harrowing experiences during the Civil War, particularly those at the Battle of Shiloh, shaped a writing career that included editorials, novels, short stories and poetry. Among his most famous works are “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “The Boarded Window,” “Chickamauga,” and What I Saw of Shiloh. While on a tour of Civil-War battlefields in 1913, Bierce is believed to have joined Pancho Villa’s army before disappearing in the chaos of the Mexican Revolution.

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      Book preview

      The Fiend’s Delight by Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated) - Ambrose Bierce

      of

      AMBROSE BIERCE

      VOLUME 4 OF 35

      The Fiend’s Delight

      Parts Edition

      By Delphi Classics, 2013

      Version 1

      COPYRIGHT

      ‘The Fiend’s Delight’

      Ambrose Bierce: Parts Edition (in 35 parts)

      First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

      © Delphi Classics, 2017.

      All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

      ISBN: 978 1 78656 428 3

      Delphi Classics

      is an imprint of

      Delphi Publishing Ltd

      Hastings, East Sussex

      United Kingdom

      Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com

      www.delphiclassics.com

      Ambrose Bierce: Parts Edition

      This eBook is Part 4 of the Delphi Classics edition of Ambrose Bierce in 35 Parts. It features the unabridged text of The Fiend’s Delight from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Ambrose Bierce, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

      Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Ambrose Bierce or the Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce in a single eBook.

      Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

      AMBROSE BIERCE

      IN 35 VOLUMES

      Parts Edition Contents

      The Novellas

      1, The Dance of Death

      2, The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter

      3, The Land Beyond the Blow

      The Short Story Collections

      4, The Fiend’s Delight

      5, Cobwebs from an Empty Skull

      6, Present at a Hanging, and Other Ghost Stories

      7, In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians

      8, Can Such Things Be?

      9, Fantastic Fables

      10, Negligible Tales

      11, The Parenticide Club

      12, The Fourth Estate

      13, The Ocean Wave

      14, Kings of Beasts

      15, Two Administrations

      16, Miscellaneous Tales

      The Poetry Collections

      17, Black Beetles in Amber

      18, Shapes of Clay

      19, Fables in Rhyme

      20, Some Ante-Mortem Epitaphs

      21, The Scrap Heap

      The Non-Fiction

      22, The Shadow on the Dial, and Other Essays

      23, The Devil’s Dictionary

      24, Write It Right

      25, Ashes of the Beacon

      26, On with the Dance!: A Review

      27, A Cynic Looks at Life

      28, Tangential Views

      29, Bits of Autobiography

      30, Miscellaneous Articles and Reviews

      31, Uncollected Essays

      The Letters

      32, The Letters of Ambrose Bierce

      The Criticism

      33, The Criticism

      Biercian Texts

      34, Biercian Articles and Reviews

      The Biography

      35, Ambrose Bierce: A Biography by Carey Mcwilliams

      www.delphiclassics.com

      The Fiend’s Delight

      In 1872, Ambrose Bierce and his wife Mollie moved to England, where he hoped to achieve literary success.  In fact, he published his first book there.  The Fiend’s Delight appeared under Ambrose Bierce’s pseudonym, Dod Grile, published in 1873 by John Camden Hotten, of London.  This early collection was a hodgepodge of Bierce’s fiction, poetry, essays and personal reflection.  Many of the pieces, published earlier in American journals, demonstrate his combative, though often darkly humorous journalistic style, showcasing his witty satire and often biting sarcasm.

      First edition published by John Camden Hotton of London in 1873

      CONTENTS

      PREFACE.

      SOME FICTION.

      One More Unfortunate.

      The Strong Young Man of Colusa.

      The Glad New Year.

      The Late Dowling, Senior.

      Love’s Labour Lost.

      A Comforter.

      Little Isaac.

      The Heels of Her.

      A Tale of Two Feet.

      The Scolliver Pig.

      Mr. Hunker’s Mourner.

      A Bit of Chivalry.

      The Head of the Family.

      Deathbed Repentance.

      The New Church that was not Built.

      A Tale of the Great Quake.

      Johnny.

      The Child’s Provider.

      Boys who Began Wrong.

      A Kansas Incident.

      Mr. Grile’s Girl.

      His Railway.

      Mr. Gish Makes a Present.

      A Cow–County Pleasantry.

      The Optimist, and What He Died Of.

      The Root of Education.

      Retribution.

      Margaret the Childless.

      The Discomfited Demon.

      The Mistake of a Life.

      L. S.

      The Baffled Asian.

      Tall Talk.

      A Call to Dinner.

      On Death and Immortality.

      Music–Muscular and Mechanical.

      The Good Young Man.

      The Average Parson.

      Did We Eat One Another?

      Your Friend’s Friend.

      Le Diable est aux Vaches.

      Angels and Angles.

      A Wingless Insect.

      Pork on the Hoof.

      The Young Person.

      A Certain Popular Fallacy.

      Pastoral Journalism.

      Mendicity’s Mistake.

      Picnicking considered as a Mistake.

      Thanksgiving Day.

      Flogging.

      Reflections upon the Beneficent Influence of the Press.

      Charity.

      The Study of Human Nature.

      Additional Talk–Done in the Country.

      Current Journalings.

      Obituary Notices.

      Christians.

      Pagans.

      Musings, Philosophical and Theological.

      Laughorisms.

      Items from the Press of Interior California.

      Poesy.

      Ye Idyll of Ye Hippopopotamus.

      Epitaph on George Francis Train.

      Jerusalem, Old and New.

      Communing with Nature.

      Conservatism and Progress.

      Inter Arma Silent Leges.

      Quintessence.

      Resurgam.

      THE FIEND’S DELIGHT.

      BY DOD GRILE.

      "Count that day lost whose low descending sun

      Views from thy hand no

      TO

      THE IMMUTABLE AND INFALLIBLE GODDESS,

      GOOD TASTE,

      IN GRATITUDE FOR HER CONDEMNATION OF ALL SUPERIOR AUTHORS,

      AND IN THE HOPE OF PROPITIATING HER CREATORS

      AND EXPOUNDERS,

      This Volume is reverentially Dedicated

      BY HER DEVOUT WORSHIPPER,

      THE AUTHOR.

      PREFACE.

      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.

      DOD GRILE.

      SOME FICTION.

      One More Unfortunate.

      It was midnight-a black, wet, midnight-in a great city by the sea. The church clocks were booming the hour, in tones half-smothered by the marching rain, when an officer of the watch saw a female figure glide past him like a ghost in the gloom, and make directly toward a wharf. The officer felt that some dreadful tragedy was about to be enacted, and started in pursuit. Through the sleeping city sped those two dark figures like shadows athwart a tomb. Out along the deserted wharf to its farther end fled the mysterious fugitive, the guardian of the night vainly endeavouring to overtake, and calling to her to stay. Soon she stood upon the extreme end of the pier, in the scourging rain which lashed her fragile figure and blinded her eyes with other tears than those of grief. The night wind tossed her tresses wildly in air, and beneath her bare feet the writhing billows struggled blackly upward for their prey. At this fearful moment the panting officer stumbled and fell! He was badly bruised; he felt angry and misanthropic. Instead of rising to his feet, he sat doggedly up and began chafing his abraded shin. The desperate woman raised her white arms heavenward for the final plunge, and the voice of the gale seemed like the dread roaring of the waters in her ears, as down, down, she went — in imagination — to a black death among the spectral piles. She backed a few paces to secure an impetus, cast a last look upon the stony officer, with a wild shriek sprang to the awful verge and came near losing her balance. Recovering herself with an effort, she turned her face again to the officer, who was clawing about for his missing club. Having secured it, he started to leave.

      In a cosy, vine-embowered cottage near the sounding sea, lives and suffers a blighted female. Nothing being known of her past history, she is treated by her neighbours with marked respect. She never speaks of the past, but it has been remarked that whenever the stalwart form of a certain policeman passes her door, her clean, delicate face assumes an expression which can only be described as frozen profanity.

      The Strong Young Man of Colusa.

      Professor Cramer conducted a side-show in the wake of a horse-opera, and the same sojourned at Colusa. Enters unto the side show a powerful young man of the Colusa sort, and would see his money’s worth. Blandly and with conscious pride the Professor directs the young man’s attention to his fine collection of living snakes. Lithely the blacksnake uncoils in his sight. Voluminously the bloated boa convolves before him. All horrent the cobra exalts his hooded head, and the spanning jaws fly open. Quivers and chitters the tail of the cheerful rattlesnake; silently slips out the forked tongue, and is as silently absorbed. The fangless adder warps up the leg of the Professor, lays clammy coils about his neck, and pokes a flattened head curiously into his open mouth. The young man of Colusa is interested; his feelings transcend expression. Not a syllable breathes he, but with a deep-drawn sigh he turns his broad back upon the astonishing display, and goes thoughtfully forth into his native wild. Half an hour later might have been seen that brawny Colusan, emerging from an adjacent forest with a strong faggot.

      Then this Colusa young man unto the appalled Professor thus: Ther ain’t no good place yer in Kerloosy fur fittin’ out serpence to be subtler than all the beasts o’ the field. Ther’s enmity atween our seed and ther seed, an’ it shell brooze ther head. And with a singleness of purpose and a rapt attention to detail that would have done credit to a lean porker garnering the strewn kernels behind a deaf old man who plants his field with corn, he started in upon that reptilian host, and exterminated it with a careful thoroughness of extermination.

      The Glad New Year.

      A poor brokendown drunkard returned to his dilapidated domicile early on New Year’s morn. The great bells of the churches were jarring the creamy moonlight which lay above the soggy undercrust of mud and snow. As he heard their joyous peals, announcing the birth of a new year, his heart smote his old waistcoat like a remorseful sledge-hammer.

      Why, soliloquized he, should not those bells also proclaim the advent of a new resolution? I have not made one for several weeks, and it’s about time. I’ll swear off.

      He did it, and at that moment a new light seemed to be shed upon his pathway; his wife came out of the house with a tin lantern. He rushed frantically to meet her. She saw the new and holy purpose in his eye. She recognised it readily-she had seen it before. They embraced and wept. Then stretching the wreck of what had once been a manly form to its full length, he raised his eyes to heaven and one hand as near there as he could get it, and there in the pale moonlight, with only his wondering wife, and the angels, and a cow or two, for witnesses, he swore he would from that moment abstain from all intoxicating liquors until death should them part. Then looking down and tenderly smiling into the eyes of his wife, he said: Is it not well, dear one? With a face beaming all over with

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