[analphilosopher] Keith Burgess-Jackson: Ambrose Bierce

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Posted by Keith Burgess-Jackson:
Ambrose Bierce
http://www.analphilosopher.com/posts/1155236457.shtml


   Scrap-Book, n. A book that is commonly edited by a fool. Many persons
   of some small distinction compile scrap-books containing whatever they
   happen to read about themselves or employ others to collect. One of
   these egotists was addressed in the lines following, by Agamemnon
   Melancthon Peters:

     Dear Frank, that scrap-book where you boast
     You keep a record true
     Of every kind of peppered roast
     That's made of you;

     Wherein you paste the printed gibes
     That revel round your name,
     Thinking the laughter of the scribes
     Attests your fame;

     Where all the pictures you arrange
     That comic pencils trace--
     Your funny figure and your strange
     Semitic face--

     Pray lend it me. Wit I have not,
     Nor art, but there I'll list
     The daily drubbings you'd have got
     Had God a fist.

   (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)