## The Devil's Dictionary: H

by Ambrose Bierce

### HABEAS CORPUS

n.
A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when confined for the wrong crime.

### HABIT

n.
A shackle for the free.

### HALF

n.
One of two equal parts into which a thing may be divided, or considered as divided. In the fourteenth century a heated discussion arose among theologists and philosophers as to whether Omniscience could part an object into three halves; and the pious Father Aldrovinus publicly prayed in the cathedral at Rouen that God would demonstrate the affirmative of the proposition in some signal and unmistakable way, and particularly (if it should please Him) upon the body of that hardy blasphemer, Manutius Procinus, who maintained the negative. Procinus, however, was spared to die of the bite of a viper.

### HAND

n.
A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.

### HAPPINESS

n.
An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

### HARANGUE

n.
A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harangue-outang.

### HARBOR

n.
A place where ships taking shelter from stores are exposed to the fury of the customs.

### HARMONISTS

n.
A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.

### HEAVEN

n.
A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.

### HISTORY

n.
An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
Of Roman history, great Niebuhr's shown
'Tis nine-tenths lying. Faith, I wish 'twere known,
Ere we accept great Niebuhr as a guide,
Wherein he blundered and how much he lied.
Salder Bupp

### HOMICIDE

n.
The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another — the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.

### HOMOEOPATHIST

n.
The humorist of the medical profession.

### HOPE

n.
Desire and expectation rolled into one.
Delicious Hope! when naught to man it left —
Of fortune destitute, of friends bereft;
When even his dog deserts him, and his goat
With tranquil disaffection chews his coat
While yet it hangs upon his back; then thou,
The star far-flaming on thine angel brow,
Descendest, radiant, from the skies to hint
The promise of a clerkship in the Mint.
Fogarty Weffing

### HUMANITY

n.
The human race, collectively, exclusive of the anthropoid poets.