The Fiend's Delight Read online

  Produced by Charles Aldarondo

  THE FIEND'S DELIGHT

  By Dod Grile

  "Count that day lost whose low descending sun Views from thy hand noworthy action done."

  New York:

  1873.

  TO THE IMMUTABLE AND INFALLIBLE GODDESS, GOOD TASTE, IN GRATITUDEFOR HER CONDEMNATION OF ALL SUPERIOR AUTHORS, AND IN THE HOPE OFPROPITIATING HER CREATORS AND EXPOUNDERS, This Volume is reverentiallyDedicated BY HER DEVOUT WORSHIPPER,

  THE AUTHOR.

  PREFACE.

  The atrocities constituting this "cold collation" of diabolisms aretaken mainly from various Californian journals. They are cast in theAmerican language, and liberally enriched with unintelligibility. Ifthey shall prove incomprehensible on this side of the Atlantic, thereader 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 peoplein one way and another; but the reader will please to observe that theywere not people worth the trouble of leaving alive. Besides, I had theinterests of my collaborator to consult. In writing, as in compiling,I have been ably assisted by my scholarly friend Mr. Satan; and to thisworthy 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 merelyimitative mind. Palmam qui meruit ferat--I shall be content with theprofit.

  DOD GRILE.

  SOME FICTION.

  "One More Unfortunate."

  It was midnight--a black, wet, midnight--in a great city by the sea. Thechurch clocks were booming the hour, in tones half-smothered by themarching rain, when an officer of the watch saw a female figure glidepast 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 darkfigures like shadows athwart a tomb. Out along the deserted wharf toits farther end fled the mysterious fugitive, the guardian of the nightvainly endeavouring to overtake, and calling to her to stay. Soon shestood upon the extreme end of the pier, in the scourging rain whichlashed her fragile figure and blinded her eyes with other tears thanthose of grief. The night wind tossed her tresses wildly in air, andbeneath her bare feet the writhing billows struggled blackly upwardfor their prey. At this fearful moment the panting officer stumbled andfell! He was badly bruised; he felt angry and misanthropic. Instead ofrising to his feet, he sat doggedly up and began chafing his abradedshin. The desperate woman raised her white arms heavenward for the finalplunge, and the voice of the gale seemed like the dread roaring of thewaters in her ears, as down, down, she went--in imagination--to a blackdeath among the spectral piles. She backed a few paces to secure animpetus, cast a last look upon the stony officer, with a wild shrieksprang to the awful verge and came near losing her balance. Recoveringherself with an effort, she turned her face again to the officer, whowas clawing about for his missing club. Having secured it, he started toleave.

  In a cosy, vine-embowered cottage near the sounding sea, lives andsuffers a blighted female. Nothing being known of her past history, sheis treated by her neighbours with marked respect. She never speaks ofthe past, but it has been remarked that whenever the stalwart form of acertain policeman passes her door, her clean, delicate face assumes anexpression which can only be described as frozen profanity. The StrongYoung Man of Colusa.

  Professor Cramer conducted a side-show in the wake of a horse-opera, andthe same sojourned at Colusa. Enters unto the side show a powerful youngman of the Colusa sort, and would see his money's worth. Blandly andwith conscious pride the Professor directs the young man's attention tohis fine collection of living snakes. Lithely the blacksnake uncoilsin his sight. Voluminously the bloated boa convolves before him. Allhorrent the cobra exalts his hooded head, and the spanning jaws flyopen. Quivers and chitters the tail of the cheerful rattlesnake;silently slips out the forked tongue, and is as silently absorbed. Thefangless adder warps up the leg of the Professor, lays clammy coilsabout his neck, and pokes a flattened head curiously into his openmouth. The young man of Colusa is interested; his feelings transcendexpression. Not a syllable breathes he, but with a deep-drawn sigh heturns his broad back upon the astonishing display, and goes thoughtfullyforth into his native wild. Half an hour later might have been seen thatbrawny Colusan, emerging from an adjacent forest with a strong faggot.

  Then this Colusa young man unto the appalled Professor thus: "Ther ain'tno good place yer in Kerloosy fur fittin' out serpence to be subtlerthan all the beasts o' the field. Ther's enmity atween our seed and therseed, an' it shell brooze ther head." And with a singleness of purposeand a rapt attention to detail that would have done credit to a leanporker garnering the strewn kernels behind a deaf old man who plantshis field with corn, he started in upon that reptilian host, andexterminated it with a careful thoroughness of extermination.