The Fiend's Delight by Ambrose Bierce

Author:Ambrose Bierce [Bierce, Ambrose]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2003-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

By the way, we should dearly love to know how to baptize a Chinaman. We have a shrewd suspicion that it is done as the Mongolian laundryman dampens our linen: by taking the mouth full of water and spouting it over the convert's head in a fine spray. If so, it follows that the pastor having most "cheek" is best qualified for cleansing the pagan soul.

An important question arises here. Suppose Dong, Gong, and Tong to have been baptized in this way, who pronounced that efficacious formula, "I baptize thee in the name," etc.? Clearly the parson, with his mouth full of water, could not have done so at the instant of baptism, and if the sentence was spoken by any other person it was a falsehood. It must therefore have been spoken either before the minister distended his cheeks, or after he had exhausted them. In either case, according to the learned Dr. Sicklewit, the ceremony is utterly null and void of effect. (Study of Baptism, vol. ix., ch. cxix. vi. p. 627, line 13 from bottom.)

Possibly, however, D., G. and T. were not baptized in this way. Then how the devil were they baptized?-and why?

…. Henry Wolfe, of Kentucky, aged one hundred and eight years, who had never been sick in his life, lay down one fine day and sawed his neck asunder with a razor. Henry did not believe in self-slaughter; he despised it. It was Henry's opinion that as God had placed us here we should stay until it was His pleasure to remove us. That is also our opinion, and the opinion of all other good Christians who would like to die but are afraid to do it. It will be observed that Henry could not claim originality of opinion.

But there is a point beyond which hope deferred maketh the heart sick, and Henry had passed that point. He waited patiently till he was naked of scalp and deaf of ear. He endured without repining the bent back, the sightless eyes, and the creaking joints incident to over-maturity. But when he saw a man perish of senility, who in infancy had called him "Old Hank," Mr. Wolfe thought patience had ceased to be commendable, and he abandoned his post of duty without being regularly relieved.

It is to be hoped he will be hotly punished for it.

…. One day an obscure and unimportant person pitched himself among the rolling porpoises, from a ferry-boat, and an officious busy-body, not at once clearly apprehending that the matter was none of his immediate business, hied him down to the engineer and commanded that official to "back her, hard!" As it is customary upon the high seas for such orders to emanate from the officer in command, that particular boat kept forging ahead, and the unimportant old person carried out his original design-that is, he went to the bottom like an iron wedge. Rises the press in its wrath and prates about a Grand Jury! Shrieks an intelligent public, in

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