Dr. Druring and his wife sat in the library. The scientist was in rare good humor.
"I have just obtained, by exchange with another collector," he said, "a splendid specimen of the ophiophagus."
"And what may that be?" the lady inquired with a somewhat languid interest.
"Why, bless my soul, what profound ignorance! My dear, a man who ascertains after marriage that his wife does not know Greek, is entitled to a divorce. The ophiophagus is a snake which eats other snakes."
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Thursday, January 15, 2026
Grounds for Divorce
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), "The Man and the Snake," The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs, ed. S.T. Joshi (New York: The Library of America, 2011), pp. 160-166 (at 165):