Explore "A Lifted Finger" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
[The "Chronicle" did a great public service in whipping / and his fellow-rascals out of office. -- "M.H. de Young's / Newspaper".]
What! "you" whip rascals? -- "you", whose gutter blood / Bears, in its dark, dishonorable flood, / Enough of prison-birds' prolific germs / To serve a whole eternity of terms? / "You", for whose back the rods and cudgels strove / Ere yet the ax had hewn them from the grove? / "You", the De Young whose splendor bright and brave / Is phosphorescence from another's grave -- / Till now unknown, by any chance or luck, / Even to the hearts at which you, feebly struck? / "You" whip a rascal out of office? -- "you" / Whose leadless weapon once ignobly blew / Its smoke in six directions to assert / Your lack of appetite for others' dirt?