The Devil's Dictionary VI

Here's a sixth entry in an ongoing series from Ambrose Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary.”

Bierce (1842-1914) was a brilliant but underappreciated American author and journalist who had a long and tumultuous releationship with press baron William Randolph Hearst, and was a misanthrope possibly without peer.

DAWN

Noun. The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.