Today is January 18, 2009, in the United States of America, and the following definition of “Hunger” is not an entry in my Dover Press reproduction of the 1911 edition of Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary. But I found the definition handwritten (by me) in the margin of my copy of the Dover Press reproduction, with an arrow pointing between ‘Humorist’ and ‘Hurricane’.
My hypothesis is that the decline in socialist and labor, third-party local and state election victories in America between 1908 and 1912 accounted for the disillusionment manifest in Bierce’s definition:
Hunger: n. An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a solution to the labor question.
(Read a few biographical words about Ambrose Bierce, from the 1958 Dover paperback edition of The Devil’s Dictionary, here.)
