<?xml version="1.0"?>       <!DOCTYPE package PUBLIC "+//ISBN 0-9673008-1-9//DTD OEB 1.0 Package//EN"         "http://openebook.org/dtds/oeb-1.0/oebdoc1.dtd"><html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/x-oeb1-document; charset=utf-8" /><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/x-oeb1-css" href="devil.css" /><title>The Devil&#8217;s Dictionary: Y</title></head><body lang="en-US">  <h1>Y</h1> <p class="entry"><span class="def">Yankee</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> InEurope, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. Inthe Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMNYANK.)</p> <p class="entry"><span class="def">year</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A periodof three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.</p> <p class="entry"><span class="def">yesterday</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Theinfancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.</p> <div class="poem"><p class="poetry">But yesterday I should have thought me blest<br />To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak<br />Of middle life and look adown the bleak<br />And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,<br />Where solemn shadows all the land invest<br />And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak<br />Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak<br />The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest.<br />Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame<br />To stay the shadow on the dial’s face<br />At manhood’s noonmark! Now, in God His name<br />I chide aloud the little interspace<br />Disparting me from Certitude, and fain<br />Would know the dream and vision ne’er again.</p> <p class="citeauth">Baruch Arnegriff</p></div> <p class="indentpara">It is said that in his last illness the poet Arnegriff was attended at different times by sevendoctors.</p> <p class="entry"><span class="def">yoke</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Animplement, madam, to whose Latin name, <i>jugum</i>,we owe one of the most illuminating words in our language—a word that definesthe matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy. A thousandapologies for withholding it.</p> <p class="entry"><span class="def">youth</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> ThePeriod of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has afollowing and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.</p> <p class="poetry">Youth is the true Saturnian Reign,<br />the Golden Age on earth again,<br />when figs are grown on thistles,<br />and pigs betailed with whistles and,<br />wearing silken bristles,<br />live ever in clover,<br />and clows fly over,<br />delivering milk at every door,<br />and Justice never is heard to snore,<br />and every assassin is made a ghost<br />and, howling, is cast into Baltimost!</p> <p class="citeauth">Polydore Smith</p> </body>    </html>