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<?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’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> In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMNYANK.)</p> <p class="entry"><span class="def">year</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.</p> <p class="entry"><span class="def">yesterday</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The infancy 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 seven doctors.</p> <p class="entry"><span class="def">yoke</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An implement, madam, to whose Latin name, <i>jugum</i>, we owe one of the most illuminating words in our language—a word that defines the matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy. A thousand apologies for withholding it.</p> <p class="entry"><span class="def">youth</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following 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>