Y

by Ambrose Bierce

　　YANKEE,n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander.In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMNYANK.)YEAR, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.

　　YESTERDAY, n. The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, theentire past of age.

　　But yesterday I should have thought me blest

　　To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak

　　Of middle life and look adown the bleak

　　And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,

　　Where solemn shadows all the land invest

　　And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak

　　Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak

　　The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest.

　　Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame

　　To stay the shadow on the dial's face

　　At manhood's noonmark! Now, in God His name

　　I chide aloud the little interspace

　　Disparting me from Certitude, and fain

　　Would know the dream and vision ne'er again.

　　Baruch Arnegriff

　　It is said that in his last illness the poet Arnegriff was

　　attended at different times by seven doctors.

　　YOKE, n. An implement, madam, to whose Latin name, jugum,we owe one of the most illuminating words in our language -- a word thatdefines the matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy.A thousand apologies for withholding it.

　　YOUTH, n. The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum,Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowinga living Homer:

　　Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth

　　again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with

　　whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and

　　clows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice never

　　is heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and,

　　howling, is cast into Baltimost!

　　Polydore Smith