roasted.  A similar noted immunity was that of David when he incurred
the wrath of Yahveh by numbering his people, seventy thousand of whom
paid the penalty with their lives.  God is now Love, and a director of
the census performs his work without apprehension of disaster.



X



X in our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility
to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will
doubtless last as long as the language.  X is the sacred symbol of ten
dollars, and in such words as Xmas, Xn, etc., stands for Christ, not,
as is popular supposed, because it represents a cross, but because the
corresponding letter in the Greek alphabet is the initial of his name
-- _Xristos_.  If it represented a cross it would stand for St.
Andrew, who "testified" upon one of that shape.  In the algebra of
psychology x stands for Woman's mind.  Words beginning with X are
Grecian and will not be defined in this standard English dictionary.



Y



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, the entire
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 that
defines 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
endowing a 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
  cows 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




Z



ZANY, n.  A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with
ludicrous incompetence the _buffone_, or clown, and was therefore the
ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters
of the play.  The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as
we to-day have the unhappiness to know him.  In the zany we see an
example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission.  Another
excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the
rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the
devil.

ZANZIBARI, n.  An inhabitant of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, off the
eastern coast of Africa.  The Zanzibaris, a warlike people, are best
known in this country through a threatening diplomatic incident that
occurred a few years ago.  The American consul at the capital occupied
a dwelling that faced the sea, with a sandy beach between.  Greatly to
the scandal of this official's family, and against repeated
remonstrances of the official himself, the people of the city
persisted in using the beach for bathing.  One day a woman came down