“Thrice happy must be our reflections could we stop here, and contemplate the ascending prosperity and increasing vigor of this religious community.  But the one half has not yet been told,—­the beginning has hardly been begun.  Could I borrow the language of the spirits of wrath,—­was my pen transmuted to a viper’s tooth dipped in gore,—­was my paper transformed to a vellum which no light could illume, and which only darkness could render legible, I could, and I would, record a tale of blood, of which the foulest miscreant must burn in ceaseless anguish only once to have been suspected.  But I refer to imagination what description can never reach.”

What the author referred to in this last paragraph no one knew, nor did he ever advance any explanation of these strange words.

Near the close of his discourse, he said:  “Standing in the place of a Christian minister among you, through the whole course of my ministrations, it has been my great and leading aim ever to maintain and exhibit the character and example of a Christian man.  With clerical foppery, grimace, craft, and hypocrisy, I have had no concern.  In the free participation of every innocent entertainment and delight, I have pursued an open, unreserved course, equally removed from the mummery of superstition and the dissipation of infidelity.  And though I have enjoyed my full share of honor from the scandal of bigotry and malice, yet I may safely congratulate myself in the reflection, that by this liberal and independent progress were men weighed in the balance of intellectual, social, and moral worth, I have yet never lost a single friend who was worth preserving.”—­pp. 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11.

Y.

YAGER FIGHTS.  At Bowdoin College, “Yager Fights,” says a correspondent, “are the annual conflicts which occur between the townsmen and the students.  The Yagers (from the German Jager, a hunter, a chaser) were accustomed, when the lumbermen came down the river in the spring, to assemble in force, march up to the College yard with fife and drum, get famously drubbed, and retreat in confusion to their dens.  The custom has become extinct within the past four years, in consequence of the non-appearance of the Yagers.”

YALENSIAN.  A student at or a member of Yale College.

In making this selection, we have been governed partly by poetic merit, but more by the associations connected with various pieces inserted, in the minds of the present generation of Yalensians. —­Preface to Songs of Yale, 1853.

The Yalensian is off for Commencement.—­Yale Lit.  Mag., Vol.  XIX. p. 355.

YANKEE.  According to the account of this word as given by Dr. William Gordon, it appears to have been in use among the students of Harvard College at a very early period.  A citation from his work will show this fact in its proper light.