Yeaster.

Dignified reader, were I to claim to be the day before the day after to-morrow, the Bay of Bengal, the ghost of Hamfat the Giblet, or the echo of a dumbell, you would suspect me of harbouring a hiatus in the head, or static in the attic; and rightly so. And yet, when you are officially advised that it is Easter, you inhale the tidings holus bolus and in the piece, on the slender but weighty evidence of the usual slabs of palæological pottery which bear a strange device and boast that they are buns—to say naught of those oval omens of Easter, the imitation eggs of the lollie shops. Believe me, trusting reader, no one knows when Easter really hatches out (not even the baker who calls it Yeaster—which is all bun-combe). It only requires some nit-wit to remark: “Well, well, who'd believe it'll be Goo'friday next Thursday week?” and the cry spreads like the parasites of parrot fever, until the powers that be are piqued into placating the pop-eyed populace by throwing in a vacation.