Life — December 27, 1906 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘LIFE: =e The Old New Year The Successful Rival \, HERE is amonotony about New Year's \ nativity of our common Adam,” which life’s other monotonies in the shade. One's own birthday is a step from milestone to milestone, and there is a definite termination to the jour- ney; it gets us somewhere, whether we want to go or not; but the birthday of the year is our in heritance from a measureless past,and its sameness is the sameness of centuries. Perhaps Janus en- joyed his litle New Year cakes, when kind old Numa first set them smoking on his altar. Per haps the Romans of that pastoral period liked paying their bills and making good resolutions and giving undesirable presents to their neighbors, whenever this auspicious day came round. ‘There was a freshness in men’s hearts twenty seven hundred years ago which may have inclir kindly to recurrent duties and pleasures. And, after all, New Year was a novelty then. It m y be that not a single Roman poet had written “Lines to the Dying Year.” No Roman school- child recited,“ Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky.” an lady gave a Whittier Calendar, or a Christy Calendar, or a Church Calendar, or a Calendar of Gentle Thoughts to her unsuspecting friend. It was pleasant to live 713 B.C But now the programme is so full and so unvarying. We know the New Year editorial before we open our newspaper. We know the New Year sermon before we enter the church. We know our w Year mail before we see the billheads. We know the New Year poem, and the familiar picture of the Old Year, bent and bearded, giving place to his valiant little suc- cessor. We do not needa score of calendars—sad offerings of friendship—to make us aware that another twelvemonth lies ahead of us. We do not need a dozen engagement pads to warn us of all it has got to hold. There is a real unkindness in thrusting into our reluctant hands so many reminders of things we should like to forget Agnes Repplier Graceful Conduct of Daughters Ron L) ; joins Colonel Watterson and the Courier-Journal in praising the noble self-abnegation exhibited by the United Daughters of the Confederacy at their recent meeting at Gulf- port, Miss. It seems that the Daughters resolved that the sponsors and maids of honor ou; from the Con- federate reunion to be held in Richmond next May, and give the veterans a chance to be entertained. The Daughters set forth in their resolutions that at recent reunions the sponsors and maids had got most of the attention, and that as Richmond would be ve anyway, and it hospitalities heavily taxed, and as, moreover, the next May meeting is likely to prove the last annual reunion the Veterans. will have, they ought to have the middle of the road and all the front seats at this one. So the maids and sponsors will hold off and the Veterans are to have the proceedings planned to suit them and the concomitants mixed with an eye to their infirmi ties. ‘That is, maybe they are, The Daughters have willed that MPLOYER : Have you any excuse to offer for speaking t they shall. But, of course, the Veterans may bolt and declare so impolitely ? that an annual reunion without sponsors and maids of honor Orrice: Boy: Yes, sir; I forgot that I wasn’t talking over would be no good. the telephone. But it was handsome of the Daughters, wasn’t it? “Your apology is accepted.” y crowde comicbooks.com