Life — January 4, 1912 — page 34: what you’re looking at

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

34 To the New Year: Greeting! E is a jolly, young New Year coming in, entirely without experience in human affairs, the youngest of his family. Welcome, Young Fellow! We have known several of your brothers, and liked them all (some better than oth- ers), and are prepared to like you. What is more, we are prepared to find you the most remarkable year yet. Be ready for surprises, young chap, You have happened to hit a wide-open Earth, full of pots a-boiling, and fizzing fuses, and it may make a wonderful reputation for you. Back a spell there was a year that made such a record that he was known as Annus Mirabilis. He was a great fellow; you can find his date if you look him up. The like may happen to you, and when. you retire to your place in the chronological tables it may be that you will figure, not as mere 1912, but as Annus Mirabilis Junior. For you see, there is such a lot doing in this world you come to. Look at us here in the United States—such games started, the issue of which no one can quite fore- see! There is the Presidency to be settled again! You will see whether Taft and Wilson are the competitors; whether Roosevelt is drawn in; whether La Follette makes a figure in the running; whether Harmon pans out stronger than now seems likely, or the Democrats turn finally to Underwood. You will see the preliminary sparring in Congress over the tariff and, perhaps, the Sherman law, Mr. Taft, the Democrats and the Insurgents all endeavor- ing very properly to deserve well of the voters and have their high deserts impressed on the popular attention. And then the conventions, and then the campaign and the elec- tions, and you will see what figure, if any, the suffragettes will cut in it, and the Socialists, and the Prohibitionists, and the single-taxers and all our other enthusiastic friends ; and how Hearst will cut up, and what sort of a bar- gain Cohalan and Murphy will be able to drive for Tammany. But, after all, all that is only American politics in a unusually lively Presidential year. We don’t invite you, Urchin, to anticipate marvelous and upsetting novelties in this conservative country, so well provided with vents for the ebullition of all sorts of opinion. There will be a greater showing of goods of that class in England than here, and some startling patterns perhaps in Germany, and at least the usual variety in Russia, and in Mexico who knows what, but something very important, whether ex- HAPPY NEW YEAR “"TIS LOVE THAT MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND” plosion or turbulent progress; and in China revolution and modernization without precedent. And then, observe that that mess of Italy with the Tripolites and Turks is still stewing, and liable to blow up into a really penetrating fuss. Keep a corner of your eye on it, for all that~it is such a cruel, disagreeable mess to watch, And keep an eye on France, for France in sundry vital particulars is not going sound, and somehow, though prob- ably not immediately, must jolt into a better gait if she is to hold her place on the road. And glance at Portugal now and then to see how her republic fares, or what she gets in place of .it, and at Spain, that old Roman Catholic bottle so lately charged with so much new wine; and at Persi: where there is so much more to interest a young modern Year than usual, and look care- fully at India, where there may come a blow-up if you don’t watch it, and add up a few columns of figures for Japan to see if progress has left her money enough for meals, and make an occasional note about the Philippines, and keep a correspondent in Aus- tralia and New Zealand, out-stations of experiment in Gov- ernment, and if there is anything moving in South America except hides and wool and rubber, and coffee and such things, don’t miss it, and observe the Panama Canal and re- flect about it a little, and if anything should pop up in Africa that you can’t see from Europe, send a Day or two to watch it. You see, young sir, the great point, the point that may give you a special name of your own in history, is thai all the civilized world seems to be bitten by the same bug. Everybody who thinks, or thinks he thinks, seems pos- sessed, all of a sudden, to demand more say about what's done, more to eat if his board is bad, less work if his hours are long, more pay if he thinks he can get it, more, or less, religion according as he thinks he has too little or too much, and better or ampler matrimonial privileges, especially for women, Now and then there come these times when the whole batch of human dough gives evi- dence of the working of yeast, and begins to heave and bubble. When it has these turns it has to rise. There’s no stopping it. People always try, but if the movement is strong enough, authority has to skip for a while to the tall timber, and wise observers put out pans and prepare to bake a lot of new bread. Which done, the world lives on it for years after, and Authority comes out of the woods again and goes back to his job with chastened deportment and abbreviated powers, and continues to look wise, and do