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Show ' IE NEW YBAR. II While solemn bells toll for the year that's fled H The year with its achievements cold and dead S B Joy bells are ringing in the new-born year, B That comes with happy greetings, and good ! B cheer. :i t B Men like the years grow old and fall asleep B In that last slumber dreamless and so deep, B While raptured mothers strain to loving breasts I B Their infants, thankful that they are so blessed. B Thus moves the endless chain of death and life, - B The morning's joy, the noon day's heat and strKe, 1 B The evening's chill, the hushed and starless night, tt B Again the morn, again the warmth and light. fcl 4 Is it a symbol that, life's long year o'er, T B There is a waking on another shore? 5 B Where silver uells rinS la a softer light, m B Beyond the soundless shores, the chill and night? Z B THE WORLD'S PROGRESS. m B The year just closing has not been punctuated sL B by many great exclamation points. In Great EB Britain the great South African war has been C B brought to a close; a king has been crowned and a B great industrial triumph, under British guidance, R fl has been completed in Upper Egypt. On the conti-W conti-W B nent nothing of special interest can be named. m B Tne ancient inertia of Asia has not been much BB disturbed except by the awful cataclysm in Tur-EBkestan Tur-EBkestan and that Russia has been completing BBher great through highway to the Pacific and pre-W pre-W B Paring to divert what she can of the world's com-RBmerce com-RBmerce across her territory. SB Australasia is still prostrate under the mighty fcBdrought that has afflicted Australia for years g Buatil a great proportion of the live stock has per-wL per-wL Bished and many once prosperous regions have been BBrendered almost uninhabitable. The mining re-r re-r Bgion of West Australia is still productive though in RBlessened product of gold. w B Mexico has gone on prospering, though the con-It con-It BUnued fall in the price of silver has disturbed her BJ Bfinances. The great Diaz is still at the helm there, b Bind our sister Republic is running on an even keel. CI Canada has been generally prosperous; some r Bpeat industrial enterprises are being perfected in RVat country, and the flow of the precious metals vwom her western provinces supplies her with. ever WL Bncreasing means to carry on her work. El Terrible volcanic eruptions and earthquakes t pave wrought awful disasters in some of the West BBQdIa islands and in Central America. On the Bsland of Martinique thousands of lives were lost jBnd the island made practically uninhabitable; great loss of life and property was suffered in Guatemala. There is not much to report from South America Ameri-ca except that Colombia and Venezuela have been swept by revolutions and just now half a dozen nations of the Old World are trying to enforce their demands upon miserable Venezuela, which has not much with which to satisfy the demands except alligators, boa-constrictors, parrots and monkeys. Our own country seems to still be the greatly favored land of all the earth; except for the great industrial strikes in the coal and iron regions, and the lesser sympathetic strikes in different places, there would not, on New Year's morning, be a cloud upon our skies. The war is practically over in the Philippines, and those sunny islands are slowly rounding into civilized form; Cuba has been restored to her own people, and the act of restoration restora-tion makes a page of history on which the letters are printed all in gold; our harvests of cotton and wheat have been very great, of corn the greatest on record; the yield of the precious metal mines has been the greatest in history; the wave of prosperity pros-perity is sweeping on in continuous and increasing increas-ing volume; four hundred thousand people from the Old World have come to us; railroad mileage has a good deal increased; the shore end of the great Pacific cable has been laid off the abutments of the Golden Gate, and is now being paid out to draw our Pacific island possessions close to our mainland. Never before was a land so favored, never before was free government so vindicated; never before did the world have an object lesson so potential to show what a free people, unhampered unham-pered by unnecessary laws and all permitted t hope for any legitimate thing, can accomplish. The old saying, "Time was when to be a Roman citizen was greater than to be a king," can justly .be only a little" paraphrased to read: "Time is when to be an American citizen is to enjoy a crowning glory to man's sovereignty on earth." |