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Show THE KINDLING TORCH. Tho tumult and shouting which ushers the Old Year derisively out and drags the New Year hilariously in, it is, after all, only a spent hour of self-abandon. . For when the noise has died and the little night is past, the fact remains; and the fact is a milestone set firmly in the fibre of our living journey, and it would come if we slept, or if we keep vigil or, indeed, if we passed into eternity in advance of the event. It is fatality we celebrate, whether we recognize it or not; it is human limitation we speed into the night with the old year, knowing that all things are beyond our control; and thus ive play the bravo, daring Time to do what he can and will, since the dawn is not of our numbering. For some, the night of capering; for others, the morning of reflection. "Resist the beginnings," urges Ovid, but he speaks of. temptations. ''Those that with haste," remarks Cassius, "will make a mighty .fire, begin it weak straws." That is wisdom, and the weak straws of our flame are the gleanings of New Year's Day, left from the vanished harvest of the dead year. Spenser was not the first nor the last to discover that "each goodly thing is hardest to begin," be-gin," but there is a quite common discovery that even the weakest of good intentions leaves a reproach among its ruins, and that is something. some-thing. Life is a succession of moods, through which we pass again and again; and, according to our character, char-acter, some grow strong and some more faintly marked as they revolve. The coming of the New Year is of all these moods, the most arresting, because it conspires with the seasons to symbolize life itself. He is a bold man who dares shut his ears to the toiling of the summons this day echoes; he is a foolish man, too, for if the bells monotone their warning, they also peal their promise. Who knows of tomorrow? Of another such day, a year hence, and what shall be written ? Whither the trail, what the rewards? Something stirs within as the day glides into' the year; and that profound clement of high adventure, adven-ture, which shines through the eyes of a boy for whom all the earth awaits a conqueror, flickers, perchance per-chance flames and light "a candle of understanding in thine heart, which shall not be put out." Good intentions are not to be despised; des-pised; they are their own benediction. Not all are wise enough to collect weak straws, but the fault is born of zeal. So long as we ponder that matter mat-ter and realize, if once a year, that it is even better and more useful to live for good ideals than to die for them, each New Year holds toward us the kindling torch. For these the peal of promise, and the dawn after the night. |