WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 83, 31 December 1924, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

One would like to think the weather will make a few New Year’s resolutions to-day.

New Year’s Eve, with another year slipping away in the sands of time, always seems a very definite point in events, and it is curious to reflect that English people have celebrated it on December 31 for only a hundred and seventy-three years, for prior to 1752 England’s New Year’s Eve was on. March 24. Scotland has had its New Year’s Day on January 1 since 1600, and possibly it was their satisfaction at getting ahead of England in having an up-to-date calendar that caused the Scots to make such a festival of the New Year. In Britain in the seventh century the custom was introduced of beginning ibe year on Christmas Day, and this prevailed for five hundred years until the twelfth century, when New Year’s Day was changed to the day of the Annunciation on March 25.

British history books treat the year all through the piece as though it had begun on January 1, and thus while contemporary writers refer t« the “Revolution of 1688,” one has to remember that William of Orange arrived in February, and that the year 1689, according to our present count, had thus begun. Soiling out dates in the past is quite a science, for although hunianity is supposed to have been in existence on this globe something like 500,000 or more years, it has never been able to keep a tally of years that lasted more than a of thousand, and even then as often as not with considerable chopping and changing in the start of one year and. the beginning of the next.

Our present count of Anno Domini has only held sway for fourteen c«toturies, when it was introduced by the learned Abbot Dionysius, head of a Roman monastery, and was not adopted in Britain until two hundred years later. Before that the last big era of long standing was dated from the foundation of Rome. When it was first used by the Romans i» not certain, but it must have been long after the event, for some Roman historians counted from 749 B.C-, while others wandered over the intervening years up to 753 8.C., the date most' widely accepted. The Roman tally, if it was in use up to the adoption of that now prevailing, would thus have lasted something over twelve hundred years.

The Jewish calendar makes this the 5685, a count which is based on the Creation, an event that according to this calendar took place 3760 = years and three months before the beginning of our era. Unfortunately Adam and Eve do not seem to have ticked off the years as they went round, and it was only five hundred years back that the Jews figured out when the world began, and started their count from that' date. Theologians, both Christian and Jewish, were busy about that period calculating out from the Biblical genealogies when the Creation took place, and one investigator has discovered over two hundred such calculations, varving from 3483 B.C. to 6984 B.C. Archbishop Usher favoured the ? date 4004 B-C. as the most accurate, some unknown person subsequently slipped it into the margin of the Authorised Version of the Bible, and right down to the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign it was rank heresy to question it.

Even practised orators arc apt to mix their metaphors at times. The “Morning Post’’ recalls that it was Mr. Balfour who delighted his critical opponents by describing redistribution as “a thorny subject which will require delicate handling or it will tread on someone’s toes.” while Lord Curzon once suggested to a meeting that “although we are not out of the wood vet we have got a good ship.” Even that wonderfully fluent speaker, Mr. Winston Churchill, slipped on one occasion when he told a meeting that “Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered into his soul,” while on another occasion he was actually struck dumb in the House of Commons while talking about trades disputes. In the course of a clever speech he remarked: “It rests with those who oppose the Bill to convince the workclasses , , , ” and there he stuck. A second and ever, third time he repeated the phrase, but could get no further. The House gave him a cheer of encouragement, and a fourth time he essayed to complete his remark, but ■without avail. Then, he acknowledged himself beaten, and, thanking the House for their consideration, he sat down. An Irish orator at a certain conference in London is said to hav e remarked: “Gentlemen, this is a most insidious proposal. If you accept it vou will find it to be neither more nor less than the thin edge ot a white elephant.” “Nautilus” writes asking if it re correct that an Englishman sailed round the world in Magellan s expedition to which reference was made in this column yesterday. An Englishman, it is true, was a member ot the very mixed company that made up that expedition, but was not among the immortals who completed the circumnavigation. He was one Master Andrew, of Bristol, the port which has supplied so many adventurers upon the seas, and/was engaged as mastergunner of the Trinidad, Magellan a flivship. His pay according to an old” record was £l2 18s. 9d. per annum, a sum which meant quite a lot in pre-war money. Unfortunately, Alaster Andrew took sick and died at the Ladrone Islands on the morning of March 9, 1521. Aery little is known about him beyond the fact that he had married a .certain Anna Estrada, of Seville, and left a sum of nionev to a Spanish church tor masses for the repose of his soul. Allowing the right of way to a lady driving a mot< r-car is chivalry to say nothing of prudence. It was in one of those crowded makeshift hospitals just back of the front. The surgeon shook his head hopelessly, saying to the chaplain, “He’s done for.” The chaplain leaned over the voting soldier and whispered, “Alv lad,’you are in desperate shape, and’ if vou have any word to send to the family, better tell me now.” “Aly inside coat pocket,” whispered tha soldier. The chaplain pulled put a pocketbook in which was one lone ten-dollar bill- In doubt as to the soldier’s wish, he held up the bill. The bov smiled. “What shall Ido with it’?” asked the chaplain. The soldier whispered, “Bet you that ten I don’t die.” And he didn’t. PAGEANT. Though I go by with banners. Oh, never envy me These flags of scarlet flying This purple that you see . . x This air of marching triumph Was all that I could save Of loves that had an ending And hopes that had a grave.' —Margaret Widdemer in the “New York Outlook.” ,—Charlotte Mew.