SPEEDING THE OLD YEAR

Evening Star, Issue 15072, 2 January 1913, Page 10

SPEEDING THE OLD YEAR

STREETTULS "IX AT THE DEATH." In conformity with his gregarious propensity, which science lias made plain "to us mail takes big events to his realisation collectively. It is not an individual process. in politics, for instance, "public' 'opinion is what politicians fear and profess to respect. Now. the passing of the old Year and coming ol the new is a process which has been endowed with certain sentimental associations—so much so that were man an animal of more lonesome bent he could reasonably be expected to mark the occasion in private musing and gladness engendered in solitude. On the contrary, he celebrates the abstract significance.of the festival in public by congregating in the public places, by parading the streets. It is the highest honor he can pay an occasion to gather and walk and talk and engage in collective convivialities. Thus he did on New Year's Eve He his legs tired on the solid-surface of Dunechn's only street," as visitors call it; gazed in shop windows in common with his fellows, and obtained for himself hie greatest satisfaction in wishing his friends and acquaintances "A happv New Year." People crowded round the death-bed of the_ expiring year as though lie were some curio that they must gaze'at. They would . not give him air, though they knew" he was in that stage when "No visitors' must have been the 15rat order a physician would have given. But there is no "physician for the dying year. "Kismet' rules'there, and he has never had any use for physicians. Tie people pressed Tound and" watched with careless eyes the expiring face of the year which had marked so many epochs, perhaps even for them. Would it not have added" to the solemnity of the occasion, if it deservect solemnitr. to have given "1912" an open space to breathe his last in, without such unseemly curiosity and crowding? Would it not have been more suggestive of sufficient sotrow if those discordant streets had been quiet—even deserted? • But it is an ancient and inherent custom, and perhaps if the old year had been-al-lowed to go in peace the soothing effect of mournful solitude and blankets would have proved overpowering, and even-one would have been asleep when the timid New Year came. Then there would have been no one to give him a seemly and fitting welcme. The scenery might not have been shifted in time, and our young friend might have found himself in a land of darkness and death—surely nerve shaking enough to make him pawky for the rest of Ins reign. Thus the old year suffers for the good of the new, and people say with "one breath -(as when a. king dies) I "The year is dead; all hail to the year."-