OF HOLIDAYS, AND “A NEW BEGINNING.”

Otago Witness, Issue 3016, 3 January 1912, Page 72

OF HOLIDAYS, AND “A NEW BEGINNING.”

It is one of the blessed illusions of life, which no amount of living ever dispels, that every new day, like every new year, is “a new beginning”—a fresh start in life. The feeling is especially strong with regard to the New Year. All the things that we have meant to do before we shall most certainly do—more or less this year. All the things we have meant to be (a much more intricate question) and have not been, we shall be —more or less—this year. How like we are to children playing! We cling to the notion of a new beginning, and hold -fast, hold desperately, to an old ending! For what would all the new ‘‘beginnings” hi the world be worth to us if we must leave behind the old and dear ‘‘endings”? Friends, memories, associations, the subtle wearing of years, years that each in their turn were New Years, full of promise and anticipation, and each in turn faded to Old Years of experience and reality, with all our elaborate pretence of a New Year, and a new beginning. How cold and naked we should stand in winds of Time = and Circumstance but for these dear intimate gar- ■ ments of the past! Truly they must form part of our travel- ! ling kit on the fresh stage of life’s journey : upon which we have set forth with January 1, 1912. Doubtless we have some new suit cases, hat boxes, rug-rolls of the latest and most approved design in which to pack them; but they are there, those dear worn garments! Travel-stained a little with the dust of life’s journey, frayed here and there with hard work, patched more or less neatly with new opinions, faded, —ah, but that is rarely ! —with too much sunshine; still, they must be packed away, whether we like it or not, in our travelling kit for 1912. I We are a little serious minded as we take the road again. Underneath the debonair and genial smiles with which ;we exchange New Year greetings with friends and fellow travellers, and assure ourselves and them that this is indeed ‘‘a happy New Year,” we feel a little anxious. We ‘‘hear a bird that sings of yesterday” ; we have our regrets (useless as we realise them to be) for this or that in the year that is dead, and the travelling kit which looks so light and up to date is really heavy with good resolutions which have not had time to evaporate an ounce of their pristine strength, j We have not got into our stride yet, perhaps, you and I. Only thcee who are in really splendid ethical training can take the first hilly stretches of the New Year road without a little tug at the heart- , strings, a breath that is perilously near a sob. Fob it is true that with so many of ( us the old year holds memories of joy and ; sorrow, of love and loss, of meeting and i parting which no new year, be it ever so ; gay and jocund, can rival. Such memories | fill the eyes with unshed tears. They shall not fall, for who would baptise the j New Year at his very birth with a legacy | of tears shed for the Old Year at his ! death?

Not we! In many a year's expecienoe we have learnt the value of Cheerfulness and of Courage, and we know- that large supplies of both must be packed into our travelling kit. Indeed, so important is it to carry a good supply of these two C’s that it were better to throw out some superfluous resolutions to ensure room for Courage to keep the rest and Cheerfulness to meet each day’s misadventures with a smile. Smile a little, smile a little, All along the road; Every life must have its burden. Every heart its load. For of one thing we may be certain—• there will be misadventures ; worse perhaps : loss, failure. These will be difficult hills to climb; we cannot shirk them, though on the long, upward climb our hearts strain almost to bursting. There will be sandy plains or lonely swamps to cross, and it may be that we must cross them alone, for “the human soul is a very lonely thing,” and it may be that this very year we must pass through the Gardten of Gethsemane.

Down shadowy lanes, across strange streams, Bridged over by our broken dreams; Behind the misty caps of years, Beyond the great salt fount of tears, The garden lies. Strive as you may. You cannot miss it on your way* All paths that have been, or shall be, Pass somewhere through Gethsemane, And so we must look well to oui’ reserve stock of faith, for only in the connection that “Whatever is is best ’ can we find foundation for Courage and Cheerfulness. What is it Stevenson says ! “Help ue to play the xnan,_ help us to perform them [our duties] “with laughter and kind faces; let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blythely on our business.” We shall need all our smiles —if not for ourselves, then for others. We shall need all our courage, if not for perils of adversity, then for perils or prosperity, which are much more to be dreaded. We can fight against adversity, but prosperity, God knows, too often finds us defenceless ! And as we go, like the pilgrim travellers of old, we shall patter our beads and whisper our prayers, never doubting that what we pray for is good, and that the granting of out prayers would render us or those we pray for happy. Only as time goes on and the road behind ns stretches far and farther, we begin to realise that the goodness of God, the wisdom of the Eternal, lies most often in his refusal to grant our prayers. We see that the very things which were given to us “because of our importunity” proved to be our undoing—a curse rather than a blessing. Yet we have prayed ; yet we shall pray. For that deep instinct, close as life itself, the impulse which we share with the savage to seek and make our supplications to something greater than ourselves, will lead us there. . . . Pray on, sad heart That -which thou pleafiest for may not be given, But in the lofty altitude where souls ■Who supplicate God's grace axe lifted, there Thou e-holt find help to bear thy daily lot Which is not elsewhere fotund. So the year’s travel on the uncharted road of Time and Fate stretches before us, so, with a tender thought for the old year and a cheerful smile for the New Year, and a little space of loving silence for those who . . . Ever kind and true. Kept stoutly step by step with you, Your whole long gusty lifetime through, let us begin our year’s journey with the old familiar phrase: “A happy New Year, and many of them.” EMMELINE. All cards sent jto me to be forwarded have been posted, and a pleasantly crowded postbag waits to be shared with my readers next week.