The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1883-09-29 00:00:00

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SSTURDAI, SEPTEMBER 29. h. 1883

IHE END OF THM QUARTER.

The reenrrence of quarter-day ma.ks an era
in every houst h idet's life. It is a distinct re-
minder not on!y to those of a philosophic turn
rhet felother three months has been taken away
from existence, but to those of practical mind
that et,r, it! worldi ly duties and obligations hithse-
to e! fulfilled require immediately to be attended
to in the cow se of nature it is apparent that
th., shorter the span of an/ given period of time
tio less gt nerolly important will it appeHr ; but
there is the differeuce between the great division--
ages. centuries, or even years —and the
less—quarters, months, weeks or days—that the
character of the former once detirtuined ie a
character fixed and immoveable, not likely to
recur, while that of the latter is in many points
so marked that it returns to us again and again
until its existence becomes one of the many facts
which custom has embodied into our daily life.
We speak for instance of the Dark Ages, of the
Elizei)ethan period, of the dull eighteenth cen-
tury(thongh this is an erroneous application of
the adjective), aud of the famine year of 1840.
or the year of revolution of 1848 ; but all or any
of these wi:l not again come before us. But in
process of time we have fixed upon certain days
of the year as sacred either tofastiug or to feast-
ing ; certain weeks as devoted to holiday ;
certain mouths as the most fitting for the in-
dulgence in specified sports and certain quarters
RS the most proper for the performance of divers
public, or domestic duties. It is the last division
cf time with which we are now dealing, and it
would surprise those who have never given the
subject a thought to know how many facts there
are to be considered in connection with it. "Seed
time and harvest, summer and winter shall net
fail," the world was told ages ago and the quar-,
ters divided as the years are divided by natures
strictest laws, are as necessary to the conduct
of our business [now as they were thousands
of years since. Each quarter has its own char-
acteristics ; in each occur in every year certain
well-defined events, and we can forecast from
one time to another what will happen when the
particular period combs round again. To us in
England for instance the Michaelmas quarter
now ended is associated in our minds not only
with the ingathering of the harvest of hay, and
of core," and of fruit, but with the annual proroga-
tion of Parliament, with the commencement of
grouse and partridge shooting, and more espec-
ially prehaps to the majority, with the usual
autumnal hoiiday, To the householding citizen
it has other features not less marked ; it is the
quarter in which the list of parliamentary at d
municipal voters are published and partly revised
and in which the jury lists are playcarded upon
the church doors, and further it is one of the
two quartere especially devoted to the process
of heuse-changing. Lady Day is the great
houiveclianging date of the year, but Michaelmas
reeks next to it, and those who have experienced
the trouble and expense of the proceeding will
recognise that it is with much truth that its fre-
quent occurence in any given quarter is sufficient
to entitle that quarter to receive from it a char-
acteristic. But beyond and above all these
matters of every-day life with which this con-
sideration of the end of the quarter has brought
us acquainted, how the very names of the qu art er
days themselves carry us back several centuries
and take us to an England very different from
the England of to-day. Lady Day and Michael-
mas Day and Christmas Day speakes to us in
the language of hundreds of years since, in the
leuguage of the times before the Reformation
betare modern England came to be. And this
is only another illustration of how much of
interest.and even instruction is to be extracted
from a thoughtful consideration of those ordinary
incidents of our daily existence which from their
very frequency are apt to be little thought of.