Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1859-01-07

readers the year of Our Lord thousand eight hun
dred and tyeight will have passed away forever Like
the herads who the same BREATH the death
of one King and the accession of another may well
cry " The year is dead Long live the year." 1858
was and is not It has gone to its account, carrying
with it the record of all lives of which mark can
be efaced or hidden no msspent hour fail to be reck
oned for Of all its three hundred and sxyfve days,
none were given to us in van-of all the deeds done in
them-the words spoken in them-the thoughts thought
in them not has persisted But for good or for evil
the old year as pas-itis longer-we cannot by
taking thought alter word or one syllable OF Its his
tory, but may perhaps, be enabled to improve by
the teachings of its experience and learn to avoid the
errors which have impaired usefulness or marred our
best efforts to promote our good or the good OF
others.
Will we do SO who knows! Who does not know
how ail are all human resolves how year after year,
mankind follow on in the beaten track, always to be
good always to be happy, always ready to welcome the
good time coming but never come How, year alter
year the old world and the young are at
youthful hope looks forward to bright future while the
saddened experience of age mourns over the good Old
times when the world better the men drawer, the
women farer and the politicians honest than they
are now.
Both views are mistaken. All the locomotives and
teegraphs that ever dazed the vision of the ardent dis
cipe of progress have not soul among them They
are mere subordinate agencies and must not be cOnOund
ed with the great end of human happiness too much OF
which has already been sacrificed in the wild hunt after
position-n the ruthless pursuit Of wealth and power
The question ought not to be how fast you travel
r. To Int how ham will
when YOU get there and how you will enjoy yourself on
the road Thought may travel faster on the telegraph
and by the railroad but the nobest thoughts of unnsplr
ed man were sung by blind old Homer, who never
dreamed of printing Office and the purest example OF
merely human virtue was afforded by George Washing
ton, who knew nothing of locomotive telegraph.
But for all this shall we find with the mechanical i'm
improvements of the age shake heads and cry VICE.
woe? By no means. The inventions of the age are
good in their place. They are valuable They contr-
butte to human comfort The enterprsng spirit OF the
age is good least it is far preferable to stagnation
But with all these advantages there corresponding
drawbacks Too often the real end is lost sight Of or
deferred to the means enterprise degenerates into wild
and reckless speculation in which principle itself is for
gotten in the stern battle of life the weak crushed
and the energies of the strong overtasked and thus
it happens that the most enterprsng and the eest peo
on earth-hose enjoying the largest of personal
comfort and the best rewards for industry are the most
careworn in expression the most dyspepc in habit and
without being morose the most sombre in temperament
of any civilized race.
These inordinae desireshese feVerish efforts to OBJ
tain wealth or acquire position lead to those expansions
in business and those extravagances in social life which
cause revulson in the one and embarrassment and I'M
happiness in the other. State, corporate, individual
credit is overstraned, and period OF panic like that
from which the whole commercial world is just recover
ing necessarily results at regularly recurring intervals
while shallow chaatans cry for tariff or other artificial
and unnatural nosrums to obviate the effects of natural
causes which must work out their own cure.
The broad, common feelings of humanity are above
and beyond the power of merely adventurous circum
stances. Men and are born live, love and die
pretty nearly the under any form of government.
Even in the widest excitement of civil war; the current
of domestic life is but slightly interrupted, and the suf
fering is indeed intense that be marked by any
large per cenage of decrease in the proportion of mar
rages and births to population The crisis of 1878
was certainly not of sufficient intensity to scare OIL any
one from the commission of matrimony the tendency to
which, during the past year, came near to assuming the
characteristics of epidemic Miss Milford in one OF
her charming tales of village life in England speaks of
good gentle maiden lady no longer young, who gets into
quite twter on learning that lady in her circle is
going to get married "Just to think Of it, says Miss
Matey, some one that know going to get married.
1t is coming quite near-very indeed-who knows
Oh gracious To all but the incorrigibe the conta-
10 booD
whom it did not quite reach it very to. 1858
has been quite year.
And of deaths it has had its share but Some
endemic visitations there have been at New Orleans
and Charleston Some lives have been lost by accident
on sea and land but these hardly affect the grand aggre
gate of mortality Some people have been slain in In
dia but as an average each second and an eighth has
claimed its life with just much certainty as the pen
duIum vibrates and it has claimed more Your turn
and ours will come with just much certainty all the
others The hour is mercully hidden from us for who
would know it. that he might count the sands of existence
as thew run from the glass; or feel the tide Of life ebbng
away day by day and hour by hour 1t is true, the
sands do rum and the tide does ebb and we know it, but
we do not know how many sands may yet be in glass
nor do we know how long it will take the tide to flow
away. The hope, that springs eternal in the human
breast keeps suggesting to long lives and prosperity
"a respite from our tos-a reward for our labors. No
man yet abandoned all hope and lived Even the gloomy
Imagination of the Italian poet could fancy but one
place wholly devoid of hope and that place the abode Of
the damned of which absolute despair is the distinctive
curse.
Turning aside from moralzing, and coming to the
more practical if not congenia topic of business