New-York tribune., 1866-12-31
THE TE4RS END.

To-day is the last of IN important and mem
orable year. 1t is therefore fitting that with
cOnSidcratc sermon we should be mindful of
to-day and yesterday before we pay our res
poets Ia the happy morrow. This present day.
last geing relic of the old year will pass out OF
crcuh, ION as many a current day has done,
and will add another leaf TO the volume of the
wear and of time. now as thick with these
every day relics as the Adirondacs i'll Autumn
are with spendthrift foliage The old
year is still marketable or merchant
able to the extent of so many hours
but with the stroke of twelve il Will cease to
I've a commodity with those whose time Is
money, and who sell their hours for bread. il
will pass out of trade and traffic: and neither
broker nor publican is bound in bust
ness to respect it. 1t will go its ways
tomb to make up the monument and
of the centuries, but in very xEte of its
death it will reentcr into all the linz of the liv-
ing Folks in the minority may be very
glad to get nd of it; lucklcss candidates,
bad traders, and disreputabe Congressmcn.
may conceive that it buries something,
but we assure them that it is not, after ALL so
easy a matter to kill time, or to stamp out any
dangerously live yesterday such as will prob
ably last them, with good memories, to the end
of lifetime. By those who look with
merely speculative eyes, nothing further is to be
made out of the dead old year, and its mem
ory may be dismissed to sentimentasts and
poets. Well will it be if those memories retain
such happy cherishing but we have a notion
that Secretary McCulloch will find it as useful
as any old penny that has specie ring in it,
II. L.. a.. III,
lesson of past that might as well be blotted
ont, but is a blot, nevertheless; and that Secre-
tary Welles will honor it with a retrospective
tenderness not incompatible with his venerable
years and innumerabe yesterdays.
To-day will have gone out OF date that IS
all; it will still be coin of some kind or other,
and while fools may know not how to use 1T,
and fogies and Philistines may employ it
for Yesterdays dead sake to make war on
the living citadel of to-day, it will
nevertheless pass current into history,
stamped and restamped with the ideas and
uses of men, minted by the spirit of the age,
and exchanging with the wisdom of future
never too wise to buy counsel of the past. We
shall see whether statesmen will cOntrive
to tinker UP their bad morrOws ont of
good yesterdays; WHctner men OF enterprise
will be expert enough to add fraction TO
golden days to come by eking out with the
substance and experience of yesterday;
whether political gamesters have learned trick
or two by the turning up of last years trump
| in the hands of their antagonists; whether
| Slavery tomorrow will in shrewd good faith
finally and wholly accept the liberty we
decreed yesterday, and cease to attempt
with paralytic Hands to tie up Freedom in the
pillory, and mount Slavery on the bench and
in the law; whether it is wise at all for that
crazy old grandmother of the Past, who sold
her own chldren--all that came back to her to
be devoured-to pinch the faces and wiring
the hearts of the orphans and widows
of the future with the withered
malicious fingers of the year 1850; whether the
nation, purified by physical struggle, and en-.
Hghtened by intellectual and moral trial, viii
know how to keep its head cool and its heart
warm, so that the Freedmen ordained yes
terday shall be wholly erect Tomorrow
monument high enough to bury deep the