Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1873-01-08
THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW.


Time rolls on, and again we stand on the
threshold of a New Year. In the pas
sion of our age our impulse is to look only
forward to the possibilities of the New
Year and to forget the past. We incline
to press into the future, to take in advance
if possible, what the New Year has for us
rather than to make this a day for calm
! look over the old
Measured by the incidents that usually
make the years conspicuous in history, the
one just ended has not Been remarkable.
1t bears on its record no great revolutions
in governments, none Of the honors of
war, nothing wonderful in the achieve
ments of science, nothing in these respects
to make it more prominent than many
others ofthe eighteen hundred and seventy
one that preceded it into the great waste of
the past In the list of the great men of
our land who have been carried away on
its bosom it must be noted. In mon whose
names are familiar III the legislation ami
politics of our land, it bears on its death
roll such names as Seward, Randall, Davis
and Grimes. The men whose names have
been on every lip, who have, through the
pen and press, spoken daily to hundreds
of thousands are Greeley and Bennett
foremost in their calling in the great army
of workers who do so much towards
moulding the public sentiment of the
day. When the great heart of the people
of the North and South were molten like
lava in the heat of civil war, there were
names written in them that time alone
can erase. With the old year have gone
Mead and Halleck on the one side and
Ewell on the other. The
reader of the CHRONICLE who
studies this morning the news of
yesterday from Paris or London or Berlin
will not forget Morse who first taught
the electric current to speak through
thousands of miles of space. In litera-
ture, the old year has borne off some of our
greatest. Lieber, Buchanan Read, Had
ley, Putnam and Fanny Fern " are
names forever to be associated with the
year that took them to their long, last
home. In the ranks of the Ministry such
valiant leaders as Cartwright, Vinton,
Eastburn and Spaldng have written thci-
names among the dead of 1872. In its
ieathroll at least, the old year has prom
nent place in the long calendar of the
past.
Before us is a new year with its promis-
IS and its uncertainties. 1t can not be full
Of the contention and party strife of the
Did and therefore may bring us, as a State,
more fraternity and prosperity. We can
make it so if we will There is work for
Ill to do and nothing tends to make it so
Easy OF accomplishment as a firm resolve |
that it shall be done.
We need public 'schools that shall make |
free. TO all. we need more pop |
llation to lessen the burdens now resting
lpon us and to lend US busy hands to make
he future of Tennessee what we all wish
it to be. We need better public roads,
more national spirit, more progressive lib>
raj legislation, and all this, 1878 agiU bring
Is as people if we but say it mast.
In the beginning of the annual journey,
When all hearts are warmed with higher
SEPARATIONS and nobler resolves, with our
'acks upon the past and our hopes bright
or the future the CHRONICLE extends to
me an all its sincere wishes for a HAPPY
JEW YEAR.