Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1874-01-17
1873 AND 1874.
Teachings Ofthe old, and Promises Of
the New Year.

LOW uTluIy VIC ICSOAfOO IHSfO SdCH VI
its days should bear worthy re-
cord! How strong was our convic-
ion that it would see our besetting
sins conquered, our special weakness
es cured! And then we loathed the
remembrance in June of our Janua-
ry resolves. How we welcomed the
years close, that we might ''turn
over a new leaf'' and begin afresh!
Alas! Not all our
WASTED YEARS
had yet taught us the folly of New
Years resolutions. We began the
useless labor in childhood. During
the MISUNDERSTANDING, while the
coming school term loOmed up be-
fore us, and stretched away as
measureless as eternity seems to us
now, our young souls agOnized over
premature and surreptitiOus cOnsum-
ing of noonday-lunches, unrepOrted
whisperings, shirked lessons and
other childish peccadillos; and most
solemnly did we vow to ourselves,
and record in uniformed penmanship,
that we would abandon all these
practices, calculated to ruin ourselves
and bring disgrace upon our rela
tives, and wonld endeavOr to con-
form ourselves in every way to those
now known to be impossible-mod-
els found in the SundaY-schoOl
books. By midsummer nothing re-
manned to remind us of our good
resolves, except an uneasy, irritated
consciousness that we were not what
we ought 30 be; which conscious
ness, we have since learned, is an in
separable adjunct to humanity, but
which we then imagined to be ours
by monopoly.
VERY CURIOUS
are the various subjects on which
we make resolutions as we advance
in life. When we were in that be-
witching time known as the ''teens,"
when everything was rose-colOred,
we were always resolving to improve
the time-as if youth did not always
have a good time when let alone by
its elders-and as if the surest way
to spoil time was not to seek to i'm
prove it. A little farther on is the
age when one resolves to save mon
ey, to rise early, to leave off light
reading, and take up a course of
history or the languages, to swear
off on tobacco and liquor, to quit
flirting and get married. A little
later on come the years when sani-
tary measures appear of paramount
Importance. We make it a rule
never to eat before going to bed, to
practice with the dumb-bells every
day, to sleep with the head of the
bed to the north, to avoid scenes, to
leave off hair-dyes, to stop reading
in bed, etc., etc. That is the last
stage; after that Jan. l sinks into a
mere arbitrary division of the eter-
nifty on which all humanity is en-
barked. We take our repentance
in daily draughts instead of animal
excesses, and content ourselves, on
the opening of the New, by a review
of the
LESSONS OF THE PAST YEAR.
Dear old '79 taught us that it 81
not safe to become bondsmen for any
man; that Solomon was as clear
headed as ever when he remarked
that "He that maketh haste to be
rich shall not be innocent;" that all
the honest men don't always get on
the same political ticket; that there
is no knowing just what may hap
pen; that the world goes on just as
we'll if celebrated men do die; that
we can't change the world, but it's
ten to one the world changes US;
that, if Beecher, Tilton, a Bow
en-, and a church play cat's-cradle
with a string of lies, no man can
predict the next combination, or on
whose hands it will be; that church
es are splitting, instead of consolida-
ting; that the national debt won't
be paid by the individual abnegation
of cigars; that, if we had our lives
to live over again, and were born
with the same characters and had
the same opportunities, we should
do the same things; that hanging is
one of those disagreeables to which
man cannot accustom himself, and
a reprieve does not materially help
him; that Washington's body-ser-
want is a perennial who dies every
year to blossom into life again as
newspaper exigencies may require;
and that journalistic enterprise has
been brought to such perfection that
the modern editor stands ready to
sacrifice his own relatives profess
sional prospects to sensation.
1t may be as well, then, for us to
jOt down in our memories
FEW HINTS FOR l774.
1t is better to live in a little,
mean, two-story frame house than in
a Jail; it is a good thing, when you
are talking of another mans defal-
cation, to make sure you could have
handled as much money, with like
opportunities for dishonesty, and not
fallen before temptation. 1t doesn't
pay to worry over what will happen
to your wife if you were taken
away; she may get better husband.
If you are wondering what makes
your former schoolmate's hair so
gray, or what makes such a one so
wrinkled, or why such another one
is growing so stout, just take long
look in the glass. Do not imagine,
because you have resolved to prac-
tice charity and speak well of every
body, that everybody has made the
same resolution regarding you. If
you are heartsick with regret that
you were not more tender and
thoughtful towards the dear ones
-. o,-AfI