The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1876-12-30

ONE DAY more, and another year Will be gone.
What is a year? The question is simple; but
the answer will materially differ. The happy
will say-"a span of time which an infants
hand might cover - the unhappy and weary
"a long and almost endless PERIOD And still
it is only one turn around the prescribed circle
In the sea of eternity of that wonderful wheel,
which, like that of the car of Juggernaut,
brushes all things in its journey,-joy and
sorrow, love and hate, life and creation, and in
its annual round always brings something new
despite the saying of the wise man that there is
no new thing under the sun. For to us it seems
that the new which every year brings forth is
the better; the better progress in all things, not
of this world, but only in this world for another
and a better world-the world of eternal truth.
The first American Centennial, which fell on
this our year now nearly past, was the exposition
OF the success of a free peoples self government,
the great lesson that in liberty is progress,-a
lesson for the other nations of earth to learn, and
one which France has so far successfully copied,
but which poor priest-ridden Spain has so sadly
Numbered in. The great exposition at Philadel-
phia has shown to the world, not only the pro-
gress OF the United States during the century,
OAN VIZ ~ " NAS OAAA Al CIV anu AChNC
and prominently in all that tends most toward
the promised reign Of truth. As marvellous as
have been the inventions of the century to tighten
the burdens of labor, they fall far below those
destined to facilitate the interchange of thought.
Interchange of thought, the dissemination of
knowledge and truth, is the school for eternity.
In the field of telegraphy, inventions have been
added during the year by which whole sentences
can be sent more rapidly than single words were
formerly flashed along the wire; and now, more
wonderful than all, an audible conversation can
be carried on over the wire The Hoe printing
press at the Centennial, printed and folded for
distribution from fifteen to thirty thousand copies
an hour of a Philadelphia newspaper; a feat for
performing which Mr.. Hoe would probably have
been burned at the stake two or three centuries
ago, not only at Rome, Madrid or Nuremberg,
but even in Salem. But the end is not yet; and
every coming year will add it's quota of progress,
and the great revolving wheel of time will yet
bring the hour when human thought can be
printed as fast as spoken, and be distributed by
the flash of the electric fluid.
In religion and morals, in spite of the croaks
of skeptics or pessimists, the world is steadily
marching on toward the higher and better plane.
| Superstitions and errors are Sinking away into
obscurity, and the light of eternal truth is pierre
ing with accumulated rays of brightness the
| clouds of human intellect. He is blind indeed
who cannot perceive this.
During the past year peace has held sway over
the most powerful, and at the sam time and for
! the same cause, most intellectual nations of the
earth. The Turk, however, is Haunting the flag
of the crescent-the symbol of murder and
rapine-in the face of Christian nations, and the
coming year may perhaps see him driven out of
Europe; and a few Spanish-American States,
such as Mexico, Guatemala and San Salvador
have amused themselves with petty revolutions.
Rebellious Cuba still remains unconquered by
Spain.
y In our own beautiful island home in mid
Pacific, a retrospective view of 1876 cannot but
inspire our hearts with gratitude to the Disposef
of events. The ocean has borne to our shores
an increasing commerce.; industry and labor have
reaped their rewards in peace; no epidemic has
brought sorrow and desolation to our homes;