The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-12-25
The New Decade.

The present number of the WATCH
MAN concludes volume, and its next
issue will bear the unaccustomed date
of 1890. According to popular reckon
ing, new decade will then begin, eight
giving place to nine as a penultimate,
and so controlling, figure. If the mathe-
maticians are correct, the years which
we name in cardinal numbers are really
ordinal periods of time. Thus the
eighty-ninth year of the nineteenth
century closes December 81, 1889.
This being the case, the final decade of
this fast-eXpiring century will not begin
until January /, 1891. AS we have
said, however, popular usage makes the
division coincident with a change of
figures. We may, therefore, consider
that we have entered upon a new
decade when we place nine where eight
used to be. Eight is now going, as
seven, six, five and four have pre-
viously gone, from present to past.
Their record is unalterable.
The opening of a new year is widely
made period for good resolutions and
time for taking account of our moral
stock as well as of our worldly pos
sessions. The notorious failure of SO
many of us TO maintain our most solemn
resolves has led cynical and self.indul-
gent persons to sneer at 1st of January
reformations, but it is better to fall
short of high aspirations than to be con-
tent with Indifference to amendment.
If there are numerous cases in which
resolutions are imperfectly kept, when
kept at all, there are many more in
which they are the beginning of a
nobler life. We can not expect any
thing else. The flight of time, and the
constant approximation of the day in
which we must all of us pass beyond
the veil, must sober every thoughtful
person. Even that easy-going skeptic,
the Roman Horace, in apostrophizing
his friend Posthumus, bitterly bewails
the rapidity with which the cold
years" glide on. The death of the
old year and the birth of the new ought
to make us thoughtful. The considera-
ton Of the mistakes of the past ought
also to strengthen our determination to
make better use of the future. The
sad proofs we have all had of the
treachery of our hearts, and the fire.
quent failure of our strength, should
move us not TO despair but to the seek
ing of a strength which never fails and
of wisdom which never deceives.
If the lapse of twelvemonth is thus
fitted to arouse all that is noble and
progressive in our nature, much more
should the passage of ten twelvemonths
impel us to earnest and consecrated en-
deavor. We may not all live a year,
but it is mathematically demonstrable
that to many, if not most, of those who
read these paragraphs the decade now
opening will be the last. Ten years
work wondrous changes, Tor the dread
reaper is busy from their beginning to
their end. In 1900 the survivors of the
men who are now sixty will be seventy,
the septuagenarians of to-day will have
replaced the venerable octogenarians
we see around us, and the youth of
twenty will have entered early middle
life. Who are to be previously called and
who are to remain fora season longer nc
one can tell. We only know that sooner
or later the strongest of us will moulder
into dust. These thoughts should sol.
emuize us, but they should not appall
us; we should do our appointed work
as if we were to live forever here, and
we should do it with such fidelity that
whenever called we can hear the Mas
ter's summons without fear. AS the
last sunset of 1889 CLOVIS in the west
let the hearts of all be moved by peni