Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1895-01-01
WILL SON PRINTING COMP ANY,
 326 PINE STREET.

Another little drop has sunk into the great ocean of infinity. Another trembling ray from mans life-sun has been sent upon its mission through measureless space. Another round has been fashioned in the ladder of destiny, and before us is the new year. All the mighty centuries, with their ag- gregate creation of form from chaos, have been built from these molecules of time. As the coral in the depths of the sea becomes the basic fragment of Q continent only when it has yielded up the body in which it was sensate organism, so our years, precious to us, thrilling with the emotions that mark existence, become fragments of the worlds history only when we lose our grasp of them and they are gone. They become imperishable only when to usI they have dropped petal by petal their days, and their color and fragrancel have departed.
 Time is the most profound of all | mysteries, the most unfathomable of all secrets Intangible yet potent, coming whence who can tell, going whither who knows? Each year is an ,epitome of all that has come and gone, since the first indestructible atom of matter displaced the darkness of pri- mordial emptiness, and wandering on the wings of ether found an orbit, and became the nucleus of q universe. With in the bosom of the years lies the story of man from the cradle to the grave, the unwritten history of unborn nations; the rise and fall of empires, systems and creeds; the riddle which can never be read by mortal eyes. We look at the past and strive to grasp it's meaning, to garner up few sheaves of wisdom. We turn our eyes to the fu- ture, enraptured at the mirage of way ing fields of untrodden effort, ready for the sickle of the mind, and looking backward and forward the precious present slips away and tomorrow be- comes yesterday.
 :. A new year! Heir Of all the wealth of the old years, pulsing with possibi1- ity, great with promise. Itis well that we bow the knee and lift the heart, as the old passeth, and the new cometh out of the door of the storehouse of future centuries, surrounded by it's cycle of days, each bearing aloft it's un~ lit torch awaiting the signal of the bridegroom.
 Nations, like the planet upon which they live, have their era of subsistence and emergence, their tidal waves and earthquakes, their glacial epochs and their periods of teeming fertility of thought and achievement as well as of glory and prosperity. Now and again they are shaken to their center and old forms give way to newer and l better Thus is the miracle of creation made recurrent. Looking upon the life-chart of nations, as it lies spread out before us in history, we see here and there an tillumined mountain peak, Mohamned, Christ, Luther or Cromwell, and here and there burned out crater of passion, Waterloo, a Flodden Field, Gettysburg. Noun tain-peal and crater are part of the great scheme of humanity, abiding places for the eternal sunlight guiding men to loftier heights of patriotism and purity, or warnings of the smol- dering fires which keep the earth throbbing with heat and vitality, when prisoned, but unclaimed involve it in ruin.
 The year that has gone has been one of regret and disappointment to us as people, Like the prophet of old we have looked to the heavens for sign and found it not, and lowing our hearts we have waited with what pa- tience we might for Time, the healer, to cause us to forget our wounds. All that was in the old year, but the dawn of a new future shines upon us. As we gaze upon its first roseate ray we pie ture to ourselves the qualification of hope deferred. We hear in the tones of the bell, still quivering with the dirge of the past, new strain. It breathes of hope, tells of strife soothed to peace, hatred quenched in forgive ness. We follow the ray and it leads us to the embers on the hearthstone of the old year. Looking closer, we find l 1t was kindled there. Amid the ashes of shame and violence, fires of patriot ism and brotherly love still burned. Dark indeed will be the old year that sees them quenehed in our land; darker still the new year that gives no promise l of liberty under law and no respect for the ideals of the past.
 Another year, would we finger in the portals of the past, where we have been garlanded with love and joy or where age has crowned us with frui- ton? Behind us the crowding centu- ries push like a great army hurrying in hot haste to the victory. Onward they press, sweeping all before them. Alas we may not pause. Reluctant or willing, we are hurried forward toward those bs ttlements, which, seen dimly against the horizon, may be mist shrouded and so near at hand that the next step will bring us to the grim gates which open but once to every mortal, and behind which there is a mystery greater than that of Time. Those trampling centuries, laundering forward with a tread like the music ot the stars, ''so loud it deafens mortal ears," are advancing to carry man te the highest pinnacle of hope and achievement. Woe be to us if each day we join not the host as valiant soldiers ready to storm any fortress of wrong and prejudice, willing to do battle ac- | cOrdinr t0 the Sfrenpth of ou1- So11ls