The age-herald., 1901-01-14
Happy New Year, Russia.

This day, Monday January 14 is New Years Day, the first day of the twentieth century, in far-away Russia, and the Great White Tsar and his hundred million of adoring subjects, after attending the re- ligious duties imperative upon Tsar and mou1ik alike, will proceed to enjoy long hours of jollification behind the air-tight doors and windows of that frozen land" spoke last night one who had travelled in Russia.
 There will be some outdoor sports on the ice, but the snow will lie too deep and the Russians are too accustomed to it for much enjoyment with that element In the main the festivities will be indoors, and there will be almost as much drunk enness proportionally as there was in our Birmingham last Christmas Eve The Russians are the greatest drinkers in the world, but drunkenness is not common, it being held to be disgraceful, and those people in that high latitude can drink enormously without intoxication. Their national drink is vodka a spirit distilled from potatoes and black rye which is per- haps many times as strong as our Ameri- can national drink, whisky. An ordinary whisky glass full of vodka would knock the average American drinker seven ways for Sunday and he'd be seven /days recover ing. Talk about Jersey lghtning-vodka is liquid birthstone with dash of tobasco large enough to down every cadet at West Point.
 ''The Russian New Year is thirteen days behind our New Year, which is the same all over the Christian world except in All ba RnSsiaS that England adopted the so-called new style, and since America was then mostly English in so far as concerned settled ter ritory, we on this side the ocean made the change at the same time. The story of the calendar is an old and interesting one fa- miliar mere or less to most people. When Caius Julius Caesar became Pope of Rome he found the Roman calendar hopelessly mixed. He called it a lunatic. not a lunar calendar The eauinoxes were arriving about three months late, and he promptly decreed the knocking out of that much of past time and making the current year con- sist of 455 days. Then he began to work on the months, giving thirty-one days to each of six months. thirty to five, and twenty nine days to February in three years out of four, and thirty in the fourth year to make up odd hours and minutes re- quired by the sun in its motion through given space. That was the Julian calen- dar, and it prevailed for fifteen centuries. until another Pope of Rome, Gregory XIII, in 15S1, gave the Gregorian call endar, which is the one you will write work and live by this day. Pontffex Maxi mus Gregory, Great Pope, finding the cal-~ endar eleven days behind, ordained and de- creed, first, that a bound of eleven days should be made in the reckoning of that year; second, that no century thereafter should be leap year unless the number of centuries was a multiple of four Tn this way it came about that 1900 was a lean year. but 100 was not, nor was 1SO0 nor last year. 1900. Within a few years all Catholic governed countries had adopted the new style, but the Protestant-ruled countries England, Scotland rejected it. mainly because dt was 'popish,' albeit they were then living by the Catholic Julian calendar. By the end of 1752 all Christen- dom, except Russia, which did not exist as a great power in Gregory's time, had adopted the new style. Russia being in rebellion against Rome ever since Russia as we know it became a nation, 1t has not adopted the Roman calendar of Gregory
 What splendid theme for a master poet--Great Gregory, Pope of Rome, more than three hundred years ago. calmly