Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-12-17

tans and Pilgrims assemble in the town
hall New Year day and decide. solemnly
and with shouts of gladness. to eschew
and stay off the stuff once and forever?
Not anything remotely resembling it.
Just read the menu of any New Year
feed of the Puritan lotteries and you'll OBJ
serve that the old redeye, in various but
always recognizable forms, took up near
ly all the space on their New Year carte
de jour. The punkin pies and things that
they sank their fangs into that day OBJ
Viously were only partaken of for the
sole and exclusive purpose of laying a
good foundation for the highly fiery and
ornate list of vets that made up such an
overlapping portion of their New feal
menu. In fact. we can't think Of any
thing more powerfully calculated to drive
a wabbling rider on the water wagon
into falling over the tailboard than Tor
him to read. accidentally or otherwise
about one of those New Year big-eats
celebrations of the Puritans. It's IKE
reading Dickens. when Dickens gets his
bunch at some coy little wayside inn IN
Rochester, England. on bitter. stormy
day, and gathers EN- around the gioWy'
CHEEKY fireplace in the tavern front room,
and has the landlord, aproned up to the
neck, trudge in with a bowl of stea min
punch, all spiced and delicious, with
church-warden pipes on the side, ana
then, as a moist obligato to go with the
hot veal pie or mess of Yorkshire pud-
din, why, Dickens has tankards of beaoy
old ale for the travellers, and then some
more of that aromatic punch, please, be-
fore turning in, and
Well if reading Dickens doesn't cause
a whole lot of water-Wagcn riders to drop
their whip, thus compelling them to cllmo
down after it, then the present writer Is
willing to grant that the reading of a
Puritanical New lear day menu doesn
have the same effect upon the modern
individual who is striving to be good and
long-eared and abstemious tor himself ;
and the present writer is Willing to grant
nothing whatever of the kind, for reasons
best known to himself.
x
To get back, why New Year day. par
ticularly, for the swear-off gag? Why not
the Fourth of July? Why not Thanks
giving day? Why not the anniversary of
the battle of the Boyne? Why not any
old day, just as well and just as effectual
or Intellectual as New Year day? Any one
of these days would do just as Well for
the man who has passion for even dates
or for dating great and solemn events
in his life from some recognizable stand
ing start in time.
But it's a disquieting fad, for one very
important reason. Ii a man must swear
off New Year day is pretty chrky,
merry kind of day in these and many
other parts to be chosen as a day for
the swearer-off to attempt to put that
kind of stuff across. New Year day is
a day of doins: town hall tonight on
New Year day; regular parties; big intro
ducings; all hands wearing a sort o wag-
gish I-dare- you-to-Start- Somethlng look
in their eyes. These are the conditions
that the New Year day swearer-off must
encounter; when nearly everybody else
in his burg is looking and feeling roguish,
and ready for any old kind of rough
stuff Just short of infracting the law that
ANYBODY suggests, the swearer-off, per-
haps with a leftover from the evening
of December 81, has to mooch around,
tasting that coppery taste on his tonsils,
and stick to the terms of his rash under
taking.
1t wouldn't be so bad If it hadn't come
to pass, as it has in quite recent years.
that the night of December 81 is now the
great big rollicking. all-bets-off, swing
your partners, y-minutes-for-a-new-
book evening of the entire year. 1t has
come to be that the sky is the limit for
the night of December 81. Conservative
persons on that night have been known
to wedge to the center of the milling
throng and double-dogd dared all of the
piano movers and policemen in Christen-
dom to come along and have their arms
bitten off close to their shoulders.