The Alaska daily empire., 1915-01-02
lANuAaY.

About the time ihat George Wash ! ngton was wondering lf he would be
 likely % jeopardize the popularity oi l postage atamps to be adomed with
 bis classIc profile should he grow lregular mouatache, people were turn
 Ing over now leaves, se,sins their
 old debts and blowing tho'r unwol. | como fish-horns in blustery March for
 celebration Of tho new year
 in i75z an ingomnioc who by chance
 had been elected Co Che Bridaa Par
 lamont discovered that about 2,500 j years before Numa Pomplius the
 second Roman Emperor had selected ] Januarius as the frat month Of ho ] year when be tucked it to the hithor- to abbreviated calendar of those dayg ln speeeh pointing out that coneer- yalism misht easily be considered as having been carried triiie far when it Jagged twenty-five centuries behind the course Of events, he walked parlia- ment up long enough for it to pass an act making January the official first oi Che year. and thu5 temporer. fly brought the British dominions abreast of afiairs
 X certain Ambrosius Thoodosius Marcobius the Horace Greedy of his times, has ioyously pointed ont thae' Numa quite evidently selected iho DOT ter Of Che Olympic heaven as sponsor for tho new month because be he'd the political advantage Of possessing twol distinct faces, and from his position | at tho apex of Che year could peer down the corridors of the future with one set ol linenments while indulging in useiul retrospect with the other @ manilest asset, even in those days when no one ever knew from which direction the bricks would come
 Another gifted Journalist Of the per- iod, Marso Henry Plutarch, has agreed with the poetically inclined Ovid. who a little earlier had infested the cal. toriai sanctums of the day, in the be- lief that Janus was selected as god father of the newborn infant Of the calendar because he &as invariably on the ground when things were started.
 They do best. says plutarch. awho begin the new year with the winter lolstice." and then proceeds to point put that everything in nature took ' } fresh start at that time. 4 dissen- .er hove in sight later in the person 'f Alexander de Alexaudro who got g ID on tho literary soapbox to observe 2 hat January Junoni esset sacer was lis opinion. January is sacred to 'uno," said he just before the trau- 'le started. but he could find no talk. rs. for nearly an had placed their n money on Janus and did not care to a edge D Vestgian, much later. comments up- o n Che fact that the Anglo-saxons J alled the month Woifmonat "because z be people are most like In that month " } be devoured by wolves" and the !, iodern householder has stlll other b ames for it about the time he begins q ursuing the last shreds of his win c ar coal supply Into tho corners of ts 10 bin to which 1t has retired. ~ Both the French and the Scot, be. . ig temperamentaI and suspicious peo- .e, looked with doubtful eye upon 70 le first month of the year and used to point ? proyerb and aodrn @ warn- v g. "It Is better to see a mad dog N nm hot sun In January" say the le rmer. and If grass grows green yS9, Janeveer twill be th waur for Q "
 year observe the latter. both Of q. 1ich remarks ere considered to be to
 poor taste as welcome to the 15 her who marches at the head Of 70 e company of months th
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