Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-12-31

an occasion Of festivity. Long, long In ad-
vance they reserve a table at their favorite
cafe; and becomngly habited In boiled shirts
or gowns Of the lowest visibility, and well
armed with a commodity which is said to be
synonymous with yourself-money-they
seek to outwit you by crowding a month OF
merriment into half dozen hours. Yet their
victory is brief and fallaclous, for If hours
spin too fast by night they will move grind
ingly on the axle the next morning. None
of us can beat you in the end. Even the
hat-checli boy grows old, becomes gray and
dies at last babbling Of greenbacks.
ITO MY own taste, old Time, it is moro
L agreeable to make this evening a season
of gruesome brooding. Morosely I survey
the faults and folIes of my last year. I
am grown too canny to pour the new wine OF
good resolution into the old bottles of my
imperfect humors. But get a certain grim
satisfaction in thinking how we all-every
human being of us--share alike in bondage
to your oppression. There is the only true
and complete democracy. the only absolute
brotherhood of man. The great ones of the
earth--Charley Chaplin and Douglas Fair
banks, General Pershng and Miss Amy
Lowell-all these are in service TO the same
tyranny. Day after day slips or jolts past,
joins the Great Majority; suddenly we wake
with start to find that the best of it is
gone by. Surely it seems but day ago that
Stevenson set out to write little book that
was to be called Life at Twenty-hve'-
before he got it written he was long past the
delectable age-and now we rub our eyes
and see he has been dead nigh as long as
the span of life he then so delightfully."- con-
templated. If there is one meditation COM
mon to every adult on this globe II is this,
so variousy phrased, We'll, bo, Time sure
does hustle"
COME of them have scurvily entreated you,
~ old Time! The thief Of youth, they have
called you; a highwayman, a gypsy, a grim
reaper 1t seems a little unfair. For you
have your kindly moods, too. Without your
gentle passage where were Memory, the
sweetes. Of lesser pleasures? You are the
only medicine for many a woe, many sore
heart. And surely you have right to reap
where you alone have sown? Our strength,
our wit, our comeliness, all those virtues and
graCes that you pilfer with such gentle hand.
did you not give them to us in the first
place? Give, do / say? Nay, we knew,
even we clutched them, they were but
loan. And the great Immortality of the race
endures, for every day that taken
away from ourselves added to our
children or our grandchildren. 1t was
Shakespeare who thought great deal about
you, who put it best:
Nativity once in the main of light.
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being
crowned,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight
And Time that gave doth now his gift
confound-
1t is to be hoped my dear Time that you
have read Shakespeare's sonnets. because
thew Will a dignity
of your career and also suggest to you the
only way we have of keeping UP with you.
There Is no way of outwitting Time, Shake
speare tells his young friend Save breed
to brave him when he takes thee hence"
Or poor bungling parodist revamped it:
Pep is the stuff to put Old Time on skids--
Pep in your copy, yes, and lots of kids.
It is true that Shakespeare hints another
way of doing you in, which is to write SON
nets as good as his. This way, needless to
add, Is open to few.
WELL my dear Time, you are not going
w to fool me into making myself ridicu-
lous this New Years Eve with a lot of
bonny but impossible resolutions 1 know
that you are playing with me just a cat
plays with a mouse; yet even the most
piteous mousekin sometimes causes his tor
mentor surprise or disappointment by getting
under a bureau or behind the stove. where,
for the moment, she cannot paw him. Every
now and then, with little luck, shall pull
Oft just such a scurry into temporary immor-
tality. 1t may come by reading Dickens or
by seeing sunset or by lunching with
friends, or by forgetting to wind the alarm
clock, or by contemplating the rosy little
pate of my daughter, who Is still only a
nine days wonder--so young that she doesn't
even know what you are doing to her But
you are not going TO have the laugh on me
by Turing me into resolutions. / know my
weaknesses. I know that I shall probably
continue to annoy newsdealers by reading
the magazines on the stalls instead of buy
ing them; that I shall put off having my
hair cut drop tobacco clnders on my waist
coat feel bored at the idea of having to
shave and get dressed be nervous when the
gas burner pops when turned off buy more
Liberty Bonds than can afford and have
TO hook them at grievous loss. l shall
continue to be pleasant to insurance agents,
from sheer lack of manhood; and to keep
library books out over the date and so incur
fine My only hope, you see, is resolutely
to determine to persist in these failings.
Then, by sheer perversity, may grow out
| of them.
| ILTHAT avail, indeed, for any of us to
w make good resolutions when one con-
| templates the grand pageant of human
| frailty? Observe what I noticed the other
day in the Lost and Found column Of the
New York Times:
| LOST-Hotel Imperial lavatory. set of
teeth. Call or communicate Flint. 1874
| East 43d street. Reward.
Surely II Mr.. Flint could not remember TO
| keep his teeth in his mouth, or II any one
| else was basely whimsical to juggle
them away from him, It may we'll teach us
| to be chary of extravagant hopes for the
| future. Even the League Of Nations, when
| one contemplates the sad case of Mr.. Flint
| becomes a rather anaemic safeguard. We
| had better keep Mr. Flint in mind through
| the New Year as a symbol Of human error
| and disappointment And the best of It is
| my dear Time. that you, too, may be a little
| careless. Perhaps one Of these days you
| may doze a little and we shall steal a few
| hours of tmeless bliss. Shall we see n little
| ad in the papers:
| LOST-Sixty valuable minutes, said to
| have been stolen by the unworthy hui