Year: 1879




Unsurpassed in Beauty and SubIimity.


Last night the old year died. Did
you see that old man, so pale, frail
and ghostly, who stood out upon
the bleak and icy hills last night,
leaning in his decrepitude upon the
arm of his last surviving but dying
child, the departing December


The chaplet of buds, flowers and
fruits wreathed around his brow by
spring, summer and autumn, were
frosted by winter; his sandals were
Old, and covered with snow and
mud; his garments were tattered,
and 9listening with slect were fast
ened around bis wasted form; his
grey locks were frosty, his breath
was cold, and his pulse quivered
ike an icy thread in his chilled and
shrunken arm.


Who is he? He was the child of
remorseless Time. He was one of
numerous family that presents US
no two contemporaries. The birth
of one has always been preceded by
the death of the solitary other. The
wailiEg requiems over the death of
the one have always ended in lula
bies over the cradle of his sue
cessor.


Who Is he? He was the Old Year.
Last night, eternlty's horologue
tolled out low twelve upon its
sounding bell. 1t was his death
knell and at that lonely hour while
we slept, when cadaverOus ghosts
are fabled to creep amid the ivied
ruins of castles old, and shrink
through the crevices of tottering
church belfries, and dry old bones
shake and clatter in churchyarGs,
he died, aud the spirits of winter
passed him in a cold cloud drawn
by boreal winds, and drove him out
to sepulchral oblivion and buried
him in grave whose cerements are
eternal. He will return no more
forever. Farewell, old year! Let
thy cold ghost mingle with the
shades of thy predecessors, but let
it not come back to haunt US when
we die.


Gone, but he has left his foot
prints. The lovely babe the mother
SO fondly kissed last New Year is
not here this morning. 1t simply
came. smiled, then wept and depart
ed. 1t seemed to come from heaven
and to stay just Ions enough to
make us love it, and then to return.
Its mission appears to have been to
gather up our affections and carry
them back to heaven with it, to
make US love heaven more and earth
less.


Some beautiful girls and noble
boys, whose laugh and shout enliv-
ened our homes during the last
Christmas and New Year holidays
are not with us to-day. Dreamlces
they sleep beneath the SHOWS of the
winter in our neighboring cemete
ries, and foul decay has marred
their lovely forms.


In placing the house in order in
these holidays we have found a toy,
a shoe, a hat, a book, unclaimed
and Ownerless, which made us weep
anew. ., shall they ever live again?
The old arm chair that sat in the
corner, and was tenanted by smiling
old age, one year ago. is empty now
its occupant is gone and some of
us are fatherless. The head OF the
table is also vacated. The dust lies
heavily upon the mantle-piece, and
disorder has crept into the family
chamber, for with some of us moth
er is gone too, some familiar foot
fall is missed, some well known
voice is hushed. The receding year
has touched us somewhere. Weare
a year older, a year nearer the
grave. This year may land US in
heaven, or sink us to hell. Are you
ready to die? If die we must, this
year we may ascend to heaven.


But the misty spirit of the Old
Year, wreathed away into the dark,
dim past, the angels of God sang
the birth hymn of the New Year.
And still you may hear the dying
touches of the dying wind still lin
gering in the mountain tops, and
quivering gently in the happy air,
and coursing sweetly the nerve cor
riders leading to the minds sense
rum to greet the human soul. The
New Year is here. How many years
since TIE world was made l know
not, neither does any man. How
many years since man was made l
know not-our chronolOgies cannot
be absolutely relied upon. But it
is eighteen hundren and seventy
wears since the infant Savior was
born, wrapt in swaddling cloths and
laid in a manger; eighteen hundred
and thirty seven years since his
crucifixion, burial, resurrection and
ascension to heaven.


The New Year is here, and with
him his children. He came crown
ed with glittering frost and robes Of
trailing snow; two with temptests
in their fists, and stray sunbeams
on their brows; four, clothed in
green, enameled with buds, flowers
and fruits, and straitened with gold
en- ripeness; three with robes of vel
low, red and purple; one in freezing
nudity with a scepter of ice. Be
fore the first may pass we may lie
dead, and the remaining eleven may
dance their rounds upon our graves.


No year has ever passed without
some one dying whom we knew and
loved. Every succeeding year marks
its number and name upon some
tombstone in our cemetery.


What Schools Should Teach.


1t is a serious fact that the more