NEW YEAR'S EVE


Every man hath two birth-days: two days, at least, in every year,
which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his
mortal duration. The one is that which in an especial manner he
termeth _his_. In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this
custom of solemnizing our proper birth-day hath nearly passed away, or
is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor
understand any thing in it beyond cake and orange. But the birth of
a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or
cobbler. No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.
It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is
left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.

Of all sounds of all bells--(bells, the music nighest bordering upon
heaven)--most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the
Old Year. I never hear it without a gathering-up of my mind to a
concentration of all the images that have been diffused over the past
twelvemonth; all I have done or suffered, performed or neglected--in
that regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a person
dies. It takes a personal colour; nor was it a poetical flight in a
contemporary, when he exclaimed

I saw the skirts of the departing Year.

It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of us seems to be
conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. I am sure I felt it, and all
felt it with me, last night; though some of my companions affected