NEW YEAR PROPHECIES


Some people are surprised at the daring with which compilers of
prophetic almanacs forecast the details of the future. The most
astonishing thing of all is that nearly everybody still regards the
future as a mystery. As a matter of fact, we know a great deal about
the future. We know that next year will contain 365 days. We know--and
this is rather a tribute to our cleverness--that the year 1924 will
contain 366 days, and even the exact point at which the extra day will
slip in. Ask a savage to point you out the extra day in Leap Year, and
he will be more hopelessly at a loss than a man looking for a needle
in a haystack, but even the most ignorant Christian will pick it out
at the right end of February as neatly and inevitably as a love-bird
on a barrel-organ picking out a fortune. The art of prophecy has grown
with civilisation. Prophets were regarded as almost divine persons in
the old days, but now every man is his own Isaiah. I am the most
modest of the prophets, but even I venture to foretell that there will
be an annular eclipse of the sun in the coming year on the 8th of
April, that it will begin at twenty-two minutes to 8 A.M. at
Liverpool, and that it will be visible at Greenwich. What clairvoyant
could go further? Test my mantic gifts at any other point and I doubt
not I can satisfy you. Do you want to know at what time there will be
high water at Aberdeen on the afternoon of the 21th January? The
answer is: "Thirteen minutes past one." Do you want to know when
partridge shooting will begin? I do not even need to reflect before
giving the answer: "The 1st of September." And so I could go on,
almost _ad infinitum_, filling in the details of the year in advance.