Apropos of the New Year
It was Montaigne—was it not?—who said: “I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers, and only the thread that binds them is mine own.” So it must be said of our New Year editorial; we have gathered a few selections from writers who have expressed our own thought with more force and beauty than we can command, and these selections we commend to our readers.
First of all, as to our New Year resolutions. They are worth while. Even if we fail in some measure, it is something to have aspired to better things. Yet if we fail too miserably, we may despair and resign ourselves to the Slough and Despond. The wisest word that has been said on this subject—as on many other subjects—comes from my Lord Bacon, and this is his language:
“He that seeketh victory over his nature, let him not set himself too great nor too small tasks; for the first will make him dejected by often failing, and the second will make him a small proceeder, though by often prevailings.... Where nature is mighty, and therefore the victory hard, the degrees had need be, first to stay and arrest nature in time (like to him who would say over the alphabet when angry); then to go less in quantity (as if one should, in forbearing wine, come from drinking healths to a draught at a meal); and, lastly, to discontinue altogether. But if a man have the fortitude and resolution to enfranchise himself at once, that is the best.”
In our “Thought for the Week” in this issue, Emerson pays a high tribute to cheerfulness. “The joy of the spirit indicates its strength,” he says—and very correctly. Cheerfulness is a form of heroism, of bravery in spite of disasters; while to surrender to one’s morbid and melancholy tendencies is a form of cowardice. Then, too, cheerfulness is a form of Christianity, a recognition of the fact that “God’s in His heaven and all’s right with the world”—who that believes in a good God who overrules all things can ever be a pessimist? We make these observations because our next selection is a New Year’s plea in behalf of cheerfulness as found in one of our exchanges a year ago:
“Just what particular step is most needed each one must determine for him or herself. Probably ninety-nine out of every one hundred of us ‘boys and girls grown tall’ need most to brace up and strengthen the round of cheerfulness, and I question if there are many of you who can make a resolve that will do more to develop and strengthen your higher nature than an earnest one to be cheerful—even when things go wrong—for from its roots is sure to spring thoughtfulness of others, and hope, and courage.”
And just a cheerfulness is a virtue, so is thrift. The ability to save, to lay aside for future wants, always implies foresight, self control and regard for others; it makes for honesty and contentment. Listen then to this advice of Col. J.B. Killibrew of the January Southern Farm Magazine:
“At the beginning of the present year let every farmer resolve to save at least a small percentage of his income for investment or for pressing necessities. It so often happens that when the farmer receives a large sum of money from the sale of his crops, as cotton, tobacco or wheat, that he and his family at one enter upon a career of extravagance and unwise expenditure. Soon they find their little horde wasted, and, what is still worse, habits are formed that make it much harder to practice economy in the future. If the rule were once established in the home of the American farmer, as it is in almost every German home, that a part of the income should be saved for the exigencies of a ‘rainy day,’ it would soon be a source of the greatest pleasure to the family and lead them into the ways of contentment, thrift, peace and affluence.”
And the very last of our “posy of flowers,” our group of selections, is this from the Saturday Evening Post: perhaps it is one of the widest application and the one that we may most fittingly let ring in our ears as the conclusion of this New Year sermon:
“There are other debts, too, that it would be wise to pay on this first day of the year. The folk who have helped us on the way, who are not to be reached with money, do we owe them nothing? You think every day that your wife is the kindest of women, the nearest right of any human soul. Do you tell her so? There is a pitiful story of an old woman in New England dying in the arms of her son, himself a gray-haired man. ‘You’ve been a good mother to me!’ he cried. She turned and looked at him. ‘Oh, John, why did you never say it before?’ she said. Our Puritan and Scotch blood has made us stingy of praise and kindness, of the little words that help our neighbor on his way. This is a good time to count up such debts.”
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