Essays of Elia (1888) Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NEW YEAR'S EVE. ERY 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 sound 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 havedone 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 rather to manifest an exhilaration at the birth of the coming year, than any very tender regrets for the decease of its predecessor. But I am none of those who? Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties; new books, new faces, new years,?from some mental twist which m...Read More