I SUPPOSE this old world will revolve about its axis in 1869, just as it did in 1868, and that we shall revolve with it just the same. I suppose we shall go on loving, hating, praying, cursing, marrying, dying, and doing foolish things in the new, as we did in the old; that Old Midas and Gunnybags will chase the Almighty Dollar just as hard, and swindle just as much; that Mrs. Blobbs will continue to lecture Old Blobbs on the proprieties, and that Old Blobbs will continue to grow worse and worse; that Aurelia will have another baby in the new year just as she did in the old, and will think there never was such a baby born before; that Celeste will continue to do foolish things, and be the most delightfully wicked little creature in the world, for she is just wicked enough to be completely good; that Fitz-Herbert will make an ass of himself next year as he did this; that Mignon will be just as sweet and lovely, and keep all the rest of us in sunshine, and that Blanche will still search for the lost melody in her life.

In general, I suppose, men and women will do in the new year just as they did in the last, and will continue to air their vices in the courts as if they were of any interest to other people who have vices of their own, which are a great deal more interesting, and boasting their virtues, when everybody knows that under the cuticle they are just as shabby as the rest of the world. This is the one grand mistake which people make, viz: To suppose their virtues or their vices are of any earthly interest to other people.

As a general rule, you are only essential to yourself, and the man who takes off your boots, and puts on your coat, or the young woman who does up your coiffure, and looks after your toilet, and knows you best, will tell you this. Some people succeed in making heroes of themselves, and are worshipped by some other people, but they are never heroes to those who know them best. Strip your hero of his decorations, bid him come down from his pedestal, undress him, and stand him up by the side of Terence Maloney, and you can't tell one from the other.

You see the whole thing is conventional.

So I suppose the sun will rise and set, and the world go on just the same, until suddenly it stops going, for you and for me, and we shall go out of it like gentlemen, I trust.

We shall make the usual number of resolutions, I suppose, on New Year's Day, and break them before the next with our usual success. We shall firmly persuade ourselves next Friday morning that we are hereafter to be models of goodness, and pinks of propriety. We shall appropriate to ourselves the most of virtue and decency in the world, and set examples for the rest of mankind. We shall all be shining instances of temperance and godliness. We shall confine ourselves to a proper use of King's English. We shall attend upon Parson Primrose's ministrations twice each Sunday. We shall no longer ruin the characters of others with our idle, foolish gossip. We shall take off our masks and wear our souls upon our sleeves. And before the year is over, there isn't one of us who will do anything of the kind. Our cemeteries, next New Year's Day, will be just as full of head-stones set up to mark where our broken resolutions lie, as they have ever been.

And a hundred years hence, it is extremely doubtful whether any one will care for our resolutions, whether they were kept or broken, or for us, whether we have lived or died. But I suppose, for all that, it will be necessary for us, during the coming year, to conceive that we are of some importance, and that the curious looker-on in Jupiter, and the Man in the Moon, will wonder what we are all doing on our ant-hills, and why we are making such a fuss.

And I suppose when you and I retire from the stage, and the curtain comes down on the little farce we have been playing, that the great audience will not go home, nor the manager close up the theatre, but that other actors will step into our buskins, and thus the play will be kept up, and men will laugh, and women will weep, and others will love and hate, and do brave deeds and naughty deeds, although the call-boy may never summon us again behind the lights.

Now, I might go on from this point and preach you a sermon, as my brethren in the pulpit will do, upon the brevity of time and the stern realities of life, but I am not going to do anything of the kind. Life is not measured by years, nor by flight of time. He lives most who loves most, and lives longest who appreciates what is best. Some men live longer in a year than others in a lifetime.

December 26, 1868.