Barbour Jeffersonian

1880.

The Japanese, who are a wise people, and fond of expressing themselves by symbols, present to each other on every New Year's Day a piece of the commonest and coarsest dried fish, done up in a rough scrap of paper. This is to remind them of the frugality and temperance of their ancestors, and in this way to exhort each other to form and keep good resolutions for the next twelvemonth.

With us, too, the opening year is fitly the time to pledge ourselves to good resolves; and the resolves, with each individual, naturally relate to his or her special weaknesses or temptations.

Nor can we, any of us, probably make a pledge more beneficial to ourselves and to others than that same pledge of the Japanese, to be temperate in all things: not only in eating and drinking, and in the enjoyments and gratifications of life, but in the judgment and treatment of our neighbors, in the pursuits of our worldly ambitions, in our daily dealings, business and social.

We should also be temperate in the exercise of all our faculties, in speech and in action, as citizens, as laborers, as members of society, and as inmates of the domestic circle.

The blank pages of the new year are spread out before us. Each of us has his blank page to fill with a chapter in the history of a life. Each has it to a large degree in his power to make that page bright with the story of good deeds, and an upright, unselfish career, or to blot it with ill doings, which once recorded, can never be rubbed out, though they may be atoned. But as prevention is better than cure, so the avoidance of evil actions is better than atonement for them.

If we look beyond our individual selves into the great world bustling around us, we may find reasons for cheerful anticipations of peace and prosperity among the nations. Stirring events, no doubt are before us, in 1880. At least two exciting and closely-contested elections will take place in Christendom: one for President, in the United States, and one for a new Parliament in England. We may look forward to them, however, without much apprehension.

Meanwhile there are but few clouds in the world's horizon. Material prosperity is fast replacing the straightened times of the past few years; factories long shut are humming with labor; and the ships are once more heavy-laden with precious cargoes. Down to the very humblest occupation, restored confidence and reviving thrift are bringing greater comfort and more steady profits. It seems as if the whole civilized world, after a long and uneasy rest, were starting forth on a new race of enterprise and peaceful rivalry.

That the year may end with the general peace unbroken, with prosperity still smiling upon the peoples, and with many, many good resolutions promptly made and firmly kept by young and old, is the wish with which we greet our readers.