Bismarck Daily Tribune

What Has Nineteen Hundred and Six Meant to You?

By John Anderson Jayne

It means that during this year you have enjoyed over 36,500 heart beats; that you have eaten nearly one ton of food, that you have partaken of nearly 1,100 quarts of water, to say nothing of other liquid refreshments you may have used to slake your thirst. You have earned according to your capacity. Do you know how much you have earned? You have brought smiles to hundreds of people with whom you have come in contact and possibly left a heartache in the lives of a few.

You have traveled many weary miles and had many bothersome paths. Sometimes you think your life, instead of being a limited express traveling from the cradle to the grave, is nothing but a "commuter," starting from the central station of the morning and making many round trips before night falls. On the train of your life you have carried the ambitions of the young, the hopes of lovers, the sorrows of the desolate and the afflictions of the poor. You have helped and healed, blessed and saved, many by the continued faithfulness of your life.

You have had your sorrows and your joys, your mounts of delight and your valleys of humiliation. You have felt the scalding tear run down your cheek, and many a time the smile of another has driven your care away. You have heard the prattle of the children and the cry of the desolate. You have heard the wail of the new-born babe and heard the last sigh of the aged pilgrim whose eyes were fast closing in death. You have seen poverty, and have dreamed of riches.

You have erected lofty towers of purposeful resolutions, and have seen them crumble in glittering ruin at your feet. Life has pressed the ambitions out of your spirits at times, at other times it has hugged you to its bosom, and you have said: "Life is sweet, good and true. I love life."

You have had many experiences. Sometimes you think that your experience is entirely different from that of the other fellow. But when you scratch the cuticle of conventionality that separates every man from his fellows, you find that his heart has beat with yours, that his experiences are yours, and yours are his. You have learned that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin." You have learned that while you are the only you there is in the world, there are other I's equally great, good and important as you. You have learned that life means brotherhood, and brotherhood means life.

So you came to December 31, 1906. As you look back over the year, you do not see very much progress, and you are inclined to repine at your failure. But listen! No man has failed who has honestly done the best that he could; given expression to the truest within him; brought a smile to an orphan's face; bound up the bleeding heart of a friend; rejoiced through the shine and the shadow; watched the trees bud, blossom and come to their fruitage; learned the lesson of mistake; made two blades of grass grow where one was; given of heart strength for the uplift of a comrade; overcome passion and established virtue, and caught the step, swing and rhythm of humanity and lived for the best and noblest in life.

1906 has closed its books forever. And you should have been a better man at the end of the year because of your experiences, for the sole purpose of life is to make men better today than they were yesterday. Rejoice, then, that the close of the year has found you far on your journey, and know that the fulfilled expectations and promises of the past are the earnest and the prophesy of the days to come. Therefore, take courage and go forward.