h's difference between them.

"Well, my dear sister," said the New Year, after the first
salutations, "you look almost tired to death. What have you been about
during your sojourn in this part of infinite space?"

"Oh, I have it all recorded here in my book of chronicles," answered
the Old Year, in a heavy tone. "There is nothing that would amuse you,
and you will soon get sufficient knowledge of such matters from your
own personal experience. It is but tiresome reading."

Nevertheless, she turned over the leaves of the folio and glanced at
them by the light of the moon, feeling an irresistible spell of
interest in her own biography, although its incidents were remembered
without pleasure. The volume, though she termed it her book of
chronicles, seemed to be neither more nor less than the Salem
_Gazette_ for 1838; in the accuracy of which journal this sagacious
Old Year had so much confidence that she deemed it needless to record
her history with her own pen.

"What have you been doing in the political way?" asked the New Year.

"Why, my course here in the United States," said the Old Year--"though
perhaps I ought to blush at the confession--my political course, I
must acknowledge, has been rather vacillatory, sometimes inclining
toward the Whigs, then causing the administration party to shout for
triumph, and now again uplifting what seemed the almost prostrate
banner of the opposition; so that historians will hardly know what to
make of me in this respect. But the Loco-Focos--"

"I do not like these party nicknames," interrupted her sister, who
seemed remarkably touchy about some points. "Perhaps we shall part in
better humor if we avoid any political discussion."

"With all my heart," replied the Old Year, who had already been
tormented half to death with squabbles of this kind. "I care not if
the name of Whig or Tory, with their interminable brawls about banks
and the sub-treasury, abolition, Texas, the Florida war, and a million
of other topics which you will learn soon enough for your own
comfort,--I care not, I say, if no whisper of these matters ever
reaches my ears again. Yet they have occupied so large a share of my
attention that I scarcely know what else to tell you. There has,
indeed been a curious sort of war on the Canada border, where blood
has streamed in the names of liberty and patriotism; but it must
remain for some future, perhaps far-distant, year to tell whether or
no those holy names have