there is
beauty in the world again! But then will they betray you? Will they grow
old and ugly? Will they live to mock at you? And now the words, 'No you
don't, you can't come it,' tremble upon your lips; but then, oh! the
delight of giving up to it; going the whole, the entire, the unclipt, the
blind-folded, the universal; 'ha! ha! come to my heart, my beauties!' and
with open arms you stagger to their embraces. But in that long, long,
kiss, with the hot breath of passion, and the bounding blood and brain
reeling to madness, there is the bitterness of death. _Dust and
ashes!_--take them away. . . . THE drop too much in all this is, that you
get no sympathy from others; it is quite too personal, too exclusive for
that. Whereas, in the solemnities of New-Year's, and in all the
concernments of that day, the whole world beareth company. Not but that we
have occasion for all our bravery, our greetings and rejoicings; it is
well to affect that, for there is a strange man about town, all that day,
and a _disci mori_ whispered about the streets; and although we pretend
not to know, or to hear him, there is one at our house who hath let him
in; and all day long is he parleying and protesting and offering
refreshments, forsooth, to that unwelcome visitor. But there is a pleasure
in the assurance that the cunning of our neighbors shall not avail more
than ours with his impertinence; that he shall be stabbed under the fifth
rib, that he shall wince under his hits, his jokes, his stinging rebuke!
There is also something companionable in the thought, that we are not
alone in this onward movement of years, this stern necessity of motion,
this tread-mill step! No one can defalcate in this particular; no one can
Texas-ize and be quit of his transgressions and his onward travel. But
millions of our own kith and kin travel the same way; England goes with
us; Europe goes with us; and let not the indolent Turk dream that he is
becalmed the while; let not the exclusives of the rising sun imagine that
they in their nearness to Heaven do not, nevertheless, whirl on in the
general motion, even as the outer barbarians! Decidedly, they _do_; their
somersets avail not, and the edicts of the great Ching-poo are astounded
at their non-effect. This is one pleasant reflection born of New-Year's;
beside, it would be amusing, if one could laugh at any thing so sad, to
observe the humors of the few who think upon the bearings of that solemn
time. In the y