Threads of Grey and Gold

The proverbial "good resolutions" of the first of January which are usually forgotten thenext day, the watch services in the churches, and the tin horns in the city streets, are aboutthe only formalities connected with the American New Year. The Pilgrim fathers took nonote of the day, save in this prosaic record: "We went to work betimes"; but one JudgeSewall writes with no small pride of the blast of trumpets which was sounded under hiswindow, on the morning of January 1st, 1697. He celebrated the opening of the eighteenth century with a very bad poem which he wrotehimself, and he hired the bellman to recite the poem loudly through the streets of the townof Boston; but happily for a public, even now too much wearied with minor poets, thecustom did not become general.