ON THE THRESHOLD. The Old Year and the New.

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 235, 31 December 1904, Page 6

ON THE THRESHOLD. The Old Year and the New.

IT'S the way of the world to be off with the old love and on with the new. There is too a peculiar fascination about the unknown. If you search around you may also discover in the foibles of human nature various other reasons for the hearty unanimity with which we are* going this Saturday night to kick 1904 over the door-step, and throw our caps wildly in the air for the advent of 1905 Some people won't go to bed at all for the joy of it. Bands of young fellows, fairly circumspect at other times, will parade the streets with arms linked and trying to persuade themsehes that they can sing. Staid citizens will be rushing around inviting each other to have "just one mere." They \mll be pump-handling each other's "arms with great vigour and wishing everybody — even the man who has forgotten to pay his bill — " a Happy New Yeai 1 ." * * v For many of us 1904 has bi ought much happiness— much more than we deserved perhaps — but, all the same, we are doing our sba'-e in speeding the departing guest. Good as it may have been, we are expecting much more from 1905. For others the passing year has been fraught vuth gnei, affliction, blasted hopes, and bitter disappointments. No wonder they are ready to ring cut the old and nng in the new. All are united in the common expectation that 1905 may for them individually be a golden year. * » * It matters not that they hope to garner where they have not sown It is of no consequence that our artificial divisions of time produce no impression on the current of events, and that the cause shaped on the 31st December cannot be detached from its logical effect on the Ist of January. Hope springs perennial in ihe human breast and everyone hails 1905 as a Happy New Year. In the mam let us hope it may be. 1904 will go down to history as the year of the Russo-Japanese War. How vast and far-reaching its consequences it passes the wit of man to determine. In the British Imperial annals it will be associated with the retirement of the Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain from office in order to v\oik up the propaganda of preferential trade between the component parts of the Empire. So far the results of the campaign do not bulk large with piomise. The United States have given President Roosevelt a fresh lease of power, the Australian Commonwealth has had trial of three different Premiers and Cabinets, and New Zealand has got a fresh Governor but the same old King Dick going on just as strong as ever. It has been a memorable year also for Wellington. Electric trams and a brand new Town Hall are making us think no small pumpkins of ourselves. The people who have been telling us

any time these past eight or nine years that good and bad seasons mn in cycles, and that our fat. years of plenty were over and the lean years of penury were knocking at the gate, are not yet able to cry "I told you so." The colony keeps steadily on in prosperous seas, peace abides with us, and the contentment springing from good times is widely diffused throughout the land. • * * The dairy industry may not be so much on the boom as ot yore, but wool has gone up to high water mark if not beyond it. Two years ago it was 40 per cent, down below normal. Now it is ever so much up, and as it is still the great staple export of the colony the significance of this esent is not to be lightly estimated. What high prices for wool mean tor New Zealand may be gathered in part from the bald statement that for 1903 it headed our exports with a value of £4,044,223, frozen meat coming next with £3,201,300, and gold being third with a value of £2,038,075. * * * Good as 1904 has been to us in the mass, we join with eager optimism in the universal hope that 1905 may be better and brighter still for us both individually and collectively. It may be irrational, but still there is much potency in a cheerful philosophy. The wine of life would be drawn off for most of us, and the mere lees be left instead, if we could pierce the future and count up exactly our gains and losses. As we can't, there" is a large measure of hope to carry us forwaid and spur us on to fresh endeavours. At any rate, theie is much virtue in making new resolutions at this enhance upon another year to avoid past mistakes, drop bad old habits, and try to be better men and women. Let us make them and stick to them. We cordiall) wish om readeib A Happy New Year.