The Daily News SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30. ANOTHER MILESTONE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8016, 30 December 1905, Page 2

The Daily News SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30. ANOTHER MILESTONE.

Monday morning will see the commencement of another year. New Year ! What recollections are associated with the New Year! We square up the business of the past year, and wo ascertain the balance for good or ill. The lids of the soul are open, and we examino the true inwardness of our year's doings, and are glad if wo find no spot to sully the pages of the record. In New Zealand we have much to be thankful for. No unemployed trouble, no abject shivering hunger, no war, pestilence or famine. And in the year that is passing hence to join those other peaceful years, New Zealand as a whole has little to regret. For us, outside the small political strifes, which have mattered little, the year 1905 has been one of much peace and plenty. * * * *

But while the majority of the people in New Zealand are happily placed, and while there is room for the growls of the pessimist, it must not be forgotten that joy and happiness are not universal, and not even colonial or local. Individuals there are

in every community, however small, on whom the black hand of sickness or poverty is laid. Still, even in the blackest hour, there is a chance for a ray of sunshine. Who knows what capacity he has for diffusing these rays unless he trios his hand at it ? Who does not know that the acme of happiness is found in giving happiness to those most in need of it ? * * * #

New Year might fittingly be the birth-time of new resolves, new aspirations, the turning over of new clean leaves, the tearing out of soiled year-worn pages. You don't forget the soiled pages. You can't. If they are not soiled, so much the better for you. If you can't forget, perhaps a few spotless pages in the future will even things up. New Year time is a

white milestone on the rough road of life, the flower in the desert of daily doing, the refreshing draught to a thirsty wayfarer. And when you are healthily weary with the vigor of your holiday, when the cobwebs have been swept from the tired brain or limb by the hand-brush of happiness or leisure, you will have a space where the cobwebs have been, to store up the resolves that will keep other cobwebs from forming in the yearjto be.

There isjno need for gloom at New Year time, or any other time. The world is not gloomy of itself. We put on the black clouds with the paint-brush of perversity. Let us bury the brush, and forget where we buried it. Let us eat and be merry, and forget about the " dying " part of the verse in the meantime. It is a heap better to live well than to die well, and a deal more noble to help others to live well, both physically and mentally, than to go on living to one's self. In Taranaki, as in every part of New Zealand, Nature has smiled on the people, and is smiling yet. If Nature smiles, her children smile too, and all are glad. To the people who smile with such good reason, wo would say that it rests in their hands to make Taranaki still more prosperous, and to those of our friends and readers who share the optimism with which the birth of the New Year should be redolent, we wish, in all sincerity, " A Happy New Year,"