The Daily News. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1912. THE NEW YEAR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 190, 31 December 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1912. THE NEW YEAR.

It is the time of our moral audit as well as our financial one. for to-morrow will see a new year dawn for all of us, and, according' to custom, we have to sit down and take stock of things. So i far as the "morality" is concerned, it is better to let the dead past bury its past, for there are few among ns who can afford to throw the first stone or who can put in a claim for the Dtinmow flitch, on the grounds of never having said a hard word or done a wrong action for twelve months. We always start i the new year with the best of intentions, meaning to do unto others as we would that they should do by us. But good intentions, like the cracked jug, go often to the well, but come home broken at last. Still it docs not do us any harm to resolve that the next year shall be a better one than the last, even if we do not strive quite so honestly as we might to make it so. Even misdirected effort means a strengthening of character, and folks who try are bettor constituents of the community than those who bury their talent in a napkin and do not even try to turn it over. "We want everybody happy,'' runs a line, of a popular musical-hall song, and. quoting the crisp vernacular of the people, we do not know that there could be a plainer or more simple expression of goodwill in the direct AngloSaxon language that we love to claim iV ~ f dier • It is in this

spirit that we approach our readers. But though' sentiment is the oil that lubricates the wheels of existence, we have to go further for a justification for complacent prosperity. The old year is dead, along with its bad debts, and its rainy days, and its sunshine, and its legacies, and its l happiness, and its wanton waste of wayward hours, and all its hopes and desires and trials and tribulations and accomplishments are chronicled in the eternal past. What of the new one? We are not concerned with its sentimental aspect. That lies in the lap of the gods as a matter of individual ■ temperament. But because commerce is the Wood of life we have some concern regarding it. And' so we

face the New Year with every confidence, for it dawns with a quite/exceptional brightness. There is nothing easier in the world than to be an optimist—unless it is to be a pessimist—but this year's prospects sway the balance, far on the side of'those who love to look at the world • with hopeful and unjaundieed eyes.