CHAPTER XIX
NEW YEAR'S DAY
Croakers croaked, of course, but the Christmas Festival, accomplished, was a great success, and no one enjoyed it more than the croakers--when they knew themselves unnoticed. It was a roaring win for optimists. The expectations were everywhere excelled. The dinner was worthy of the intention. The conversations, music, songs, and games, went with a ring. Not a dissentient note was heard. High and humble, rich and poor, met for that occasion as comrades, and the good effects of their coming together remained. The world was, henceforward, better humoured, gentler, more considerate than ever it had been.
It was a triumph to fairies and to the less fortunate folk who are human. There let us leave it!
New Year--the Feast of Good Resolutions--arrived with its loads of customary high intentions. That day brought an opportunity which the fairies meant to make the most of. But the task was not entirely easy, for old habit would be potent.
A New Year's resolution in the past had generally, almost invariably, two necessary distinct parts--the making and the breaking. That was its history. If New Year's Day was the Feast of its Creation, Twelfth Night might certainly be called the funeral day, belated. The building and the forgetting of good resolutions had become such a time-honoured process that each of the stages was as easy as breathing. Lightly entered into, the intention could be even more lightly lost. That was the fairies' difficulty. It would be simple enough to get people to resolve well; but to prevent their having a Twelfth Night of forgetfulness would be a task Titanic in comparison. Still, they must try.
June, by means of her myrmidons, hunted up the ex-Lord Mayor, Sir Titus Dods--now a baronet in the courts of Edward and Oberon--and caused him to come from his retirement at Hampstead to lead in the particular effort.
He induced every newspaper as its special New Year supplement to give away an attractive card on which practicable good resolutions could be written. The cards, inscribed, would be preserved until this New Year was old and out. It was the Mansion House procedure of last May-time repeated, spread over a very far wider area, destined to be similarly successful.
A change came over casual converse. Instead of using such old phrases and time-worn tags as "How d'ye do?" or "Cold day, isn't it?" people greeting each other asked, "Resolutions going strong?"
It was surprising how much more interesting meetings became, and how invariably the answer was "Yes." Self-respect struggled to attain the affirmative answer.