CHAPTER XXXI.
NEW YEAR’S AND A LEAP YEAR PARTY.
MY earliest recollection of New Year’s day is of being awakened at midnight by the clangor of the fire bells, and the ringing of the church bells, as they swung and rocked in their high steeples and cupolas, shouting, Happy New Year! from their brazen throats to all the sleeping town. Not being thoroughly conversant with bell language, I was very much alarmed because they seemed to say “Come, get up—Come, get up—House on fire—House on fire!” but, upon opening my eyes, I was assured that they were ringing in the New Year, and, as I again fell asleep, the bells were saying distinctly, “Wish you Happy New Year—Wish you Happy New Year.”
Next day the table was decked with flowers, and was laden with roast turkey, fruits, salads, and mince-pies. Oh, my! what delicious mince-pies they were! None since have ever tasted as good as those made and baked by my grandmother.
I often wonder if the next generation of grandmammas will make such cookies, mince pies, and doughnuts as ours did; but this was in Kentucky, and you know that we still observed the old-fashioned customs, and all day long the gentlemen came dropping in by twos and fours, and such handshaking and laughing, and such courtly compliments, and such a bowing and a wishing of Many Happy New Years, it does me good to think of. Who knows but that so many kind wishes of a long and happy life, sincerely given, may really help to bring it to pass.
Small as I was at the time, and little as I understood the customs or conversation, the spirit of the whole day was intelligible and appealed to the little child, perhaps more forcibly than to the grown-up people.
It is really too bad that the crowded states of our large cities tend to lead to the gradual decline of the custom of New Year’s calls, so that now many people confine themselves to sending and receiving cards, making the always stiff and formal bits of engraved pasteboard, do all the calling and receiving; but
New Year’s Parties
are not out of date, so we will have one on New Year’s Eve, because then young and old are privileged to sit up all night, that is, until after twelve o’clock midnight, and have all the fun possible. Let us begin our frolic with a