"Hark! the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us the day himself's not far;
And see! where, breaking from the night,
He gilds the eastern hills with light!"
Honest Master Cotton had evidently been sitting up all night, himself, when he wrote these lines; and being therefore a boon companion, and a true observer of Christmas proprieties, we will take his warning, and to bed ourselves. So "a good New Year to you, my masters! and many of them!" as the bellman (not Herrick's) says, on this morning.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] (Twelve?)
NEW YEAR'S DAY.
1ST JANUARY.
The first of January, forming the accomplishment of the eight days after the birth of Christ, has been sometimes called the octave of Christmas; and is celebrated in our church services as the day of the Circumcision.
Of this day we have little left to say; almost all that belongs to it having been of necessity anticipated in the progress of those remarks which have brought us up to it. It is a day of universal congratulation; and one on which, so far as we may judge from external signs, a general expansion of the heart takes place. Even they who have no hearts to open, or hearts which are not opened by such ordinary occasions, adopt the phraseology of those whom all genial hints call into sympathy with their fellow-creatures; and the gracious compliments of the season may be heard falling from lips on which they must surely wither in the very act of passing. To have your morning's salutation from a worthy like our friend with the umbrella in the plate, must be much the same thing as riding out into the highway, and getting your New Year's greeting from a raven by the roadside. Mathews's undertaker, who used to sing the song of "Merry I have been, and merry could I be," at his club, to a tune considerably below a dirge in point of liveliness, was a brother of the same family.