EDITOR’S TABLE.
A Happy New-Year.—Holding continual intercourse through the press with so many thousands scattered over this country, and other countries, we feel an enlarged sympathy with our fellow beings, and use suitable occasions to give utterance to hopes and wishes in another form than that of the essays, stories and poetry of the stated columns of this Magazine. We set forth our humble “table,” and while we invite all to a seat, we bid all welcome to the viands; nay, we make the little festival with a particular and special view—to express to our readers our hearty wishes for “a happy New-Year.” May they all be happy, all enjoy the year upon which we now enter, all be freed from care and troublesome anxiety, and all have enough for their own enjoyment and the gratification of liberal feelings.
Now we are as sensible as any can be that the above wish is extended to the readers of Graham—“And so we are selfish, sordid, can only wish well to those who do well to us.” That is the charge which will be made by some good-natured body that has not had her feelings refined by a constant perusal of this Magazine. She curls her thin lip in scorn at our narrow feeling, and quotes scripture and poetry against the contracted philanthropy which does good in such a limited circle. We shall not quote scripture back to her, but content ourselves with a simple remark that we adhere to our form of expression, and shall prove it to be sufficiently inclusive for all the New-Year wishes which we are bound to entertain and utter.
In the first place, we wish the readers of Graham a happy New-Year—health, peace, comforts—rational enjoyment and pleasures that will please on reflection.
Can peace, comfort and enjoyment be had by the readers of this Magazine, when those who are related with them are deprived of such gratifications? Should we not offend by gross injustice if we should imagine the readers of Graham capable of high enjoyments when others were in distress? How numerous and extensive are the ramifications of social life! Not a blow is struck on the remote verge of society but some sympathetic nerve carries it to the heart—friend—relative—associate—give interest to events; and such links in the chain of social existence bind man to man, and make of human society one common body. We wish you happy! then wealth, health, peace and quiet to all with whom you stand related. Can you be happy and your brother, your friend, your relative miserable? It is not possible. And when we wish a happy New Year to the thirty or forty thousand who take, and the four hundred thousand who read Graham, we wish a general happiness.
We enter upon a new year with the fullness of hopes that are only enlarged by the fruition of former hopes. Our hopes are not hopeless. Our desires to be rewarded have kept pace with our desires and efforts to please. We believe the latter desires have contributed to the gratification of the former; and it is therefore in a spirit of hopeful gratitude that we wish our friends and their friends a happy New-Year.
To the old we wish the ease which belongs to the dignity of years, and that degree of health which makes the twilight of life delightful.
To the middle-aged we wish the maturity of intellect which secures wisdom to plans, and success to efforts.
To youth a consciousness that very many of the promises of life are so deceptive, that they must learn to rely more upon their own exertions than upon those promises. We wish to them well regulated minds, well controlled passions—we do not expect, we do not wish for the stately dignity of age in the lively and stimulated feelings of youth: enjoyment—and enjoyment of something of which age calls the vanity of life—is permitted to youth. So that in all their rejoicings, in all the cheerfulness of their hearts, in all the wanderings which they make by the light of their eyes, (alas! how much has the lustre of even one pair of woman’s eyes led us astray,) and in the understanding of their hearts, (and how much do we all suffer by overrating that understanding!) all these things may be endured—may be encouraged indeed—if indulged in with that kind of reflection which keeps in view accountability for it all.
Some have desired that at the foot of Janus, who guards the closing portal of the past and the opening door of the coming year, there might flow a rill from the river of Lethe, that we might drink in oblivion to the past. How narrow, how contracted must be the mould of such wishes. Let us take with us into the new year a full remembrance of the past. Let the events which have cast a gloom over a portion of our experience be recollected, that we may feel for others, that we may have in view that great fact, that we are born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.