EDITOR'S DRAWER.
We are at the beginning of another year; a season in which all pause, and “take note of time”—time, the vehicle that carries every thing into nothing. “We talk,” says a quaint English author, “of spending our time, as if it were so much interest of a perpetual annuity; whereas, we are all living upon our capital; and he who wastes a single day, throws away that which can never be recalled or recovered:
‘Our moments fly apace,
Nor will our minutes stay;
Just like a flood our hasty days
Are sweeping us away!’”
It is well to think of these things, standing upon the verge of a new year. But let us not trouble the reader with a prolonged homily.
Every body will remember the missionary at one of the Cannibal Islands, who asked one of the natives if he had ever known a certain predecessor of his upon the island, who had labored in the moral vineyard there? “Yes, we know him well—we ate a part of him.” Now, the “piece of a cold missionary on the sideboard for a morning lunch,” of which the witty Sydney Smith made mention, is scarcely a less objectionable dish, on the score of the material, than the chief feature of a repast, held, according to a French journal, not a thousand miles from the Ascot race-course, in England:
“At the recent races at Ascot the famous horse Tiberius broke his leg, by bounding against one of the posts of the barrier, while preparing for the race. His owner, the Lord Millbank, lost ten thousand pounds in betting upon his noble steed, besides his value, and others also lost very heavily: the law, of course, being that all bets should be paid whether the failure to win came from the less speed or from accident.
“Three days afterward, Lord Millbank gave a very sumptuous dinner. The most distinguished of the English peerage were present, and the conviviality ran exceedingly high. Toward the close, the noble host rose in his place, and proposed an oblation to the health of the departed Tiberius.
“The toast was clamorously received, but the speaker remained standing with his glass in his hand.