THE NEW YEAR NEW MOON
To the Editor of the Every-Day Book.
Sir,
Encouraged by your various expressions of willingness to receive notices of customs not already “imprinted” in your first volume, I take the liberty of presenting the first of several which I have not yet seen in print.
I am, sir,
Your constant reader,
J. O. W.
Chelsea.
MONEY AND THE MOON.
Gentle reader,
If thou art not over-much prejudiced by the advances of modernization, (I like a long new-coined word,) so that, even in these “latter days,” thou dost not hesitate to place explicit reliance on ancient, yet infallible “sayings and doings,” (ancient enough, since they have been handed down to us by our grandmothers—and who would doubt the weight and authority of so many years?—and infallible enough, since they themselves absolutely believed in their “quite-correctness,”) I will tell thee a secret well worth knowing, if that can be called a secret which arises out of a well-known and almost universal custom, at least, in “days of yore.” It is neither more nor less than the possession throughout “the rolling year” of a pocket never without money. Is not this indeed a secret well worth knowing? Yet the means of its accomplishment are exceedingly simple (as all difficult things are when once known.) On the first day of the first new moon of the new year, or so soon afterwards as you observe it, all that you have to do is this:—on the first glance you take at “pale Luna’s silvery crest” in the western sky, put your hand in your pocket, shut your eyes, and turn the smallest piece of silver coin you possess upside down in your said pocket. This will ensure you (if you will but trust its infallibility!) throughout the whole year that “summum bonum” of earthly wishes, a pocket never empty. If, however, you neglect, on the first appearance of the moon, your case is hopeless; nevertheless and notwithstanding, at a future new moon you may pursue the same course, and it will be sure to hold good during the then current month, but not a “whit” longer.
This mention of the new moon and its crest brings to mind a few verses I wrote some time ago, and having searched my scrap-book, (undoubtedly not such a one as Geoffery Crayon’s,) I copied them from thence, and they are here under. Although written in the “merry merry month of May,” they may be read in the “dreary dark December,” for every new moon presents the same beautiful phenomenon.