ich, as is the custom among travellers of
her sex, she carried a great deal of valuable property. Besides this
luggage, there was a folio book under her arm very much resembling the
annual volume of a newspaper. Placing this volume across her knees and
resting her elbows upon it, with her forehead in her hands, the weary,
bedraggled, world-worn Old Year heaved a heavy sigh and appeared to be
taking no very pleasant retrospect of her past existence.

While she thus awaited the midnight knell that was to summon her to
the innumerable sisterhood of departed years, there came a young
maiden treading lightsomely on tip-toe along the street from the
direction of the railroad depot. She was evidently a stranger, and
perhaps had come to town by the evening train of cars. There was a
smiling cheerfulness in this fair maiden's face which bespoke her
fully confident of a kind reception from the multitude of people with
whom she was soon to form acquaintance. Her dress was rather too airy
for the season, and was bedizened with fluttering ribbons and other
vanities which were likely soon to be rent away by the fierce storms
or to fade in the hot sunshine amid which she was to pursue her
changeful course. But still she was a wonderfully pleasant-looking
figure, and had so much promise and such an indescribable hopefulness
in her aspect that hardly anybody could meet her without anticipating
some very desirable thing--the consummation of some long-sought
good--from her kind offices. A few dismal characters there may be here
and there about the world who have so often been trifled with by young
maidens as promising as she that they have now ceased to pin any faith
upon the skirts of the New Year. But, for my own part, I have great
faith in her, and, should I live to see fifty more such, still from
each of those successive sisters I shall reckon upon receiving
something that will be worth living for.

The New Year--for this young maiden was no less a personage--carried
all her goods and chattels in a basket of no great size or weight,
which hung upon her arm. She greeted the disconsolate Old Year with
great affection, and sat down beside her on the steps of the
city-hall, waiting for the signal to begin her rambles through the
world. The two were own sisters, being both granddaughters of Time,
and, though one looked so much older than the other, it was rather
owing to hardships and trouble than to age, since there was but a
twelvemont