and fancy was busy with many plans and projects for
future happiness and delight. We looked forward through the whole border
of its months, weeks, days and hours, and life grew bright with pleased
anticipations. The year has now passed away, and how few, very few, of
all our bright hopes have been realized. With how many of us have
unexpected and unwished for events taken the place of those to which we
looked forward with so much delight.

As the hours and moments of the past year have slowly glided into
the ocean of the past, they have borne with them the treasures of many a
fond heart. The sun shines as brightly as ever, the moon and stars still
look placidly down upon the sleeping earth, and life is the same as it
has ever been; but for these their work is over, and they have done with
time. As I sat watching the fast gathering shadows over the last night
of the old year, I fell into a sort of waking dream, and I seemed to
hear the slow measured tread of one wearily approaching. Turning my eyes
in the direction of the approaching footsteps, I beheld the form of a
very aged man; his countenance appeared somewhat familiar, yet it was
furrowed by many wrinkles, and on his once high and beautiful forehead
were the deep lines of corroding care and anxiety. His step was slow,
and he leaned for support on his now well-nigh failing staff. He bore
the marks of extreme feebleness, and gazed forward with a manner of
timidity and uncertainty, and on his changeful countenance was expressed
all the multitudinous emotions of the human breast. His garments had
once been white and shining, but they were now stained and darkened by
travel, and portions of them trailed in the dust. As he drew nigh I
observed that he carried in his hand a closely written scroll, on which
was recorded the events of the past year. As I gazed upon the record, I
read of life begun, and of death in every circumstance and condition of
mortal being, of happiness and misery, of love and hate, of good and
evil,--all mingling their different results in that graphic record; and
I trembled as my own name met my view, with the long list of
opportunities for good unimproved, together with the many sins, both of
omission and commission, of which I had been guilty during the past
year; but there was nothing left out,--the events in the life of every
individual member of the human family were there, all recorded in
legible characters. As the midnight hour struck the age