January

January 1st.--The service on New Year's Eve is the only one in
the whole year that in the least impresses me in our little church,
and then the very bareness and ugliness of the place and the ceremonial
produce an effect that a snug service in a well-lit church never would.
Last night we took Irais and Minora, and drove the three lonely
miles in a sleigh. It was pitch-dark, and blowing great guns.
We sat wrapped up to our eyes in furs, and as mute as a funeral procession.

We are going to the burial of our last year's sins,"
said Irais, as we started; and there certainly was a funereal sort
of feeling in the air. Up in our gallery pew we tried to decipher
our chorales by the light of the spluttering tallow candles stuck in
holes in the woodwork, the flames wildly blown about by the draughts.
The wind banged against the windows in great gusts, screaming louder
than the organ, and threatening to blow out the agitated lights together.
The parson in his gloomy pulpit, surrounded by a framework of dusty
carved angels, took on an awful appearance of menacing Authority
as he raised his voice to make himself heard above the clatter.
Sitting there in the dark, I felt very small, and solitary, and defenceless,
alone in a great, big, black world. The church was as cold as a tomb;
some of the candles guttered and went out; the parson in his black robe spoke
of death and judgment; I thought I heard a child's voice screaming, and could
hardly believe it was only the wind, and felt uneasy and full of forebodings;
all my faith and philosophy deserted me, and I had a horrid feeling that I
should probably be well punished, though for what I had no precise idea.
If it had not been so dark, and if the wind had not howled so despairingly,
I should have paid little attention to the threats issuing
from the pulpit; but, as it was, I fell to making good resolutions.
This is always a bad sign,--only those who break them make them;
and if you simply do as a matter of course that which is right as it comes,
any preparatory resolving to do so becomes completely superfluous.
I have for some years past left off making them on New Year's Eve,
and only the gale happening as it did reduced me to doing so last night;
for I have long since discovered that, though the year and the resolutions
may be new, I myself am not, and it is worse than useless putting new
wine into old bottles.

"But I am not an old bottle," said Irais indignantly, when I held
forth to her to the above effect a few hours later in the library,
restored to all my philosophy by the warmth and light, "and I find
my resolutions carry me very nicely into the spring. I revise them
at the end of each month, and strike out the unnecessary ones.
By the