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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 10 (January 1, 1936)

[section]

New years are all things to all men. A new year is “as you like it.” New years are as you make them.

The optimist, the pessimist, the cynic, the young, the old, the ascetic, the dyspeptic, the poet, the plumber, the mystic, the mummer—all make their new years in their own imàges.

The optimist can create a bonfire of bliss from stray straws of stimulation and the embers of emotion. An optimist can pluck a dead twig from the tree of Time and build a blaze that would thaw out the soul of a frozen Pole. He can illuminate the dimmest corners of his consciousness with faggots of fancy. His is a campfire of content. He gets what he expects and he expects what he gets.

The pessimist's new year is only an old year older; an effigy of Effluxion; Time in a trance, or a mess of moribund moments moulded by Melancholy to the lineaments of dazed Despair. The pessimist expects the worst and gets it worse than he expects it.

The cynic's draught in Time's bar is gin and bitters, without the gin. The poet fits the new year with wings, wraps it in golden gauze, and imagines he made it. He is happy with his home-made “hokus.”

The young take no heed of maturity's yearning for years, or laugh at such lunatic lapses. For the young see no significance in a mere muddle of months. To them all years are one year and one year is all years. Time doesn't gambol on the green with youth. He waits without the gates to arrest them as they emerge from their garden of gladness to the workaday world of worry, whiskers and wistfulness.

Age is equally indifferent to years, new and old.

The mystic endeavours to decipher the mystery of unmade moments, the ordinance of unallotted hours, the delights and delinquencies of undeciphered days, the ways of unweaned weeks, the melodies and melancholies of unmustered months; and perhaps he is happy on his hypothetical hurdygurdy.

The poet fits the New Year with wings.

The poet fits the New Year with wings.