T

O my dear friends, greeting!

May the New Year be good to all of us! He finds some changes here and there. Where, when his predecessor was born, were two, he meets but one; where was level turf on the green hillside, he sees many narrow ridges; where was silence in hearts and homes, now beats the pulse of young life. Innumerable are the changes that have crept over, or burst upon, us; but whether our voices have learned higher notes of joy or deeper tones of sadness since last we listened to the pealing of those old bells, still, as of yore, we stand on the threshold and breathe the dear wish:

Be good, New Year, to those that we love and those that love us; and those that love those that we love and those that love those that love us!

As the angel of time stands before us to-night and demands what we have. done during the past year, we are abashed, regretful, repentant. As in retrospection we go over the days that have been gathered up by the past, as the harvester gathers up his bound sheaves, and remember the possibilities which we disregarded, the blessings we threw away, we realize the bitter truth of the poet's words:

"The lost days of my life until to-day, What were they, could I see them on the street

Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat

Sown once for food but trodden into clay?

Or golden coins, squandered and still to pay?

Or drops of blood, dabbling the guilty feet? Or such spilt waters as in dreams must cheat The undying throats of hell, athirst alway? I do not see them here; but after death

God knows I know the faces I shall see, Each one a murdered self, with low, last breath,

'I am thyself-what hast thou done to me?" 'And I—and I-thyself,' (lo! each one saith,) 'And thou thyself to all eternity!'"

That is the deepest depths of the misery-those ill-spent days are as much of the soul as the beneficent ones. We cannot remove one act, one word, one thought from the past. They are there for eternity! Nevertheless, we close the door on the past and turn our faces toward the future. We will begin over again! "Man's life is a warfare." Yet we love the struggle; there is a joy we would not miss in overcoming our enemies, whether these are material conditions or spiritual temptations. If there is one among you discouraged, as he thinks to-night of his failure in the conflict, I would say to that soul: "Friend, take up your sword again! Get into your old place in the fighting line! Do not be ashamed because you failed once, twice, yea, even unto the seventy times seven. If you lift your eyes, you will find none but kindly glances, for ah! you may not know how often those seasoned warriors whom you perchance envy, have cast down their weapons, too, how frequently they still find them all but fallen from their hands; neither can you tell how many are held in the ranks solely by the courage of their comrades; for the heart that has never had its moments of weakness, its feelings of despair, is more, or less, than human. Up again, brave heart! 'Fight till you fall, and fighting, die!'"

Last year we made a number of resolutions; suppose this year we make but one, and that one To Be Good to Our Own?

But you say that this would be easy enough if they were in truth your "own," these people among whom your lot is cast; they are not, however, and though bound to you by the cords of family, they are aliens; your "own" you have not met, or if you did meet them it was only for the pain of separation. Your parents do not understand you, your sisters and brothers are at the antipodes from you, and whatever sympathy, encouragement, and appreciation you have received in your life came from the outside world, never from the home circle. This is a sorrowful condition, and, unhappily, not an uncommon one. As a condition, I ask you to meet it; and ignoring it is not meeting it, my dear friend. Has it ever occurred to you that in the beginning you helped to dig this gulf between yourself and your family, or allowed one always existing to widen, instead of trying to fill it up, or at least bridge it? If you were older or in any way superior, did you not drift into dictatorialness or selfishness, either of which course of conduct will drive off, rather than attract love? Did you not accustom yourself to think, in your young vanity, that your parents could not or would not follow you into the realm of thought by the new road you were traveling, and, in consequence, you withdrew your mind from theirs, until finally all mutual interests were hopelessly severed? Now, as you grow older and begin to realize what you have missed in this home affection, you are unhappy.

Always, when I hear such plaints, I think of what Emerson says on accepting our places in life and those with whom our lots are cast as the will of the great God towards us, and making that will ours. And how is this done? By

withdrawing yourself from the family. circle of an evening, which, in our industrial age, is the only time it meets in completion, to give yourself to other friends or intellectual pursuits? By taking no interest in the concerns of the other members of the family, or refusing to share yourself with them? The State would quickly disintegrate if the bond of mutual interests were thus snapped, and you can not expect the family, which is the State in miniature, to remain solid under such circumstances. And though you are godly, and give of your possessions to the poor (and these possessions need not necessarily be worldly goods, nor the poor those lacking material things; for of our talents and intellectual gains we can give largely, and the poor of mind whom these can help often are most deserving objects of benevolence), is not that work which Christ declared supreme-doing the will of the Father-undone? Would you not find more happiness in your life and its work if home were your refuge, your place of sweet rest and peace? And though your work be high and far-reaching in its influence, is it entire when, in the little spot where that influence should be most deeply and sweetly felt, a stranger is more of a power? But, you may say, my family is most antagonistic on the subject that is as dear to me as life. The only way I can avoid inharmony, is to avoid them. There is a snag in the river; because of it, does the pilot refrain from sailing his craft, with its rich cargo, down the stream? No, he watches for the hidden snag, and steers his boat clear of it. In domestic life there are many such snags, and daily we see precious human happiness being hurried against them for destruction. Suppose this year you make one resolution-to be good for, and to, your own?

love our neighbors as ourself, and the parable of the man who fell into the hands of the Jericho robbers, show that we should not be so narrow as to recognize only the line drawn around the family as the circumference of our goodness. If the rich were not so good to their own, the Christ-spirit would prevail more powerfully on earth to-day. Did you ever consider what a marked change there would be in this sorrowing old world if the members of all the families on earth would make and keep the resolution to be good to their own? The father would do nothing to bring a pang to the heart of his wife, the wife would keep strong and true her early. love and comradeship for her husband; neither parent would conflict with the happiness and interests of the children, who, in return, would brighten the lives of their parents instead of blasting them, as many children do. Do you imagine that the inhabitants of such a realm of love could ever be numbered among the world's robbers, its scribes, pharisees and hypocrites, its stoners of sinners, hirelings and Judases, its crucifiers of right, justice, and holiness? And if the State stood on such homes-ah! you say, that is Utopia! We could not have even such a foreshadowing of the ideal community if it did not first exist in the idea, and what is possible in thought is not impossible in actuality. Suppose you begin now to do your little part toward hastening that happy time by being good to your own? Suppose you bestow on the small world of home your sweet smiles and pleasant words and keep for the outside world your frowns and cruel bickerings? Such a line of action would cost you your popularity, your position, ruin you. Though you search the world over, you will not find such priceless wealth as is yours within the four walls of home-yet you risk its loss, and ultimately destroy it, by destroy it, by methods you would not use in dealing

with the unfeeling stranger! But (I

have heard this said) you must smile and be pleasant all day, no matter what are your feelings, and the charm of home is that it is a place where deception need not be practiced. So you relieve an overworked brain, overwrought nerves, by words that pierce like dagger-points, and loving souls draw into themselves as the sensitive plant closes up its leaves at a touch. And some day or night an hour strikes; and then from out the silence that no soul clothed in the humanity hath ever penetrated, you will hear the soft tread of the Black Camel's feet drawing near and nearer, until he kneels at the door of your dwelling; and then-when you sit alone in the void of one drawn up by God, you will find those arrows flying back into your own heart, poisontipped.

As for the selfish tendency of this resolution I suggest, recall one who is really good to his own, and must you not admit that he is also good to others? The man who speaks pleasantly to his wife at all times is not going to snarl at his stenographer; the father that treats his own children with courtesy is not tyrannical with the office boy; the sister and brother who are kind and loving to each other at home, are kind and gentle in their intercourse with their classmates or co-workers. They carry the atmosphere of their happy home with them,

and all who fall under its influence are benefited.

*

But what is being good to our own? Does it consist solely in surrounding them with all material comforts, giving them all advantages, spending present life and marring life to come to ensure their happiness? Is the father good to his wife and children when he drains the life-blood of his employees to increase his wealth for the sake of his

family? when he barters his honor for material gain or position to elevate those he loves? when he forgets God and his own soul in the mad race for gold? There is nothing good in this for himself or others, and he may live to see the fortune or place he spared nothing to secure, snatched from him and his children, or else find it become a curse for him and his. And in, how many homes of the rich are the members of the family really good to one another? The other day one whose professional work takes her into the homes of the rich said to me: "Of twenty families of which I was, for intervals, a member, I can recall only one whose home life was really happy." Yet in every case those people had all that the heart could desire, as far as wealth and position were concerned. Happiness has not her abode in material things, but in the mind and heart of man; this being so, it is in the power of each and every one of us to possess that which, in its final analysis, is the object of all human endeavor.

In being good to our own, the first to be considered is ourself. This statement may appear a little droll, in the face of the selfishness that distinguishes the age-but are we really good to ourselves when we are selfish? There is no growth for the selfish man, and as the purpose of our being here is this growth, by pursuing such a course we defeat the object of our existence. Is being good to ourselves the gratification of every wish and desire for material things and pleasures? Our greatest enemy could not do us worse injury, for satiety treads on the heels of gratification, and one does not have to be very wise or greatly experienced to know that the glass of material pleasures, so fair and deep when viewed from afar, has a false bottom, soon reached and strewn with bitter dregs. You may

think, my dear girl,-as I have heard others say, and as we may almost daily see others do-that to secure an income which would place you in possession of an elegant home, a fine wardrobe, and a position in fashionable society, you could marry a man you do not and could not love, and, because of these material things, never regret your loveless lot. Of all folly this is the rankest, as many a woman, would she open up her heart to you, would say. Looked at, they appear substantial, as does the image reflected by a mirror; but the image will

not speak to you, and when it smiles or weeps it only reflects your own emotions. Material things are as intangible to the soul as that image to your grasp. To sink ourselves in these, to make them the "summum bonum" of life, is to do ourselves the greatest possible harm.

Nor are we good to ourselves when we seek revenge for a wrong, real or fancied. Revenge is a two-edged sword, and if one edge finds your foe, rest assured the other cuts into your own life. This is the law which decrees that the injurer harms himself when he tries to harm his brother. Equally great is the harm we do ourselves when we permit ourselves to be driven from the port of reason into the high seas of anger. Our passion may bruise the heart of our opponent, but we have hurt ourselves infinitely more. No matter what opinion we may have, we are really only good to ourselves. when, without undue anxiety regarding it, we take care of our health by keeping within the bounds in all things, look on the material in as far as it is useful for our needs to-day, knowing that we shall have outgrown it by to-morrow, hold our souls in serenity no matter what tempests may blow, and have love for all living creatures.

This is being good to ourselves. It is easy, then, to be good to our own, whose circle, we shall soon come to find, is as wide as God's creation.

T

A LESSON FOR THE NEW YEAR.

HE merciful Providence of God has permitted us to witness the dawn of a new year. The old year with its opportunities and graces, its trials and combats, defeats and victories, has faded into eternity. Our own hearts will tell us whether it leaves us farther advanced on our road to God or rather fallen back. Divine goodness has prolonged our probation that we may correct the past and perfect the future. Surely, we are not unmindful of so great a goodness on the part of God. We can best prove our gratitude by making for the coming year such resolutions as those reflections inspire.

Perseverance depends on strong resolves. But, however fervent our intentions, they will soon be lost sight of and disregarded if prayer does not accompany them. This is the reason why so many sincere and earnest resolutions are broken, why so many souls are shipwrecked on the sea of life. "For," to use the words of Fr. Monsabre, "whatever may be the relationship of our correspondence with the renewal of graces, it depends on the good will of God to give us the grace of perseverance." Not being able to make ourselves worthy of perseverance, we must obtain it by humble and fervent prayer. Jesus has said: "Ask and you shall receive." Confiding in this promise, we should make known to Him our deficiencies and wants, begging the grace of fidelity through the intercession of His holy Mother. Then, indeed, will our good resolutions be fruitful, for Mary cannot turn a deaf ear. to our prayers, and is it not perseverance we ask for in the prayer so oft repeated in the holy Rosary, "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death?"

Especially, then, is it incumbent on us Rosarians, whose special heritage is

this Psalter of Perseverance, to invoke through it the benediction of Mary upon our good intentions. We know from the history of our Confraternity that volumes have been filled with accounts of miracles wrought through the intercession of Mary's beads-sinners converted, the lukewarm made fervent, temptations overcome, and heroic sanctity practiced. St. Alphonsus and other Doctors tell us that, as Jesus is the Mediator of Justice Who reconciles us to heaven, so is Mary, by the will of God, the Mediatrix of Grace who intercedes for us with Jesus; and that, consequently, God dispenses no grace, not even the great gift of perseverance, except through Mary. How powerful and prompt an assistance, then, must not the Rosary be, since it is the shortest road to Mary, and her favorite devotion? These thoughts, which the new year suggests, are admirably expressed by St. Bernard: "Oh, man, whoever thou art, thou knowest that in this miserable life thou art rather tossing on the tempestuous waves than walking upon the earth; if thou wouldst not sink, keep thy eye fixed on this star, namely, Mary. Look at the star, invoke Mary. When in danger of sinning, when tormented by temptations, when doubts disturb thee, remember that Mary can aid thee, and instantly call upon her. May her powerful name never depart from the confidence of thy heart nor from the invocation of thy lips. If thou wilt follow Mary, thou shalt never wander from the path of safety. Commend thyself always to her, and thou shalt not despair. If she upholds thee, thou shalt not fall. If she protects thee, thou need not fear ruin. If she guides thee, thou shalt be saved without difficulty. In a word, if Mary undertakes to defend thee, thou shalt certainly arrive at the kingdom of the blessed. Thus do and thou shalt live."