New Year's Irresolutions

"Great heavens!" exclaimed the bachelor, "you are not going to do anything like that, are you?"

The widow pointed solemnly to the hands of the clock, which indicated 11.30, and then to the calendar, on which hung one fluttering leaf marked December 31.

"It is time," she sighed, "to begin our mental housecleaning, to sweep out our collection of last year's follies, and dust off our petty sins and fling away our old vices and——"[166]

[166]

"That's the trouble!" broke in the bachelor. "It's so hard to know just what to throw away and what to keep. Making New Year's resolutions is like doing the spring housecleaning or clearing out a drawer full of old letters and sentimental rubbish. You know that there are lots of things you ought to get rid of, and that are just in the way, and that you would be better off without, but the minute you make up your mind to part with anything, even a tiny, insignificant vice, it suddenly becomes so dear and attractive that you repent and begin to take a new interest in it. The only time I ever had to be taken home in a cab was the day after I promised to sign the pledge," and the bachelor sighed reminiscently.

"And the only time I ever overdrew[167] my bank account," declared the widow, "was the day after I had resolved to economize. I suppose," she added pensively, "that the best way to begin would be to pick out the worst vice and discard that."

[167]

"And that will leave heaps of room for the others and for a lot of new little sins, besides, won't it?" agreed the bachelor cheerfully. "Well," he added philosophically, "I'll give up murdering."

"What!" The widow started.

"Don't you want me to?" asked the bachelor plaintively, rubbing his bald spot. "Or perhaps I might resolve not to commit highway robbery any more, or to stop forging, or——"

"All of which is so easy!" broke in the widow sarcastically.

"There'd be some glory and some[168] reason in giving up a big vice," sighed the bachelor, "if a fellow had one. But the trouble is that most of us men haven't any big criminal tendencies, merely a heap of little follies and weaknesses that there isn't any particular virtue in sacrificing or any particular harm in keeping."

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