JANUARY. THIS HIS was not always the first month of the year, for the ancient Jewish calendar, and also the Egyptian and the Greek, opened with the 25th of March, and this system ran far forward into the Christian centuries. It is supposed that Numa Pompilius, whose reign over Rome closed about six hundred and seventytwo years before Christ, gave to the year its present starting-point by placing two new months before the previous ten. The first of these he called January, in honor of Janus, a royal door-keeper in Roman mythology, and our readers who study Latin will find that the word janua means a door; and so Janus is a good name for him who opens to us the new year. This same Janus was represented as having two faces. (and apparently his race has not yet died out!) looking opposite ways, forward and backward, into the future and into the past. Sometimes, although less frequently, he was represented with four faces; and so he had the names Janus Bifrons (two-faced) and Fanus Quadrifrons (four-faced). The old English poet Cotton refers to Janus as "Peeping into the future year With such a look as seems to say, The first day of the month - - New Year's Day has been celebrated for many centuries with feastings and rejoicings, and the custom of making presents runs back into the dim past so far that we fail to find its origin. Early Latin authors mention it, and in early English and French history it prevailed even to a great excess. With us, Christmas presents are rather taking the precedence over those of the New Year. It was formerly the fashion to give such articles as were rare, and so we read of "glove money," or gloves, in the days when gloves were expensive. Pins were first invented and brought into use about the beginning of the sixteenth century (and it will always remain a mystery how the ladies had lived without them before that time); and so these useful articles were often given as New Year's presents, and money with which to purchase pins, and therefore called "pin-money," was also a common gift. This expression reaches to our own time, and now denotes money to be expended for trifles in private expenses. When this January number of the Magazine reaches its readers, we think they will prize it as an acceptable New Year's present. TWELFTH NIGHT. BY AUNT CARRIE. The old Romans worshipped him as the guar- LET us not end our merry-making Christ dian of gates and doors, of the year and of the seasons; in times of peace, he had his abode in a temple in the city, in war he went with the armies. At day-dawn the people prayed to him, and on the first day of the year great sacrifices were offered in his honor on twelve altars, one for each month. The Roman calendar gradually came to be regarded as the true one by the people; but it was not until a little more than a hundred years ago (1752) that the 1st of January was made the legal beginning of the year in England; the change was made in Scotland in 1600, in France in 1564, in Holland, Protestant Germany, and Prussia, in 1700, and in Sweden in 1753. Many of our young readers may have seen the letters "O. S." and "N. S." attached to certain dates. The explanation is this: In England, and in this country, before the 1st of January was legalized, it was cus mas night. In England their festivities continue twelve days. Twelfth Night is sometimes called "Old Christmas," as it was the day celebrated as Christmas before the almanac was changed. The change was made by Pope Gregory XIII., during the year 1752. Therefore Twelfth Night has its own peculiar festivities. In some portions of England they have a large gathering of friends. During the evening two dishes of little frosted cakes are passed around one for the gentlemen and one for the ladies. In each there is one cake with a ring, and one with a broken sixpence. The two who get the ring will be married before the year is out. indicates an old bachelor or an old maid; but if the two agree to join their broken sixpence, there is a chance for them. So says the old tradition. The broken sixpence A lady, whose early youth was spent in England, says, where she lived, Twelfth Night was celebrated especially by the children. At their social parties they selected a king and queen, who regulated the festivities of the evening. Sometimes the lady of the house prepared cards, with various figures written or drawn upon them, among them a king and queen. Each child drew a card, on entering, which designated the character he or she was to represent. Of course the lady managed to slip the cards of king and queen into the hands of those best able to preside. In one of our small cities, where there are several families who unite in keeping Twelfth Night every year, they have but one ring; and whoever gets it must give the party the next year. WHILE FROST FLOWERS. BY MARY N. PRESCOTT. GLASS. II THE philosopher Pliny ascribes the origin This of glass to the following accident: A merchant ship, laden with natron (which is the same as soda), being driven upon the coast, near the mouth of the River Belus, in tempestuous weather, the crew, who were Phoenicians, were compelled to cook their food ashore; and, having placed lumps of the natron upon the sand, as supports to the kettles, found, to their surprise, masses of transparent stone among the cinders. stone was glass, formed by the melting of the natron and its mixture with the sand, these being the two most important ingredients used in the manufacture of glass, though flint, alkaline salts, lead, silica, with kelp or sea-weed, and portions of brick clay, all go to form the different kinds of glass that are made. The common kind of glass is called crown glass, and is used for windows. Flint glass is used HILE we are sleeping, stealthily creep- for decanters, drinking-glasses, chandeliers, ing, They come, as the green comes in early spring; &c. Green bottle glass, as its name implies, is used in making bottles, phials, &c. Plate Here there's a vine or root, here shows a ten-glass, which is the most valuable, and conse der shoot; Faintest of posies, of ghostly roses, Within this garden are blossoming. What busy sprite, at the dead of the night, Ferns that keep in their sculptured sleep But now that summer's smile has fled, quently the most expensive, was invented, in 1688, by Abraham Thwart, and was first manufactured in France. This glass is almost exclusively used for mirrors, looking-glasses, and also for the windows of carriages. It is not known whether the Phoenician sailors were the original discoverers of glass, but it is certain that the Egyptians excelled in the art of staining glass as long ago as B. C. 1150. Vessels of glass have been found in the buried city of Herculaneum, which was destroyed A. D. 79. In the year 54, glass was considered so great a luxury in Rome, that the Emperor Nero is said to have given six thousand sesterces, or about one hundred and eighty dollars of our specie, for two glass cups. Venice excelled all other countries of Europe in the manufacture of glass until about the middle of the seventeenth century, when the invention of mirror-glass by the Minister Colbert placed France far above Venice in this art. As nearly as can be ascertained, glass was first introduced into England in the year 674. At first its use was confined entirely to religious edifices, and it was not until the fourteenth century that it began to be generally used. The first glass manufactory in America was established by a John Hewes, in New Hampshire, in 1790. F. BEWARE of no man more than yourself: we carry our worst enemies with us. I 2 3 5 6 7 8 In imitation of th' ambitious High from the 10GALLERY, ere the play begun, MANTLE OF ANTISTHENES. ANTISTHENES was a Grecian philoso not pher, and the reputed founder of the school of Cynics, who were distinguished for their morose contempt for the arts and pleasures of life. He lived at Athens about 426 371 B. C., and was a disciple of Socrates, but carried his master's philosophy to the extreme of despising wealth, greatness, learning, and all pleasure not founded on true friendship. His contempt of external things was wholly free from affectation, for he boasted of his poverty, and appeared as a beggar, clothed in rags. It is recorded of him that, on one occasion, when he had ostentatiously turned his cloak so as to show the holes in it, Socrates rebuked him by saying, “O, Antisthenes, I perceive thy pride through the holes W.. in thy cloak." DR. JOHNSON, when he called Lord Chesterfield a wit among lords and a lord He FELL all plump into the among wits, appears to have borrowed his PIT, 4 DEAD in a minute as a NIT: wit. Capito, a lawyer of ancient Rome, said of Atteius, the philologist, that he was a rhetorician among grammarians and a grammarian' among rhetoricians. The saying may not have Indeed and very 'DREADFUL was the been original even with Capito. Perhaps it In short, he broke his pretty Hebrew NECK; Soon as the shower of TEARS was somewhat PAST, And moderately CALM th' hysteric blast, was from this saying that the contemporaries of the Frenchman Marot borrowed the idea of styling that poet the prince of poets and the poet of princes, though the idea here is no longer the same, and rather reminds one of the reply attributed to one of the Rothschilds. When asked if he would not like to be king of the Jews, after the restoration of that nation, he is said to have answered that he preferred to be the Jew of the kings. WE find a curious account of a Christ mas Pie in an English paper. "Mrs. Dorothy She cast about her eyes in Patterson, housekeeper at Howick, sent to THOUGHT profound, And being with a SAVING knowledge blessed, She thus the playhouse MANAGER * Sir Henry Gray, Bart., a Christmas Pie. Its contents were as follows: Two bushels of flour, twenty pounds of butter, four geese, two turkeys, two rabbits, four wild ducks, two woodcocks, six snipes, four partridges, two neats' tongues, two curlews, seven blackbirds, Sher, I'm de "MODER of de poor circumference at the bottom. It was neatly and six pigeons. It was nearly nine feet in THE THE SEASON OF 1869. HE year of 1869, which has just expired, was a memorable one. During the brief space of twelve months, many important events have transpired, that will be remembered by Our Boys and Girls long after they have become men and women. Out-door sports have been no exception, for some of the most remarkable and important matches that have ever taken place in the history of base ball and boating occurred in the year now past and gone. In 1868 the visit of the English cricketers to this country caused no little excitement, and developed a renewed interest in the national game of England; but last year the sensations were much more numerous, and one in particular the Oxford-Harvard boat-race-caused the greatest enthusiasm on both sides of the Atlantic, and will be the theme in boating circles for years to come. Such contests as the Interrational Boat-race are good things; for they not only cause a renewed interest in a healthy and invigorating sport, but they also create new bonds of friendship between the old world and new. The late victory of Walter Brown, in defeating the renowned Sadler in a contest on the Tyne, will serve to keep up the enthusiasm in the international contests; and, if during the coming year the Red Stockings, the champions of our national game, visit Europe, it will add fresh fuel to flame kindied by the Harvards. The past year has been also one of the most important in the annals of base ball. Some of the finest contests at the game ever witnessed occurred last season; and the interest they have awakened will be shown this year in the increase of clubs, both professional and am ateur. We trust that all of Our Boys and Girls, in looking back to the events of 1869, find much to be thankful for, and, aided by its experiences, are prepared to enter upon the journey of a new year with joyful hearts; and it is our sincere hope that they, one and all, will find it a HAPPY NEW YEAR. OUR NATIONAL GAME. Club Averages. THE HE Occidental Club of Quincy, Ill., played fifteen match games last year, winning fourteen of them. The one they lost was with the Olympics of St. Louis, a senior club. In the fifteen games they scored five hundred and ninety-two runs, to three hundred and five for their opponents, being an average of thirtynine to a game and seven over, against twenty and five over. Their largest score was ninetyfour, and their smallest sixteen, the same on the part of their opponents being thirty-five and five. The Occidentals are the junior champions of the state, and will work hard next season to retain the position. The Mutual Club of Springfield, Mass., played ten games last season, winning six and losing four. The games lost were with the Red Stockings, Trimountains, Lowells, and Harvards. They scored a total of two hundred and thirty-two runs, an average of twenty-three and two over, against two hundred and seventy-one, an average of twenty-seven and one over of their opponents. Base Ball Notes. The new professional club to be formed in Chicago have received communications from many of the prominent players of the country. It is reported that they have engaged Fisher and Sensenderfer, of the Athletics, and Treacy, of the Eckfords. They are after George Wright, of the Red Stockings, and Johnny Hatfield, of the Mutuals. The Mutuals of New York are on a visit to the south. They will play the principal clubs of New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, and Savannah. Answers to Inquirers. C. C. G. Only the last time; and if he misses it, then, if he puts the ball to the first base before the striker reaches it, he is out. P. Z. The first game of a series is not a friendly or practice game. SKATING. THE skating season has opened brilliantly; and in all the large cities, except, perhaps, Chicago, the greatest enthusiasm prevails among those who delight to "glide o'er the glassy surface on wings of steel." Boston has one rink, which is well patronized. In Brooklyn and New York both rinks and parks are numerous; and Philadelphia, with her eight parks and mammoth rink, has ample accommodations for her boys and girls. |