LONDON: WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1869. While "Christmas time" is a period of festivity at which most of us indulge in the good things provided with a zest that shows how thoroughly we appreciate this Christian halt in the daily round of worry, toil, and vexation which assail us from January to December, and from December to January, New Year's day brings with it thoughts of a more practical and business kind. It is at this period of the year, above all others, that we take as it were a circular view of our position. In a word, we look about us, and we ask ourselves whether what has been remunerative in the past will be remunerative in the future ?—or whether what has been bad will mend, or whether it would be better to give up in despair ? And what is the answer ? Echo. Nothing more. The future is a blank, and it is as well perhaps for Effort and for Energy that it is so. Some men there are who measure future gains by past successes, but the cases in which such sieves hold water are rather the exception than the rule. Still, New Year's day is the common starting-point for the long race of three hundred and sixty-five days; and as there is a good deal of ground to be covered before the goal is won, it will surprise no one that men pause and make good preparation for the run. In their laudable desire to be foremost in the race some of the competitors will make a false start, and they will so chafe and fret at being brought up with a check, that their chance of winning may be pronounced doubtful. Another set of men there are of a feeble and doubtful turn of mind, that will even hesitate to make any start at all, while the old stager, who has run the course successfully for many years, will prepare to do his work in the old way, in the way which has brought affluence to himself, and to his father before him. But whether the competitors be bold and sanguine, timid or cautious, the race must be run, and in the assurance that it is not always for the swiftest, there is a chance for respectable mediocrity, and even for the slow. During the first month of the year preliminary cantering will be the order of the day. All the little or great schemes by which the competitors declare to win will be paraded up and down the world in the most effective colours, and attention having thus been secured to them, and their value tested, they may be fairly said to have started in the race. Well, competition is a good thingto spur men into action, to sharpen wits, to engender new ideas, to produce improvements in this or that branch of industry; and to prove to us that, if we would keep pace with our fellows, we must obey the policeman's injunction to be moving. It will never do to block up the path, for the maxim of the Briton is to look. " for a clear field and no favour." The course is therefore onward— in defiance of what has been said about a rolling stone—onward with the stream; now in the mud, now in the mire, now in deep water, now in shallow depths ; but always, let us hope, buoyant, full of spirits, and with our heads above water. Cape and Natal News 06 January 1869 Wishing all a prosperous and healthy 2013. Trish