3-071-175 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The New Year - drawn by A. E. Emslie, 1881. 'Perhaps the pretty allegorical picture with which - and all good wishes - we greet our readers on the first page of the first Number of a New-Year's issue may be found to have more suggestive meaning than might at first sight appear. The Old Year, or, if you will, Old Father Time, typified in that patriarchal figure, has the white hair and some, at least, of the wrinkles of advanced age...Time, however old, never dies, and the old year lives in the new...The eyes with which [Our young beautiful fair-haired new friend] recognises us, or that are looking into the future, are bright with hope and intelligence; while a smile of love and anticipated pleasure plays on his lips. And thus it is: the Old Year still lives with us - with its experience and lessons, if also with its grey hairs, and Time furrows, and, alas, its sorrows! The New Year comes to meet us not as an entirely new acquaintance, or helpless nurseling, though with no touch as yet of sorrow or trace of time, but with child-like hope, affection, promise - may the child prove "father to the man" - and laden with the lovely roses of spring, and the full-eared wheat and sun-riped fruits of autumn'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.