The Quiet Corner
THE QUIET CORNER / counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy library.—C. Lamb. "New Year's Day without eggnbg is no holiday," murmured the Doctor sadly. "How well I recall the jovial—" "Do you...
...Let's blow him in...
...Where can the New Year be?' 'Why don't the clock hands move?' 'Let's not wait for the New Year to come...
...Happy Old Year...
...The hard race is run, the laurels are won, O, poke fun at work that is ended!' " 'Don't you know, good sir,' he roared at me upon the close of his song, 'that I am no longer the Treasurer of Time?' I am, instead, Keeper of the Golden Moment...
...It seemed no time, and it seemed all time...
...Still there are evidences that at least a few people now enjoy New Year's Day in something of the old jovial manner— though how they do is a mystery to me," he added innocently...
...the tender glow of lovers who have looked yet not kissed under kindly light of candles...
...Up and up the people gazed at the radiant dome, and there was in their faces the expectancy of folk who seek for a fairy in the flames of a hearth-fire...
...went the clock, as up went the minute hand, and up shot the clock-keeper—up, up, and off—God knows where —it must have been into heaven, where he was long overdue...
...Upon that momentous night and that night of a moment, from six to one minute of twelve, all roads led to the dome—to the mammoth bronze dome at the top of the broadest building, topped again by the biggest radiolite clock in the whole wide world...
...And why not, I would like to know?' '"The clock-keeper took another swig of his bottle...
...Happy Old Year!' " 'Clock-keeper/ I shouted, straining my voice to arrest his attention, and popping my eyes to see him the better...
...Finally, when three or four thousand years had passed, a slight unrest made itself manifest...
...Unhappy New Year!' " 'But—hee-hee...
...asked Miss Anonymoncule...
...But I found no one...
...Only indirect—but still fairly convincing/' said the Doctor...
...What are you doing up there...
...and there, old enough to be dead a thousand years, with only the fanatical blaze in his eyes to betoken the flame of youth within, I could see the ancient horologe, tugging upon the great minute hand with his skinny right fist...
...So strong, it blew me against the face of the time-piece...
...and yet I retained enough presence of mind to look above and behold the Keeper of the Golden Moment—his bottle gone—tugging upon the minute hand with all the fury of his bony arms...
...but when I had descended once more into the street, I could see in their happiness only the hilarity of hysteria, and in their vaunted newness but another mark of old crowfoot Time.' " H H * "I wonder where Cyril got it," pondered Dr...
...they danced and they sang...
...Are there really evidences...
...Now that proves that the pre-twentieth century book of etiquette I found not long ago, was entirely wrong...
...It was as if time had stopped...
...interrupted Miss Anonymoncule interestedly...
...Blow now—hard!' " 'But still the giant minute hand remained unmoved...
...Angelicus...
...and dangling with less of physical vigor and more of philosophic calm from his minute hand, responded dreamily— "'What is New Year?' said he, his voice sinking to the sepulchral bass of one who has just wakened from the deepest slumber...
...Tock...
...The Doctor began— " 'I have never seen such a wonderful New Year's Eve, and never do I expect to see its like again...
...He was such a little man that it was hard to make him out clearly...
...And then and there I decided to slip quietly through the revelers, into and up the domed building, to the tower of the clock, that I might see what delayed the ultimate tock...
...It states that -the serving of intoxicating beverages such as eggnog at New Year's receptions is entirely out-moded.J " "Stuff and nonsense," growled the Doctor, "eggnog only flew out of the window when prohibition entered the door, alas...
...It was as if the air around them had genially frozen—as if the city were suspended in the static waters of eternity...
...Upon the stage, a dancer paused tip-toe—it seemed for an age...
...No one in the building, no one in the dock tower, not even the keeper of the tower did I see, until I climbed out onto the ledge in front of the clock...
...Don't you know that you have been holding back the New Year for these last three centuries or so ?' " 'He looked down for the first time...
...At one minute of twelve, for blocks around the giant clock, the city held its breath...
...What can be the matter?' This is a slow Old Year...
...From six o'clock to one minute of twelve, had seemed but one holy and glorious cocktail hour, for the people had become as children again...
...The Librarian...
...Ecstasy—that is the word for it...
...It was a taste of heaven and a touch of infinity...
...How well I recall the jovial—" "Do you really...
...Of course I dislike implying anything about my friends...
...Happy New Year!' bawled the crowd below...
...Tick, tock...
...They romped and they played...
...Tis a brown taste in the mouth, a katzenjammer in the head, a bromo-seltzer aftermath, a bicarbonate beginning, an arbitrary division of time, a day for Puritans, a period of melancholy, an interrogation point of painful resolution-making, a pre-catalogous colon of work to be done...
...Happy Old Year!' " 'Happy New Year,' I barked back...
...Whoopee!' he greeted...
...I looked above me...
...Aeons rolled by while a fancy skater delayed the downstroke that would complete his eight—and two lovers who stood at a gate to bid each other farewell forever, forgetful of the pain and mindful only of the sweetness, forever farewelled...
...and my motto is—Watch Not the Clock...
...Happy—' " 'But suddenly from the streets below there arose the interrupting countercry, 'Happy New Year!' And the sound as of a million horns blown at once by all the citizens from the City Hall to the outermost suburb...
...When should the next tick sound ? For blocks and blocks, and miles and miles, from the city centre to the outermost suburb that vibrated to the civic time, something strange had happened...
...The whole world seemed to have gone happily mad...
...Heavens, what a blast...
...O, dreary preface, not so much to be skipped nor omitted, as to be stubbornly combatted and forestalled...
...Whoopee!' he cried, as with his other hand he waved on high a magnum of champagne...
...and seemed pleasantly surprised to see me...
...On the contrary;' his voice rose in a spritely cackle, 'what is Old Year?' And now though his right hand relinquished not its grasp, his body bobbed up and down like an antique jumping jack to the chant of an answer— " 'The top of the cream, the cream of the jest, The joke of the work that is ended...
...Let me read you, instead, an account of Cyril B. Egan's New Year's Eve dream which he has just sent me...
...and from the crowd of clock-watchers in the midst of which I was standing, there went up a good-natured murmur...
...Let's have it—new and now...
Vol. 3 • January 1926 • No. 9
