Page:Tales of the White Hills.djvu/96

Rh the Old Year, gravely smiling. &ldquo;You will soon grow weary of looking for that blessed consummation, and will turn for amusement (as has frequently been my own practice) to the affairs of some sober little city, like this of Salem. Here we sit on the steps of the new City Hall, which has been completed under my administration; and it would make you laugh, to see how the game of politics, of which the Capitol at Washington is the great chess-board, is here played in miniature. Burning Ambition finds its fuel here; here Patriotism speaks boldly in the people&rsquo;s behalf, and virtuous Economy demands retrenchment in the emoluments of a lamplighter; here the Aldermen range their senatorial dignity around the Mayor&rsquo;s chair of state, and the Common Council feel that they have liberty in charge. In short, human weakness and strength, passion and policy, Man&rsquo;s tendencies, his aims and modes of pursuing them, his individual character and his character in the mass, may be studied almost as well here as on the theatre of nations: and with this great advantage, that, be the lesson ever so disastrous, its Liliputian scope still makes the beholder smile.&rdquo;

&ldquo;Have you done much for the improvement of the City?&rdquo; asked the New Year. &ldquo;Judging from what little I have seen, it appears to be ancient and time-worn.&rdquo;

&ldquo;I have opened the Railroad,&rdquo; said the elder Year, &ldquo;and half a dozen times a day you will hear the bell (which once summoned the Monks of a Spanish Convent to their devotions) announcing the arrival or departure of the cars. Old Salem now wears a much livelier expression than when I first beheld her. Strangers rumble down from Boston by hundreds