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without effort. Often I regret that I cannot, and preach myself sermons on the art of enjoying the present.'

But the world called him: the world, of infinite promise. 'Do not try to be anything; try to become everything.' He had his work to do, his cathedral to build. What would it be like? The answer did not come. It was veiled in the mists of the future. And it was to this uncertain image that he was to sacrifice his present joy! He forced himself to choose the day of departure. His decision being fixed, he could abandon himself with delicious fury to his passion.

His friends had agreed to meet him in the garden after dinner. He waited for them on the terrace under the chestnuts. They would come with gayety and friendliness; they would treat this evening like an ordinary one. But it was the last! Goethe, Captain of Fates, had decided; nothing could change his decree. It was painful to go, but it was sweet to find one's self inflexible.

From his mother he had inherited so intense a horror of scenes that he could not bear the idea of a formal good-bye. He wished to pass this last evening with his friends in a calm and sober gayety. He savored in advance the pathos of their conversation, where two, in ignorance of the real situation, would unwittingly wound the third, who, being alone aware, could alone be hurt.

He had been drifting among such fancies for some time when he heard on the sand the steps of Charlotte and Kestner. Running up to them, he kissed her hand. They walked together to a dark pocket of verdure which terminated the alley, and sat down in the dark. Under the pale moonlight, the garden was so beautiful that for a long time they were silent. Then Charlotte said, 'I never walk in the moonlight without thinking of death. I believe that we shall rise. But, Goethe, shall

we meet? Shall we know each other? What do you think?'

'What are you saying, Charlotte?' he answered, in agony. 'We shall meet. In this life or the next we shall meet again!'

'Do the friends that we have lost,' she pursued, 'know anything of us? Do they realize all that we feel as we think of them? My mother's face is always before me in the evening as I sit peacefully among her children, among our children, and they cluster round me, as they did round her.'

She went on in a voice soft and tender as the night itself. Goethe wondered if this unfamiliar melancholy were due to some strange foreboding. He felt the springing of his tears. The emotions he had tried to suppress seized him. Disregarding Kestner's presence, he seized Charlotte's hand. What matter? It was the last day.

'We must go in,' she said gently; 'it is time.'

She tried to withdraw her hand, but he held it forcibly.

'Let us agree,' said Kestner brightly, 'that the first of us three who dies shall send the two survivors news of the other world.'

'We shall meet,' said Goethe. 'In whatever body, we shall meet. Farewell, Charlotte. Farewell, Kestner, we shall meet again.'

"To-morrow, I suppose,' she said with a smile.

She rose and turned toward the house with her fiancé. For a few seconds Goethe still saw the white gown gleaming in the shadows of the lindens, then everything faded. For some time after Kestner had gone the Doctor wandered alone in the lane from which the front of the house could be seen. He saw a window light up. It was in Lotte's room. A little later the window grew black again. She was asleep. She knew nothing. Romance was satisfied.

The next day, when Kestner went to his house, he found a letter from Goethe:

He has gone, Kestner; when you read this message, he will have gone. Give Lotte the note I enclose. I was adamant. But your words yesterday tortured me. For a while I can tell you nothing. Had I stayed with you a moment longer, I could not have borne it. Now I am alone and to-morrow I depart. Oh! My poor head!

Lotte, I do hope to come back, but only God knows when. Think what my heart suffered, Lotte, when you spoke! It knew I was looking on you for the last time. But I have gone. What led you to such a topic? . . . Now I am alone and can weep. I leave you happy, and I linger in your

hearts. Yes, we shall meet. But to-morrow never comes. Say to my rascals, 'He has gone.' I cannot go on.

Early in the afternoon Kestner brought this letter to Lotte. All the children of the family echoed sadly, 'Doctor Goethe has gone."

Lotte was sad, and tears rose to her eyes as she read.

'It is best that he should go,' she said.

Kestner and she could talk of nothing but him.

Some visitors came. They were astonished at Goethe's sudden departure and condemned his rudeness. Kestner hotly defended him.

(To be continued)

THE JOINTS OF TIME

BY CHARLES D. STEWART

THE reason that the year begins on January 1 is a 'pretty reason,' as Lear's poor fool would say. Julius Cæsar, when he reformed the calendar in the year 46 B.C., evidently had in mind to begin the year with the shortest day. The winter solstice at Rome occurred in that year on the twentyfourth of December of the Julian calendar; consequently the first day of the year would have fallen on December. 25. But he delayed it seven days out of regard for prevailing customs and the superstitions of the people. As they had been accustomed to a lunar calendar, they would be better satisfied if the first year of the new calendar came

I

in with the new moon. Accordingly the mean new moon was carefully computed and the new calendar had its beginning on the first of January, 45 B.C., at sixteen minutes past six in the afternoon.

Among all peoples, in all ages, it has been the custom to start the year, whether civil or ecclesiastical, with either the winter or summer solstice or the vernal or autumnal equinox. These times seem to mark the natural beginnings for reckoning the circuit of the seasons. The result of Cæsar's little stroke of diplomacy is that our year now has no relation to astronomic fact or logical reason. It has relation only

to superstitions and political considerations which no longer exist.

That this year is 1926 A.D. is an opinion that would be questioned by few. But there is very good reason to feel dissatisfied with these figures. The church chronologist who set to work one day in the sixth century to find out how far back it was to the birth of Christ made a mistake of about four years.

The custom of numbering the years in the present manner did not, of course, begin immediately upon the birth of Christ. His birth and life made so little impression upon the world in general that the Greeks continued to count the years from the time of the first Olympic games, and the Romans from the mythical date when their city was founded. These dates represented their ideas as to what constituted the most memorable events in their history. As the centuries passed the world's ideas changed; and in 527 A.D. Dionysius Exiguus, who compiled the first regular ecclesiastical code for the Western Church, conceived the idea of dating time with reference to the birth of Christ. In this connection an error was made. Herod died in the seventieth year of his age and in the very year in which Jesus of Nazareth was born; and this has been discovered to have occurred four years earlier than the date from which our chronology is reckoned, or the year 4 B.C. It seems rather inconsistent to say that Christ was born in the fourth year B.C.; but chronologists quite generally agree that such was the case. The present number of the Atlantic pretends to be making its appearance in 1926. It ought to be dated 1930.

If both the year and the epoch are so open to question, we need hesitate no longer to ask what is the matter with the months. What happened to them that some should have thirty-one days,

while others have thirty, and one veers between twenty-eight and twenty-nine?

Here also there is a reason. The Romans believed there was luck in odd numbers; and seven of the months have thirty-one days each out of a desire to have as much good luck as possible. When Cæsar abolished the old lunar calendar and established in its place the form of calendar which we now have, he was adopting the absolute solar calendar of the Egyptians. In this calendar the year was made up of twelve months of thirty days each; and a supplementary period of five days, which was accounted a time of festival, completed the 365 days. To the Roman mind, here were twelve unlucky months. In their old, or lunar, calendar, which was supposed to observe carefully the phases of the moon, all the months but one had been given an odd number of days. They had twenty-nine or thirty-one days each; and this in spite of the fact that the moon knows nothing whatever of a thirty-one-day period of revolution. They had tried to disagree with Nature for the sake of good luck; and the final result was such utter chaos and confusion in the keeping of time that they had to throw over the lunar scheme entirely and try the calendar of the Egyptians. As this was one hundred per cent unlucky, they proceeded to alter the month-periods somewhat to correspond to the old calendar. They took the five festival days and distributed them among the months so as to give five of them thirty-one days each. Then two more lucky months were created at the expense of February, thus making the number of thirty-oneday months which we now have. They did not hesitate to reduce the Egyptian number of thirty days to twenty-eight in the case of February because that had always been an unlucky month with them. It had originally been left

with only twenty-eight as a matter of arithmetical necessity in making all the months odd.

There were two months to which the odd number of days was most important July and August. July was named in honor of Julius Cæsar; and he saw to it, of course, that that month was made lucky. His successor, Augustus Cæsar, needed to have a month named for him; his birth-month was therefore called August and given thirty-one days. Not a great while after this distribution of days was made it was found that there was too great a disparity between the quarters of the year; and in the new shifting about to remedy this defect it was proposed to take a day from August. Augustus Cæsar put his foot down promptly on the idea. He would have no unlucky month named after him. Consequently a day was taken from September, which had been given thirty-one in the first distribution, and transferred to October. It is because of such considerations as these that seven of our months have thirty-one days each, and four of them thirty, while February 'hath but twenty-eight.'

Openly and flagrantly wrong, or else mysteriously mistaken, are the names of the months. September is the ninth month; but a little knowledge of Latin is sufficient to inform us that it lays claim to being the seventhfrom septem, seven. Likewise October, November, and December announce themselves as being the eighth, ninth, and tenth months respectively; all of which they are not.

The reason for this discrepancy between name and number is that the old Roman year, having some regard for the spring equinox, began in March. When the calendar was changed, and a new sort of year was begun, the old months continued to run in their accustomed succession, and mostly with

their old names. The new solar year, breaking in at a certain stage of the moon, fell on the first day of their eleventh lunar month, which was January. January thus became the first month of the newly adopted year. February had been their twelfth month under the lunar calendar; and it was because it occupied this position that it lost its days. When days were needed by the other months, it seemed logical to pick them off the end of the year.

Our months are not lying to us; they are simply remembering the truth as it was in the old lunar calendar. While our present calendar, in all its various details, comes down to us from the forty-sixth year before Christ, the names of the months and their relative places run back to a time still more remote so ancient, in fact, that it is a most uncertain period of history.

The month of January was named in honor of Janus, the god of beginnings. He is the god of two faces, looking behind and before. All gates and doors were under his sacred jurisdiction; so were the morning, the opening of all solemnities, the month of January, and beginnings generally. Of his two faces, one is youthful, the other aged. The aged countenance, looking behind, reflects upon the past; the youthful one looks forward and smiles, seeing happiness in the future. How appropriate to have the first month of the year named after such a god! It is a most striking symbolism, perfect in its poetry.

The reader who has been watching my statements closely will note in this connection that they do not hang together very well. Did I not say that January came from the old Roman year, and that it was the eleventh month of that year? How then do I get this artful appositeness to the beginning of the year?

This is just one more thing that

has a reason. The month was originally dedicated to Janus because the labors of the husbandman in Southern Italy began anew at that time. This was a beginning that was quite as important as the beginning of the year. And so it becomes evident that the one month of our year whose name seems perfectly appropriate is only so by chance. In the very places where the calendar seems to run with an oily smoothness the time is most sadly out of joint.

When the sun was made the standard of measurement of the year, the moon, along with the lunar year, was thrown utterly aside. Since that time she has been wandering through the months in the lost and aimless way that is familiar to anyone who refers to the calendar on the wall. The ancient Greek or Jew or Roman had a much easier time with the moon than we have. The new moon always fell on the first; and the full moon came in on the fourteenth. These facts, written as plainly on the sky as print on paper, constituted the calendar itself. Nowadays it takes an expert to tell us on which days of the month the principal phases of the moon are going to occur. And in consequence of this abandonment of the moon to her own peculiar notions of timekeeping, those church festivals whose dates are determined by the phases of the moon have had to go wandering with her. Hence the Movable Festivals.

Easter, in reference to which all the other movable festivals are determined, comes on the Sunday following the first full moon of spring which is to say, the first full moon after the twentyfirst of March. The Book of Common Prayer, in those first few pages which contain all that a rector needs to know about arithmetic, tells us about the Golden Number, the Dominical Letter, and the Epact, and furnishes

therewith a table by which to ascertain the time of that first full moon of spring. And, strange to say, the results are usually wrong when compared with any reliable calendar. In this connection the prayer book makes mention of a fact which would seem important to take heed of: 'But Note, That the Full Moon, for the purposes of these Rules and Tables, is the Fourteenth Day of a Lunar Month, reckoned according to an ancient Ecclesiastical computation, and not the real or Astronomical Full Moon.'

It is not the actual moon in the heavens, nor yet the mean moon of the astronomers, that determines the time of Easter; though it is theoretically so. It is an altogether imaginary moon. But yet it is not wholly arbitrary when you consider that it comes in two or three days after the real full

moon.

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The reason or at least one reason for this way of computing the phases of the moon was to keep Easter from falling on the same date as the Jewish Passover. In an early day the Eastern Church contended that Easter had the same date as Passover, and they celebrated Easter as if the two holidays were identical; but the Western Church did not approve of this practice. The authorities favored the observance of the Sunday following the full moon which marked Passover. It was no doubt necessary in an early day to take some step to keep converts from getting the two festivals and their significance confused.

The Jewish Passover comes in on the fourteenth day of the month Nisan, which date, being the middle of a lunar month, marks the time of the full moon. It is the first full moon of spring. So it would seem that the early Church, by setting Easter for the Sunday following the springtime full moon, would be effectually avoiding the

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