Nativity, once in the main of light,
    Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
  Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight
    And Time that gave doth now his gift confound—­

It is to be hoped, my dear Time, that you have read Shakespeare’s sonnets, because they will teach you a deal about the dignity of your career, and also suggest to you the only way we have of keeping up with you.  There is no way of outwitting Time, Shakespeare tells his young friend, “Save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence.”  Or, as a poor bungling parodist revamped it: 

  Pep is the stuff to put Old Time on skids—­
  Pep in your copy, yes, and lots of kids.

It is true that Shakespeare hints another way of doing you in, which is to write sonnets as good as his.  This way, needless to add, is open to few.

Well, my dear Time, you are not going to fool me into making myself ridiculous this New Year’s Eve with a lot of bonny but impossible resolutions.  I know that you are playing with me just as a cat plays with a mouse; yet even the most piteous mousekin sometimes causes his tormentor surprise or disappointment by getting under a bureau or behind the stove, where, for the moment, she cannot paw him.  Every now and then, with a little luck, I shall pull off just such a scurry into temporary immortality.  It may come by reading Dickens or by seeing a sunset, or by lunching with friends, or by forgetting to wind the alarm clock, or by contemplating the rosy little pate of my daughter, who is still only a nine days’ wonder—­so young that she doesn’t even know what you are doing to her.  But you are not going to have the laugh on me by luring me into resolutions.  I know my weaknesses.  I know that I shall probably continue to annoy newsdealers by reading the magazines on the stalls instead of buying them; that I shall put off having my hair cut; drop tobacco cinders on my waistcoat; feel bored at the idea of having to shave and get dressed; be nervous when the gas burner pops when turned off; buy more Liberty Bonds than I can afford and have to hock them at a grievous loss.  I shall continue to be pleasant to insurance agents, from sheer lack of manhood; and to keep library books out over the date and so incur a fine.  My only hope, you see, is resolutely to determine to persist in these failings.  Then, by sheer perversity, I may grow out of them.

[Illustration]

What avail, indeed, for any of us to make good resolutions when one contemplates the grand pageant of human frailty?  Observe what I noticed the other day in the Lost and Found column of the New York Times: 

    LOST—­Hotel Imperial lavatory, set of teeth.  Call or communicate
    Flint, 134 East 43d street.  Reward.