Tag Archives: 1921-1940

Happy New Year! Though the library is still closed for the New Year, we wanted to share with you this inspiring article reprinted in the ever-festive January 13^th, 1922 issue of the Chatham Record

NEW YEAR day flies the flag of hope. Many of us come to the close of the year with a sense of defeat. We have failed to accomplish what we had hoped. Events have shaped themselves against us, and we have lacked the power to stem the tide. The good resolutions with which we so bravely started soon went lame and dropped out. Thus many of us find the shadows of disappointment, discouragement and failure falling around us as the old year closes. What is the use of struggling longer? We are fated to disaster.

Then New Year day dawns and something is saying: “Try again.” There is ozone in the air. Events begin to wear a different outline. Voices are calling. Hands beckon us on. And as we lift our eyes to face the future, yonder on the sky line flies the flag of hope.

This is what New Year day would do for you and me. It would put ginger and punch into our sapped and fading vitality. It would help us to stand on our feet and look the world fearlessly in the face and carry on. It would shout in our ears: “Forward! March!”

Some cynic may say it will be the old story again, but success is on the road to meet the man who tries. It is a glorious thing to put up a fight, even if you seem to lose. We are not lost because we fail, but because we decline to attempt.

The page of yesterday is a stained page, blurred by our tears and blotted with failure, but the page of tomorrow is white and clean. The New Year is saying that you may do better. Grandly begin!

— Dr. James I. Vance, in Springfield (Ill.) Journal

The library will reopen tomorrow, January 3^rd, at 9 A.M., so come out and see us. Make using the library your New Year’s Resolution! We’ll be waiting to help you out every step of the way.

The Chatham Community Library sends warmest holiday wishes to all the people of Chatham County! As a reminder, we will be closed from December 24^th through December 27^th, and again for the New Year from December 31^st through January 2^nd.

To ring in the holiday season, we’ll be sharing with you several offerings from a very festive issue of the Chatham Record, printed on January 13^th, 1922. The Record chose to reprint this popular poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, published in 1850, to celebrate the holiday season and New Year.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
                         – Alfred Lord Tennyson

Like this poem and want more by Tennyson? Check out 821.8 TEN at the CCL. Have a wonderful holiday!