The Year was Old, that day. The patient Year had lived through the reproaches and misuses of its slanderers, and faithfully performed its work. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. It had laboured through the destined round, and now laid down its weary head to die. Shut out from hope, high impulse, active happiness, itself, but active messenger of many joys to others, it made appeal in its decline to have its toiling days and patient hours remembered, and to die in peace. Trotty might have read a poor man’s allegory in the fading year; but he was past that, now. And only he? Or has the like appeal been ever made, by seventy years at once upon an English labourer’s head, and made in vain! The streets were full of motion, and the shops were decked out gaily. The New Year, like an Infant Heir to the whole world, was waited for, with welcomes, presents, and rejoicings. There were books and toys for the New Year, glittering trinkets for the New Year, dresses for the New Year, schemes of fortune for the New Year; new inventions to beguile it. Its life was parcelled out in almanacks and pocket-books; the coming of its moons, and stars, and tides, was known beforehand to the moment; all the workings of its seasons in their days and nights, were calculated with as much precision as Mr. Filer could work sums in men and women. The New Year, the New Year. Everywhere the New Year! The Old Year was already looked upon as dead; and its effects were selling cheap, like some drowned mariner’s aboardship. Its patterns were Last Year’s, and going at a sacrifice, before its breath was gone. Its treasures were mere dirt, beside the riches of its unborn successor! Trotty had no portion, to his thinking, in the New Year or the Old. ‘Put ’em down, Put ’em down! Facts and Figures, Facts and Figures! Good old Times, Good old Times! Put ’em down, Put ’em down!’—his trot went to that measure, and would fit itself to nothing else. But, even that one, melancholy as it was, brought him, in due time, to the end of his journey. To the mansion of Sir Joseph Bowley, Member of Parliament. The door was opened by a Porter. Such a Porter! Not of Toby’s order. Quite another thing. His place was the ticket though; not Toby’s. This Porter underwent some hard panting before he could speak; having breathed himself by coming incautiously out of his chair, without first taking time to think about it and compose his mind. When he had found his voice—which it took him a long time to do, for it was a long way off, and hidden under a load of meat—he said in a fat whisper, ‘Who’s it from?’ Toby told him. ‘You’re to take it in, yourself,’ said the Porter, pointing to a room at the end of a long passage, opening from the hall. ‘Everything goes straight in, on this day of the year. You’re not a bit too soon; for the carriage is at the door now, and they have only come to town for a couple of hours, a’ purpose.’