WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 1879.
The clock strikes twelve. Good-bye, 1878; and you, 1879, all hail! Be as kind to us as the departed, and we shall in turn bless your memory. This midnight hour of all the hours of the year is reputed the best for framing good resolutions, but somehow those I have tried at this season hitherto have not been exceptionally fortunate in bearing good fruit. However, I have never "resolved" on a New-Year's night before while suffering from heat and mosquitoes. I conclude to hazard one, so here goes antipodal resolution No. I. See what you are good for. I record it that it may be the more deeply impressed upon my mind, and, if a failure, that it may in print sternly stare me in the face, and not "down at my bidding."
To-day we make our first acquaintance with punkas. They extend throughout the cabin, ominous of hot weather, which I detest; Vandy, on the other hand, revels in it, and it is his turn now. Vandy handed me today a string of Cambodia money, sixty pieces, which cost only two cents, showing to what fractions they reduce exchanges in Cochin China. I have been careful to collect coins in every place visited. Sock No. 1 is now full, and I have had to start bag No. 2. I have some rare specimens; of Japan the set is complete, from the gold cobang, worth $115, oblong, five inches long by about three wide, down to the smallest copper piece. I have some Chinese coins shaped like a St. Andrew's cross, dating before Christ. The mania for coin collecting is another inherent tendency the presence of which has probably never been suspected in my disposition. But collecting the coin of the realm, when one thinks of it, isn't at all foreign to my tastes. The form of manifestation is different, that's all - old coin for new - the "ruling love," to use a Swedenborgianism, being the same; and the ruling love must be acted out, so Aunt tells me, even in heaven. "Oh!" said L., when she heard this, "I wonder what they'll get for Mr. - - to do in the other world; there are no dollars and cents there; but there will be the golden harps for him to trim and weigh." So he would still handle the siller, and be in his element. Some time afterward, when this was recalled to L., she declared that it was impossible that she could have said it. "Mr. - - trim and weigh! He would never be satisfied unless he were boiling it down solid."
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