A newspaper carrier becomes Time's own errand-boy in this witty New Year's address, delivering not solemn wisdom but a sly, playful portrait of Father Time for the modern age. Gone is the familiar scythe-bearing skeleton; in his place stands a fast-moving, fashion-conscious figure who thrives in bustling streets, among merchants, gossip, courtship, and the latest trends. With affectionate satire, the narrator dismantles the old image of Time lingering in ruins and graveyards, showing instead a social, vain, and opportunistic presence who flatters everyone while quietly wearing them down. Time is revealed as a sharp-eyed force embedded in everyday life, where novelty and noise mask decay. The closing passage sharpens the joke: Time is not a guardian of ancient memory, but an eager collector of rumors, politics, and public controversy. Elections, war, abolition, currency, novels, and journalism all pass through his hands, while the classics fade behind him. The result is a clever, contemporary meditation on change, vanity, and the restless spirit of modern life. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.

À propos de l'auteur

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804, a place whose Puritan past and lingering sense of moral unease would shape his imagination for the rest of his life. After studying at Bowdoin College, he spent years in relative obscurity, writing quietly while working in various modest posts, before emerging as one of the major American fiction writers of the nineteenth century. His career brought enduring acclaim through stories and romances that blended psychological insight, historical atmosphere, and a deep concern with conscience, guilt, secrecy, and the burden of inherited sin. Hawthorne’s writing often probes the hidden chambers of the human heart, showing how private choices are shadowed by social judgment, moral compromise, and the desire for redemption. He was especially gifted at turning the past into a living moral landscape, and his tales remain powerful because they ask questions that still feel urgent today: how do we live with our flaws, what do we owe to others, and can a person ever truly escape the weight of history? His work helped define the American literary tradition by joining symbolic depth with elegant prose and an acute understanding of human frailty. Readers today continue to find in Hawthorne a writer of haunting intelligence and lasting relevance, especially those drawn to darkly atmospheric fiction, moral complexity, and stories that linger long after the final page.