Leap year

“ I published this little puzzle in 1898 to see Pg 155how many people were aware of the fact that 1900 would not be a leap year. It was surprising how many were then ignorant on the point. Every year that can be divided by four without a remainder is bissextile or leap year, with the exception that one leap year is cut off in the century. 1800 was not a leap year, nor was 1900. ”

“ But this order is interrupted in the Gregorian calendar at the end of the century by the secular suppression of the leap-year. It is not interrupted, however, at the end of every century, for the leap-year is not suppressed in every fourth centurial year; consequently the cycle will then be continued for two hundred years. It should be here stated that this order continued without interruption from the commencement of the era until the reformation of the calendar in 1582, during which time the Julian calendar, or Old Style was used. ”

“ Thus a birthday on the 10th of June, a Monday, will in the next year, if a leap-year, be on the 10th of June, a Wednesday. Of the origin of the custom for women to woo, not be wooed, during leap-year no satisfactory explanation has ever been offered. ”

“ The word A B R A X A S, frequent on rings of the time, is said to have drawn its special power from the number force of the letters, which add up to 365 and thus encompass the entire year. Perhaps that is why Leap Year is said to be unlucky for men. ”

“ If the years had been counted from the beginning of this great year, there could have been no doubt when it came to an end, as from the want of a leap year the new year’s day must have been always moving one day in four years ”

“ So they kindle and darken, until they leap from the ashes of winter a pure, thin blaze in the shadbush, to burn higher and hotter across the summer, to flicker and die away—a line of yellow embers—in the weird witch-hazel of the autumn. ”

“ When one phenomenon of this kind, e. g. the corn-harvest, prevails over the others and is perhaps brought into prominence by the greatest festival of the year, it appears more like our New Year, though the significance of the occasion does not depend, as among ourselves, upon the position of the day in the calendar, but upon the natural conditions. And when a phase of the stars, e. g. of the Pleiades, coincides with the beginning of the agricultural year and the renewal of Nature, the stellar (Pleiades) year is obtained by comprising the time between one [277] rising or setting and the next. ”

“ It’s the first day of spring. Men are right silly, Andy thought, calling some dead and sodden day in mid-winter by the fancy, saucy name of New. The thing that is New, of course, is the Green. The New Year is the Green Year. ”

“ Agriculture is responsible for the adding of a fifth season to the four arising from the warm and the cold periods and the times of transition between these [281] . But other transitional periods between the longer seasons also arise independently [282] . The Lapps have names for the four ordinary seasons, but their language also contains compounds like ‘spring-winter’, i. e. late winter,—a compound also known in Swedish (vår-vinter) —and ‘autumn-summer’, i. e. late summer [283] . The Lapps of Västerbotten divide the year into sjeunjestie, the dark period, and tjuoikestie, the bright period. ”

“ The north wind may blow, for it is by no means a cheerless prospect, this wood-and-meadow world of [Pg 74] mine in the gray November light. The grass-blades are wilting, the old leaves are falling; but no square foot of greensward will the winter kill, nor a single tree perhaps in all my wood-lot. There will be little less of life next April because of this winter. The winter birds will suffer most, and a few may die.
Last February, I came upon two partridges in the snow, dead of hunger and cold. ”

“ Winter has December, January, and February to cover the earth with snow, to freeze the rivers, and to paint curious pictures upon the windowpanes.
Can you compare the passing of the year and the life of man? Childhood, the springtime of life, is the time for play and dance and merry song, the time to make the body supple and strong. When the body is strong and the mind has been trained, comes the summer time of work—hard work in all the fields of labor, that the harvest may not fail. ”

“ Not a child in the world will hang up his stocking at the right time."
"Didn't you know," sobbed April, "that the jar only held just enough to make us complete, and no more? And here all of us but January are ugly, maimed creatures, and the New Year will be so disgusted with us." ”

“ I can count upon these small screech owls by February,—the forlorn month, the seasonless, hopeless, lifeless month of the year, but for its owls, its thaws, its lengthening days, its cackling pullets, its possible bluebirds, and its being the year’s end! At least the ancients called February, not December, the year’s end, maintaining, with some sense, that the making of the world was begun in March, that is, with the spring. The owls do not, like the swallows, bring the spring, but they nevertheless help winter with most seemly haste into an early grave. ”

“ THE GARDEN IN SPRING The dividing line between the seasons is, of course, quite arbitrary, for Nature progresses evenly, gradually, unceasingly, and not in the jerky way which our clumsy divisions of time imply. Still it is convenient, almost necessary indeed, to adopt some such broad classification of the periods of the year as that into the four seasons which has done duty for so many centuries. One may take the flowering of the snowdrop to indicate the onset of spring, though itself belonging more especially to winter. ”

“ They are in their pristine freshness scintillating with that adhesive frost on simple summer flowers so entirely metaphorical of the season. Their dainty, artistic, and useful calendars inspire one with a cheerful fascination to begin the New Year. ”

“ There can be no doubt that when there was an absence of all civilisation and a calendar of any sort was unknown, the year meant simply the succession of seasons, and that no attempt would be made to reckon any day as its commencement. ”

“ Between tears and smiles, the year, like the child, struggles into the warmth of life. The old year—say what the chronologists will—lingers upon the very lap of spring, and is only fairly gone when the blossoms of April have strown their pall of glory upon his tomb, and the bluebirds have chanted his requiem. ”

“ Winter so cold and wet; March all clouds and dust—comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb; then April is bright.
The year slips away steadily; slips round the steady year; days come and go—no, no! Days dawn and disappear, winters and springs—springs, rings, sings? No, leave that. Winter with cold and rain—pain? March storms and clouds and pain, till April once again light with it brings.
Beth jumped down from the beech boughs, ran round to the old wooden pump, clambered up by it on to the back-kitchen roof, and made for the acting-room window. ”

“ Our April, at its best, is a bright, laughing face under a hood of snow, like the English March, but presenting sharper contrasts, a greater mixture of smiles and tears and icy looks than are known to our ancestral climate. Indeed, Winter sometimes retraces his steps in this month, and unburdens himself of the snows that the previous cold has kept back; but we are always sure of a number of radiant, equable days,—days that go before the bud, when the sun embraces the earth with fervor and determination. ”

“ I went through the ordeal each morning with an indifference and abstraction born of long custom.
The time of the year was January, the year itself 1892. A clear, cold air with just enough frost in it to stir sluggish blood, induced one to walk briskly. ”

“ POPULAR MONTHS OF THE EUROPEAN PEOPLES. In ancient times, and even at the present day in lands which lie outside the path of the great leveller, civilisation, the months taken over with the Roman calendar are not numbered divisions of the year, the names of which are a matter of indifference, but are concretely conceived and named as seasons. They are, in fact, nothing but seasons, the number and duration of which are determined by the conventional calendar. ”

“ Governesses used to tell us that the seasons of the year each consist of three months, and of these March, April, and May make the springtime. I should like to break the symmetry, and give February to spring, which would then include February, March, April, and May. It has been said that winter is but autumn “shyly shaking hands with spring.” We will, accordingly, make winter a short link of two months—an autumnal and a vernal hand—December and January. It is a little sad for autumn to have to make room for chill November alongside of the happier months of September and October. ”

“ The word ‘year’ may however also represent the highest chronological unit even independently of the seasons, as in the case of the Egyptian shifting year of exactly 365 days, and the Islamite lunar year of 354. These however are exceptional cases. At the basis lies the natural year conditioned by the course of the sun and by the natural phases dependent thereon, which penetrate closely into the life of man. ”

“ Early April sees the last contest which winter wages for supremacy, and often it is a half-hearted attempt; but after the army of the North has retreated, with its icicles and snowdrifts, spring seems dazed for a while. Victory has been dearly bought, and April is the season when, for a time, the trees and insects hang fire—paralysed—while the chill is thawing from their marrow. Our northern visitors of the bird world slip quietly away. ”

“ Year—If the civil year correspond with the solar the seasons of the year will always come at the same period. But if the civil year is supposed to be too long (as is the case in the Julian year) the seasons will go back proportionately; but if too short they will advance in the same proportion. Now, as the ancient Egyptians reckoned thirty days to the month invariably, and to complete the year, added five days, called supplementary days, their year consisted of 365 days. ”

“ I said if you want springtime ahead of time you must have it in your heart. Of course you must. If your heart is warm and your eye is keen, you can go forth in the dead of winter and gather buds, seeds, cocoons, and living things enough to make a little spring. For the fires of summer are never wholly out. They are only banked in the winter, smouldering always under the snow, and quick to brighten and burst into blaze. There comes a warm day in January, and across your thawing path crawls a woolly-bear caterpillar ”

“ God help the poor, when December’s snows are upon the earth!
On such a night as this, the Old and New Year met—both struggling for supremacy—each unwilling to accord to the other unlimited sway.
“I have been, and I am yet a monarch,” said the Old Year; “one, too, whose subjects are almost countless. You may not number the tongues which have sung of my exploits; and the length of days which has been mine has given me a knowledge and wisdom, of which thou knowest nothing. What? resign my throne to thee, thou stripling! never!!” ”

“ THE GARDEN YEAR January brings the snow, Makes our feet and fingers glow. February brings the rain, Thaws the frozen lake again. March brings breezes, loud and shrill, To stir the dancing daffodil. April brings the primrose sweet, Scatters daisies at our feet. May brings flocks of pretty lambs Skipping by their fleecy dams. June brings tulips, lilies, roses, Fills the children's hands with posies. ”

“ The days lengthen a cock's stride.
Proverb in the North.
[10]
A cold January, a feverish February, a dusty March, a weeping April, a windy May, presage a good year and gay.
France.
Warwickshire countrymen to ensure good luck bow nine times to the first New Moon of the year.
A snow year, a rich year.
The blackest month of all the year
Is the month of Janiveer.
Through all the sad and weary hours
Which cold and dark and storms will bring,
We scarce believe in what we know—
That time drags on at last to Spring.
The empty pastures blind with rain. ”

“ Only through their union does the complete year arise. Every natural year however offers on the whole the same phenomena following one another in definite succession, and thus the circle of the year has its prototype in Nature herself. Nevertheless the uniting of the different seasons into a complete year only takes place gradually by means of a selection, systematising, and regulation of the seasons. It must be carried out according to a principle—we shall see that this is as a rule the lunar reckoning—but the occupations of agriculture also serve as a handle. ”

“ There is no better spring month in which to move than April. Look among your papers and if you don't find a rent receipt for March you will know that it's your move. Plant an elm tree on Arbor day—it may grow up to be the tree under which Gen. Washington stopped to rest when he was pursuing the British—who knows! The farmer will do well to apply fertilizer to his land this month. There is no better fertilizer on the market than Limburger cheese. ”

“ Whether the conception of the year was known in the Indo-European period is not certain: it is however significant that all the words for ‘year’ of which the etymology is fairly certain either refer to the produce of the year—as ὥρα and its cognates, and also the word ‘year’ itself, Old Scand. ár—or else come from the pars pro toto counting of the year. Thus the Slavonic leto means ‘summer’ and ‘year’. Sanskrit çarad means ‘autumn’: that the corresponding Avestic sared means ‘year’ is explained by the fact that the years were reckoned in autumns. ”

“ If sidereal time be exact and invariable, while solar time is inexact and variable, every prejudice of habit will have to be discarded, and we must accustom ourselves to having New Year’s Day fall sometimes in the height of summer sometimes in the depth of winter, just as we have accustomed ourselves to have, say four o'clock fall at one season in light and heat, at another season in darkness and cold. ”