`` With all my heart , '' replied the Old Year , who had already been tormented half to death with squabbles of this kind . `` I care not if the name of Whig or Tory , with their interminable brawls about banks and the sub-treasury , abolition , Texas , the Florida war , and a million of other topics which you will learn soon enough for your own comfort , -- I care not , I say , if no whisper of these matters ever reaches my ears again . Yet they have occupied so large a share of my attention that I scarcely know what else to tell you . There has , indeed been a curious sort of war on the Canada border , where blood has streamed in the names of liberty and patriotism ; but it must remain for some future , perhaps far-distant , year to tell whether or no those holy names have been rightfully invoked . Nothing so much depresses me in my view of mortal affairs as to see high energies wasted and human life and happiness thrown away for ends that appear oftentimes unwise , and still oftener remain unaccomplished . But the wisest people and the best keep a steadfast faith that the progress of mankind is onward and upward , and that the toil and anguish of the path serve to wear away the imperfections of the immortal pilgrim , and will be felt no more when they have done their office . '' `` Perhaps , '' cried the hopeful New Year -- `` perhaps I shall see that happy day . '' `` I doubt whether it be so close at hand , '' answered the Old Year , gravely smiling . `` You will soon grow weary of looking for that blessed consummation , and will turn for amusement -- as has frequently been my own practice -- to the affairs of some sober little city like this of Salem . Here we sit on the steps of the new city-hall which has been completed under my administration , and it would make you laugh to see how the game of politics of which the Capitol at Washington is the great chess-board is here played in miniature . Burning Ambition finds its fuel here ; here patriotism speaks boldly in the people 's behalf and virtuous economy demands retrenchment in the emoluments of a lamplighter ; here the aldermen range their senatorial dignity around the mayor 's chair of state and the common council feel that they have liberty in charge . In short , human weakness and strength , passion and policy , man 's tendencies , his aims and modes of pursuing them , his individual character and his character in the mass , may be studied almost as well here as on the theatre of nations , and with this great advantage -- that , be the lesson ever so disastrous , its Liliputian scope still makes the beholder smile . '' `` Have you done much for the improvement of the city ? '' asked the New Year . `` Judging from what little I have seen , it appears to be ancient and time-worn . '' `` I have opened the railroad , '' said the elder Year , `` and half a dozen times a day you will hear the bell which once summoned the monks of a Spanish convent to their devotions announcing the arrival or departure of the cars . Old Salem now wears a much livelier expression than when I first beheld her . Strangers rumble down from Boston by hundreds at a time . New faces throng in Essex street . Railroad-hacks and omnibuses rattle over the pavements .
There is a perceptible increase XXXXX oyster-shops and other establishments for the accommodation of a transitory diurnal multitude .
In With around for from if of than to whether