The Sister Years (From "Twice Told Tales")

The story personifies the departing and incoming years as sisters who meet on the steps of a city hall at midnight and exchange recollections and forecasts. The elder records political vacillations, a border skirmish, local improvements such as a new railroad and civic building, and changing social habits that erode old prejudices, while the younger responds with hopeful expectation. Through conversational anecdote and gentle satire the piece sketches civic life, public ambition, and the small vanities and losses carried away with time, suggesting that change is mixed—progress entwined with weariness and imperfect accomplishment, as one sister sleeps and the other begins her course.