The Secret of Success

TIME AND ITS USES. THE commodity of which every man has the least, and, generally speaking, wastes the most, is Time. When we consider how small is the portion allotted to each of us, we cannot but wonder at the carelessness with which men expend it.

Of all the trite themes touched by moralists and poets, the tritest is the shortness of life. Life, we are told, is a bubble, a shifting dream, a thing of nought, evanescent as a morning mist, uncertain as a young maid's promise, brittle as a reed ; and yet men proceed to deal with it as if it were inex- haustible as the widow's cruse of oil, as if it were as sure and stable as the foundations of the everlasting hills.

There is something very curious and very pitiable in this. When we see the waste of time which goes on around us, we cannot but marvel whether the teaching of sages and, divines, and the les- sons of centuries of experience, have been of any avail ; whether men have even yet learned to realize how precious a thing it is, how solemn a responsibility it brings with it, how great a trust it puts into their hands.

Does this waste arise from want of thought, or from want of a sense of duty ? The two causes are closely connected, and may very well exert a " TIME AND ITS USES. combined influence. It is difficult to believe that the great majority of time wasters are inspired by feelings of reckless- ness and desperation ; are in a feverish hurry to consume as rapidly and as waywardly as possible the precious treasure committed to their charge.

Their folly is doubtless due to an unwillingness or an inability to reflect, and to the absence of high purposes and lofty motives. In most cases they have not been taught how to value time or how to use it. What they should do with that which is their real wealth, our children never learn.

We provide them with instruction in the "vari- ous branches of a polite education ; " we open up to them the regions of art and science ; we guide them sedulously in the flowery paths of literature ; but we do not teach them how to employ and economize their time.