Pushing to the Front

squander time, for that is the

store the loss struck fro

perish and are laid to our charge

now doth time was

ury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dw

n hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No rewa

ont store of Benjamin Franklin's newspaper establishment. "One dollar," replied the clerk. "One dol

ee him," persisted the man. The proprietor was called, and the stranger asked: "What is the lowest, Mr. Franklin, that you can take for that book?" "One dollar and a quarter," was the prom

price for this book." "One dollar and a half," replied Franklin. "A dollar and a half! Why, you offered it yourself for a dol

left the store, having received a salutary lesson from a master in

ers are e

are thus saved. So every successful man has a kind of network to catch "the raspings and parings of existence, those leavings of days and wee bits of hours" which most people sweep into the waste of life. He who hoards an

accretion which builds the ant-heap-particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact. And if ever I was actuated by ambition, its highest and warmest as

y," said a brother, found in a brown study after listening to one of Burke's speech

gifts are brought, but if we failed to accept those that were brought yesterday and the day before, we become less and less able to turn them to account, until the ability to appreciate and uti

expressions heard in the family. But what monuments have been built up by poor boys with no chance, out of broken fragm

subject to interruptions which would have discouraged most women from attempting anything outside their regular family duties. She has glorified the commonplace as few other women have done. Harriet Beecher Stowe, too, wrote her great masterpiece, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," in t

ound time to read scientific books, and write the l

while working on a farm. The author of "Paradise Lost" was a teacher, Secretary of the Commonwealth, Secretary of the Lord Protector, and had to write his sublime poetry whenever he could snatch a few minutes from a b

? What a rebuke is such a life to the thousands of young men and women who throw away whole months and even years of that which the "Grand Old Man" hoarded up even to the smallest fragments! Many a great man has snatched

periments. At one time he wrote to a friend, "Time is all I require. Oh, that I co

easeless industry

business that he had to pursue his scientific labors i

two leading magazines, and at least a dozen good books. In an hour a day a boy or girl could read twenty pages thoughtfully-over seven thousand pages, or eighteen large volumes in a year. An hour a day might make all the difference between bare existence and useful, happy living. An

something useful to which he can turn with delight. It might be

, and occupation that a hobby confers will

served," says Burke, "fills up a man's time much more completely and l

t, the celebrated shoemaker of Vermont, resolved to devote one hour a day to study. He became one of the most noted mathematicians in the United States, and also gained an enviable reputation in other departments of knowledge. John Hunter, like Napoleon, allowed himself

scholar put over his door the inscription: "Whoever tarries here must join in my labors." Carlyle, T

ted outside of his busy banking-hours. Southey, seldom idle for a minute, wrote a hundred volumes. Hawthorne's notebook shows that he never let a chance thought or circumstance escape him. Franklin was a tireless worker. He crowded his meals and sleep into as small compass as possible so that he

f thirty-seven years to those who plead

le Chancellor of England. During an interview with a great monarch, Goethe suddenly excused himself, went into an adjoining room and wrote down a thought for his "Faust," lest it should be forgotten. Sir Humphry Davy achieved eminence in spare mome

rned arithmetic during the night shifts when he was an engineer. Mozart would not allow a moment to slip by unimproved. He would not stop his wor

k of many other things." He was once shipwrecked, and had to swim ashore; but he carried wit

happened to be. Watt learned chemistry and mathematics while working at his trade of a mathematical instrument-maker. Henry Kirke White learned Greek while walking to and from

but seize the instant and get your lesson from the hour. The man is yet unborn who rightly measures and fully realizes the value

always seemed to have more leisure than many who did not accomplish a tithe of

nings of a single week, in order to mee

ed while tending store. Mrs. Somerville learned botany and astronomy and wrote books while her ne

e as in the wasted power. Idleness rusts the nerves and m

t to bed until he had laid

life. He made and recorded over two hun

? We cannot throw back and forth an empty shuttle; threads of some kind follow every movement as we weave the web of our fate. It may be a shoddy thread of wasted hours or lost opportunities that will mar the fabric and mort

es he spend his Sundays and holidays? The way he uses his spare moments reveals his character. The great majority of youths who go to the bad are ruined after supper. Most of those who climb upward to honor an

on Destiny, our w

hereafter choose

row away a dollar-bill. Waste of time means waste of energy, waste of vitality, waste of character in dissipation. It

watching with an eagle's eye for every chance of improvement, by redeeming time, defying