THERE SHOULD BE A MONUMENT TO TIME
Time has no real existence. Yet time is man"s most precious possession.
Time is defined as a "succession of events." What we call an hour means certain movements in the machinery of a watch. What we call a day means one revolution of the earth upon its axis, the turning of its surface toward the light of the sun. Time is the most mysterious factor in our lives and thoughts. It never had a beginning, it cannot possibly have an end.
Time only exists for us in the actual moment in which we live.
Yet our thoughts are in the time of past and future, and hardly ever on the actual reality of the moment.
With the ceasing of our own consciousness, time ceases, so far as we are concerned. If you go to sleep and sleep soundly, you cannot tell when you awake whether you have slept a minute or an hour. Time stops when YOU cease to observe the succession of events. In dying, we duplicate on a big and prolonged scale our little daily sleeps in life.
If a man were told that after death his soul would not regain consciousness for a thousand millions of years, he would worry, and complain of the "long time." But it would make no difference to him whether the time were a thousand millions of years or forty seconds--time would not exist for him; he would not know the difference.
There is little doubt that to the ephemeridae, creatures that live but for a day, that day must seem as long as our century, for in their life of incessant activity and agitation every second is a long s.p.a.ce. And there is no doubt that to the giant turtles of the Galapagos Islands, heavy monsters that live ten centuries or longer, a week is a fraction of time far less important than an hour to us. ----
A mysterious thing is time and its divisions. Man manufactures a watch capable of registering a fraction of a second. And in the force called light we have a power that can go seven times around the world in one second.
We estimate our time by years. It takes one year for our little earth to spin round the sun. And during that year it turns three hundred and sixty-five times on its own axis. While the entire body of our earth flies through s.p.a.ce, accompanying the sun on its journey, the northern extremity of our planet has a separate circular motion of its own. This circular motion takes twenty-seven thousand years to complete one circle, and as it moves in this inconceivably slow journey our pole selects for us and points out the various suns which in turn we call the North Star.
We have written thus much to fix the attention of readers on the question of time. Now, how does it affect you? Time represents your only chance, your only wealth, your only possibility for achieving anything.
The man who lasts fifty years lives about four hundred and thirty-eight thousand hours. Sleep takes at least one-third, or one hundred and forty-six thousand hours. The processes of eating, washing, dressing, getting up and going to bed take up at least three hours per day, or fifty-four thousand seven hundred and fifty hours.
In addition to all this TIME cut out of our lives there is the time devoted to amus.e.m.e.nt, the time devoted to idle dreaming--and yet millions of people are wondering how they can "Pa.s.s THE TIME."
In every great city and in every small town there should be a monument to time. Young children should be taken to see it, clergymen should preach at the foot of it on the sacred importance of the few hours of activity given to us here. As the sand runs through an hour gla.s.s, so you run your short race on this earth. That pa.s.sing sand means the pa.s.sing of your chances for making your life worth while. Instead of thinking how you WILL pa.s.s the time, cross-examine yourself and ask yourself how you HAVE pa.s.sed the time thus far.
What did you do last year--what use did you make of the time as it went by? What did you do yesterday? What are you going to do to-day? You possess a mind organized for practically unlimited thinking and studying. How many of your hours do you live as a thinking, studying man? How many do you live on a par with an ox chewing his cud in the field?
The ox does not waste HIS time. It is his business to grow fat and produce beef. He uses every hour. It is your business to use your time in the development of your mind, in dealing with the duties and problems that are put before you.
Every young man can make a success if he will really look upon each hour as an OPPORTUNITY, and cease to look upon the hours as useless things, to be thrown away.
One hour will give you a knowledge of some good book, or wisely spent, with a purpose of improving your health, it will make your brain more efficient and add to the value of all future hours.
If you have a horse, a bicycle, a gun, you feel that because you HAVE it you ought to USE it.
How much more should you feel that you ought to use your TIME, in using which you use your own brain! Surely, your brain is more important and more worthy of conscientious use than a bicycle or a gun.
Talk to children on this question of time. Teach them that respect for time means respect for their own lives and success in life.
A MOTHER"S WORK AND HER HOPES
This editorial is not written for women. It is written for MEN, and for boys; for the millions who fail to appreciate the work that mothers do, for the millions that ignore the self-sacrifice and devotion upon which society is based.
On a hot night, in the dusty streets of a dirty city, you see hundreds of women sitting in the doorways, TAKING CARE OF BABIES.
In lonesome farm houses, far out on monotonous plains, with the late sun setting on a long day of hard work, you find women, cheerful and persevering, TAKING CARE OF BABIES.
In the middle of the night, in earliest morning, when MEN sleep, all over the world, in ice huts North, in southern tents, in big houses and in dingy tenements, you find women awake, cheerfully and gladly TAKING CARE OF BABIES. ----
We respect and praise the man selfishly working for himself.
If he builds up a great industry and a great personal fortune, we praise him.
If he risks his life for personal glory and for praise, we praise him.
If he shows courage even in saving his own carca.s.s from destruction, we praise him.
There was never a man whose courage, or devotion, could be compared with that of a woman caring for her baby.
The mother"s love is unselfish, and it has no limit this side of the grave.
You will find ONE man in a thousand who will risk his life for a cause.
You will find a THOUSAND women in a thousand who will risk their lives for their babies.
Everything that a man has and is he owes to his mother. From her he gets health, brain, encouragement, moral character, and ALL his chances of success.
How poorly the mother"s service is repaid by men individually, and by society as a whole!
The individual man feels that he has done much if he gives sufficient money and a LITTLE attention to her who brought him from nothingness into life and sacrificed her sleep and youth and strength for his sake.
Society, the aggregate of human beings, feels that its duty is done when a few hospitals are opened for poor mothers, and a little medicine doled out in cold-hearted fashion to the sick child.
Fortunately, it may truly be said that the great man is almost always appreciative of his greater mother.
Napoleon was cold, jealous of other men, monumentally egotistical when comparing himself with other sons of women. But he reverenced and appreciated the n.o.ble woman who bore him, lived for him, and watched over him to the end. He said:
"It is to my mother, to her good principles, that I owe my success and all I have that is worth while. I do not hesitate to say that the future of the child depends on the mother."
The future of the individual child depends on the individual mother, and the future of the race depends on the mothers of the race.
Think what has been done for mankind by thousands of millions of perfectly devoted mothers.
Every mother is entirely DEVOTED, entirely HOPEFUL, entirely CONFIDENT that no future is too great for her baby"s deserts.
The little head--often hopelessly ill-shaped--rolls about feebly on the thin neck devoid of muscles. The toothless gums chew whatever comes along. The wondering eyes look feebly, aimlessly about, without focus or concentration. The future human being, to the cold-blooded onlooker, is a useless little atom added to the human sea of nonent.i.ty.
But to the mother that baby is the marvel of all time. There is endless meaning in the first mumblings, endless soul in the senile, baby smile, unlimited possibilities in the k.n.o.bby forehead and round, hairless head. She sees in the future of the baby responsibilities of government, and feels that one so perfectly lovely must eventually be acclaimed ruler by mankind.
As a result of perfect confidence in its future, the mother gives to every baby perfect devotion, perfect and affectionate moral education. Each child begins life inspired by the most beautiful example of altruism and self-sacrifice.
Kindness has gradually taken the place of brutality among human beings, because every baby at its birth has found itself surrounded by absolute kindness.
The mother"s kindness forms moral character.