"The golden opportunity Is never offered twice; seize then the hour When Fortune smiles and Duty points the way."
Why thus longing, thus forever sighing, For the far-off, unattained and dim, While the beautiful, all around thee lying Offers up its low, perpetual hymn?
HARRIET WINSLOW.
CHAPTER VI
POSSIBILITIES IN SPARE MOMENTS
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.--FRANKLIN.
Eternity itself cannot restore the loss struck from the minute.--ANCIENT POET.
_Periunt et imputantur_,--the hours perish and are laid to our charge.--INSCRIPTION ON A DIAL AT OXFORD.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.--SHAKESPEARE.
Believe me when I tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your darkest reckoning.--GLADSTONE.
Lost! Somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.--HORACE MANN.
"What is the price of that book?" at length asked a man who had been dawdling for an hour in the front store of Benjamin Franklin"s newspaper establishment. "One dollar," replied the clerk. "One dollar," echoed the lounger; "can"t you take less than that?" "One dollar is the price,"
was the answer.
The would-be purchaser looked over the books on sale a while longer, and then inquired: "Is Mr. Franklin in?" "Yes," said the clerk, "he is very busy in the press-room." "Well, I want to see 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 prompt rejoinder. "One dollar and a quarter! Why, your clerk asked me only a dollar just now." "True," said Franklin, "and I could have better afforded to take a dollar than to leave my work."
The man seemed surprised; but, wishing to end a parley of his own seeking, he demanded: "Well, come now, tell me your lowest price for this book." "One dollar and a half," replied Franklin. "A dollar and a half!
Why, you offered it yourself for a dollar and a quarter." "Yes," said Franklin coolly, "and I could better have taken that price then than a dollar and a half now."
The man silently laid the money on the counter, took his book, and left the store, having received a salutary lesson from a master in the art of trans.m.u.ting time, at will, into either wealth or wisdom.
Time-wasters are everywhere.
On the floor of the gold-working room, in the United States Mint at Philadelphia, there is a wooden lattice-work which is taken up when the floor is swept, and the fine particles of gold-dust, thousands of dollars" yearly, 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 h.o.a.rds and turns to account all odd minutes, half hours, unexpected holidays, gaps "between times," and chasms of waiting for unpunctual persons, achieves results which astonish those who have not mastered this most valuable secret.
"All that I have accomplished, expect to, or hope to accomplish," said Elihu Burritt, "has been and will be by that plodding, patient, persevering process of 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 aspiration reached no further than the hope to set before the young men of my country an example in employing those invaluable fragments of time called moments."
"I have been wondering how Ned contrived to monopolize all the talents of the family," said a brother, found in a brown study after listening to one of Burke"s speeches in Parliament; "but then I remember; when we were at play, he was always at work."
The days come to us like friends in disguise, bringing priceless gifts from an unseen hand; but, if we do not use them, they are borne silently away, never to return. Each successive morning new 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 utilize them is exhausted. Wisely was it said that lost wealth may be regained by industry and economy, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance and medicine, but lost time is gone forever.
"Oh, it"s only five minutes or ten minutes till mealtime; there"s no time to do anything now," is one of the commonest expressions heard in the family. But what monuments have been built up by poor boys with no chance, out of broken fragments of time which many of us throw away! The very hours you have wasted, if improved, might have insured your success.
Marion Harland has accomplished wonders, and she has been able to do this by economizing the minutes to shape her novels and newspaper articles, when her children were in bed and whenever she could get a spare minute.
Though she has done so much, yet all her life has been 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 the midst of pressing household cares. Beecher read Froude"s "England" a little each day while he had to wait for dinner. Longfellow translated the "Inferno"
by s.n.a.t.c.hes of ten minutes a day, while waiting for his coffee to boil, persisting for years until the work was done.
Hugh Miller, while working hard as a stone-mason, found time to read scientific books, and write the lessons learned from the blocks of stone he handled.
Madame de Genlis, when companion of the future Queen of France, composed several of her charming volumes while waiting for the princess to whom she gave her daily lessons. Burns wrote many of his most beautiful poems 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 s.n.a.t.c.h a few minutes from a busy life. John Stuart Mill did much of his best work as a writer while a clerk in the East India House. Galileo was a surgeon, yet to the improvement of his spare moments the world owes some of its greatest discoveries.
If a genius like Gladstone carried through life a little book in his pocket lest an unexpected spare moment slip from his grasp, what should we of common abilities not resort to, to save the precious moments from oblivion? 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" h.o.a.rded up even to the smallest fragments! Many a great man has s.n.a.t.c.hed his reputation from odd bits of time which others, who wonder at their failure to get on, throw away. In Dante"s time nearly every literary man in Italy was a hard-working merchant, physician, statesman, judge, or soldier.
While Michael Faraday was employed binding books, he devoted all his leisure to experiments. At one time he wrote to a friend, "Time is all I require. Oh, that I could purchase at a cheap rate some of our modern gentlemen"s spare hours--nay, days."
Oh, the power of ceaseless industry to perform miracles!
Alexander von Humboldt"s days were so occupied with his business that he had to pursue his scientific labors in the night or early morning, while others were asleep.
One hour a day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits and profitably employed would enable any man of ordinary capacity to master a complete science.
One hour a day would in ten years make an ignorant man a well-informed man. It would earn enough to pay for two daily and two weekly papers, 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 hour a day might make--nay, has made--an unknown man a famous one, a useless man a benefactor to his race. Consider, then, the mighty possibilities of two--four--yes, six hours a day that are, on the average, thrown away by young men and women in the restless desire for fun and diversion!
Every young man should have a hobby to occupy his leisure hours, something useful to which he can turn with delight. It might be in line with his work or otherwise, only _his heart must be in it_.
If one chooses wisely, the study, research, and occupation that a hobby confers will broaden character and transform the home.
"He has nothing to prevent him but too much idleness, which, I have observed," says Burke, "fills up a man"s time much more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever."
Some boys will pick up a good education in the odds and ends of time which others carelessly throw away, as one man saves a fortune by small economies which others disdain to practise. What young man is too busy to get an hour a day for self-improvement? Charles C. Frost, 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 but four hours of sleep. It took Professor Owen ten years to arrange and cla.s.sify the specimens in Comparative Anatomy, over twenty-four thousand in number, which Hunter"s industry had collected. What a record for a boy who began his studies while working as a carpenter!
John Q. Adams complained bitterly when robbed of his time by those who had no right to it. An Italian scholar put over his door the inscription: "Whoever tarries here must join in my labors." Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning, and d.i.c.kens signed a remonstrance against organ-grinders who disturbed their work.
Many of the greatest men of history earned their fame outside of their regular occupations in odd bits of time which most people squander.
Spenser made his reputation in his spare time while Secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland. Sir John Lubbock"s fame rests on his prehistoric studies, prosecuted 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 circ.u.mstance escape him. Franklin was a tireless worker. He crowded his meals and sleep into as small compa.s.s as possible so that he might gain time for study. When a child, he became impatient of his father"s long grace at table, and asked him if he could not say grace over a whole cask once for all, and save time. He wrote some of his best productions on shipboard, such as his "Improvement of Navigation" and "Smoky Chimneys."
What a lesson there is in Raphael"s brief thirty-seven years to those who plead "no time" as an excuse for wasted lives!
Great men have ever been misers of moments. Cicero said: "What others give to public shows and entertainments, nay, even to mental and bodily rest, I give to the study of philosophy." Lord Bacon"s fame springs from the work of his leisure hours while 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 moments in an attic of an apothecary"s shop. Pope would often rise in the night to write out thoughts that would not come during the busy day. Grote wrote his matchless "History of Greece" during the hours of leisure s.n.a.t.c.hed from his duties as a banker.
George Stephenson seized the moments as though they were gold. He educated himself and did much of his best work during his spare moments.
He learned 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 work long enough to sleep, and would sometimes write two whole nights and a day without intermission. He wrote his famous "Requiem" on his death-bed.
Caesar said: "Under my tent in the fiercest struggle of war I have always found time to think of many other things." He was once shipwrecked, and had to swim ash.o.r.e; but he carried with him the ma.n.u.script of his "Commentaries," upon which he was at work when the ship went down.
Dr. Mason Good translated "Lucretius" while riding to visit his patients in London. Dr. Darwin composed most of his works by writing his thoughts on sc.r.a.ps of paper wherever he 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 the lawyer"s office where he was studying. Dr. Burney learned Italian and French on horseback. Matthew Hale wrote his "Contemplations"
while traveling on his circuit as judge.
The present time is the raw material out of which we make whatever we will. Do not brood over the past, or dream of the future, but seize the instant and _get your lesson from the hour_. The man is yet unborn who rightly measures and fully realizes the value of an hour. As Fenelon says, G.o.d never gives but one moment at a time, and does not give a second until he withdraws the first.
Lord Brougham could not bear to lose a moment, yet he was so systematic that he always seemed to have more leisure than many who did not accomplish a t.i.the of what he did. He achieved distinction in politics, law, science, and literature.
Dr. Johnson wrote "Ra.s.selas" in the evenings of a single week, in order to meet the expenses of his mother"s funeral.