Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

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 snatches 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 snatch 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" hoarded up even to the smallest fragments! Many a great man has snatched 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!