Franklin has a homely saying to this effect,—that he who loses an hour in the morning, must run all day, and ’tis a wonder if he overtakes his business before night. So, if any one finds himself pinched for time, it is likely he has thrown away an hour, when he thought he had time enough and a little to spare.
Time enough—say we, when in a serious mood we resolve to be more diligent, more systematic, more punctual; when we resolve upon any reform.
We do not mean to procrastinate; but while we muse, the moment passes, and is irrecoverably lost.
Do you say, “We knew all this before?”
No doubt of it. Yet we are apt to think there is not only time enough, but some to spare.
But this is an error, and should be corrected.
The different length of different lives is nothing against our position, that life is just long enough. The oldest person has enough of duty and enough of pleasure too, if he lives aright, to occupy his threescore years and ten, while he whose sun goes down at noon, has time enough, if he will but improve it, to make his life here a blessing to others, and that hereafter blessed and glorious to himself.
——“That life alone is long,
Which answers life’s great end.”