thief of time_;' the clouds
gave you a hint of what was coming, but you seemed not to take it." "It
is," replied he, eagerly. "Doctor Young is in the right. Procrastination
has been my curse since I was in leading-strings. It has grown with my
growth, and strengthened with my strength. It has ever been my besetting
sin--my companion in prosperity and adversity; and I have slept upon it,
like Samson on the lap of Delilah, till it has shorn my locks and
deprived me of my strength. It has been to me a witch, a manslayer, and
a murderer; and when I would have shaken it off in wrath and in disgust,
I found I was no longer master of my own actions and my own house. It
had brought around me a host of its blood relations--its sisters and its
cousins-german--to fatten on my weakness, and haunt me to the grave; so
that when I tore myself from the embrace of one, it was only to be
intercepted by another. You are young, sir, and a stranger to me; but
its effects upon me and my history--the history of a poor paralytic
shoemaker--if you have patience to hear, may serve as a beacon to you in
your voyage through life."

Upon expressing my assent to his proposal--for the fluency and fervency
of his manner had at once riveted my attention and excited curiosity--he
continued:--

"I was born without a fortune, as many people are. When about five years
of age, I was sent to a parish school in Roxburghshire, and
procrastination went with me. Being possessed of a tolerable memory, I
was not more deficient than my schoolfellows; but the task which they
had studied the previous evening was by me seldom looked at till the
following morning, and my seat was the last to be occupied of any other
on the form. My lessons were committed to memory by a few hurried
glances, and repeated with a faltering rapidity, which not unfrequently
puzzled the ear of the teacher to follow me. But what was thus hastily
learned, was as suddenly forgotten. They were mere surface impressions,
each obliterated by the succeeding. And though I had run over a
tolerable general education, I left school but little wiser than when I
entered it.

"My parents--peace to their memory!"--here the old fellow looked most
feelingly, and a tear of filial recollection glistened in his eyes: it
added a dignity to the recital of his weakness, and I almost reverenced
him--"My parents," continued he, "had no ambition to see me rise higher
in society than an honest tradesman; and at thir