La vie est vaine:
Un peu d'amour,
Un peu de haine,
Et puis--bon jour.

La vie est breve,
Un peu d'espoir,
Un peu de reve,
Et puis--bon soir.[74]

There are few sayings which deserve better to be brought continually
before our minds than that of Franklin: 'You value life; then do not
squander time, for time is the stuff of life.' Of all the things that
are bestowed on men, none is more valuable, but none is more unequally
used, and the true measurement of life should be found less in its
duration than in the amount that is put into it. The waste of time is
one of the oldest of commonplaces, but it is one of those which are
never really stale. How much of the precious 'stuff of life' is wasted
by want of punctuality; by want of method involving superfluous and
repeated effort; by want of measure prolonging things that are
pleasurable or profitable in moderation to the point of weariness,
satiety, and extravagance; by want of selection dwelling too much on the
useless or the unimportant; by want of intensity, growing out of a
nature that is listless and apathetic both in work and pleasure. Time
is, in one sense, the most elastic of things. It is one of the commonest
experiences that the busiest men find most of it for exceptional work,
and often a man who, under the strong stimulus of an active professional
life, repines bitterly that he finds so little time for pursuing some
favourite work or study, discovers, to his own surprise, that when
circumstances have placed all his time at his disposal he does less in
this field than in the hard-earned intervals of a crowded life. The art
of wisely using the spare five minutes, the casual vacancies or
intervals of life, is one of the most valuable we can acquire. There are
lives in which the main preoccupation is to get through time. There are
others in which it is to find time for all that has to be got through,
and most men, in different periods of their lives, are acquainted with
both extremes. With some, time is mere duration, a blank, featureless
thing, gliding swiftly and insensibly by. With others every day, and
almost every hour, seems to have its distinctive stamp and character,
for good or ill, in work or pleasure. There are vast differences in this
respect between different ages of history, and between different
generations in the same country, between town and country life, and
between different countries. 'Better