ares. 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One hour a day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits and profitably employed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