o a youth
who had obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this
counsel: "Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you
from not having your time fully employed--I mean what the women call
dawdling. Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of
recreation after business, never before it."

Not too much can be said about the value of the habit of rising early.
Eight hours is enough sleep for any man. Very frequently seven hours
is plenty. After the eighth hour in bed, if a man is able, it is his
business to get up, dress quickly, and go to work.

"A singular mischance has happened to some of our friends," said
Hamilton. "At the instant when He ushered them into existence, God
gave them a work to do, and He also gave them a competence of time; so
much that if they began at the right moment, and wrought with
sufficient vigor, their time and their work would end together. But a
good many years ago a strange misfortune befell them. A fragment of
their allotted time was lost. They cannot tell what became of it, but
sure enough, it has dropped out of existence; for just like two
measuring-lines laid alongside, the one an inch shorter than the other,
their work and their time run parallel, but the work is always ten
minutes in advance of the time. They are not irregular. They are
never too soon. Their letters are posted the very minute after the
mail is closed. They arrive at the wharf just in time to see the
steamboat off, they come in sight of the terminus precisely as the
station gates are closing. They do not break any engagement or neglect
any duty; but they systematically go about it too late, and usually too
late by about the same fatal interval."

Some one has said that "promptness is a contagious inspiration."
Whether it be an inspiration, or an acquirement, it is one of the
practical virtues of civilization.

There is one thing that is almost as sacred as the marriage
relation,--that is, an appointment. A man who fails to meet his
appointment, unless he has a good reason, is practically a liar, and
the world treats him as such.

"If a man has no regard for the time of other men," said Horace
Greeley, "why should he have for their money? What is the difference
between taking a man's hour and taking his five dollars? There are
many men to whom each hour of the business day is worth more than five
dollars."

When President Washington dined at four, new mem