terest, comfort, and honor, would be greatly promoted? Is
the inconvenience which this rule imposes so great, or your habit of
self-indulgence so strong, that you cannot, or will not, forego a slight
temporary gratification for so substantial and lasting a benefit?

7. You will avoid much of the difficulty of observing this rule, if you
give heed to the next counsel which I have now to give, and that is,
that you economize carefully your time in school. On this point some
excellent and conscientious pupils occasionally err. They are very
faithful in home preparation; very attentive at lectures; very
industrious in discharging any set duty. But they have not yet learned
the true secret of all economy, whether of time, money, or any other
good,--namely, the knowing how to use well the odds and ends. Take care
of the pence, was Franklin's motto. If you once have the secret of
occupying usefully, in studious preparation, or in wise repetition, all
those little intervals of interrupted instruction, which necessarily
occur throughout the day, you will in the first place almost insure for
yourself an entire freedom from demerit marks of every kind; you will
secondly add materially to your intellectual progress; and, lastly, you
will acquire a habit of the utmost value in every station and walk in
life; and, depend upon it, the habits you acquire at school, are of all
your acquisitions by far the most important.

8. But I would be false to my most settled convictions, were I to stop
here. I have been a teacher of the young nearly all my life, and as the
result of such a life-long professional experience, I have no conviction
more abiding than this, that the _fear of God is the beginning of
knowledge_. I believe that mental growth is just as directly the gift of
God as bodily growth; that the healthy action of the mind is as much
dependent on his good pleasure as the healthy action of the bodily
functions. God has not only made one mind superior to another, but of
two minds naturally equal, he can, at his sovereign pleasure, make one
grow and expand more rapidly than another. As he can give symmetry and
strength to your limbs, and clothe your features with beauty and grace,
so he can make you quick of apprehension, clear of discernment, ready
and tenacious to remember, delicate in your appreciation of what is
beautiful. While, therefore, you are diligent in your studies, remember
that the reward of your labor, after all, is the