n
business. If that which is first in hand be not instantly despatched,
other things accumulate betimes, till affairs begin to press all at
once, and no brain can stand the confusion." We should steadily
cultivate the habit of punctuality. We can cultivate it until it
becomes with us a second nature, and we do everything, as the saying
is, "by clockwork." In rising in the morning and going to bed, in
taking up different kinds of work, in keeping appointments with others,
we should strive to be "to the minute." The unpunctual man is a
nuisance to society. He wastes his own time, and he wastes the time of
others; as Principal Tulloch well says, "Men who have real work of
their own would rather do anything than do business with him." [2]

IV. Promptitude.--By this we mean acting at the present moment--all
that is opposed to procrastination, putting off to another time, to a
"convenient season" which probably never comes--all that is opposed
also to what is called "loitering" or "dawdling." There is an old
Latin proverb, "_Bis dat qui cito dat,_"--he gives twice who gives
quickly. The same thing may be said of work, "He works twice who works
quickly." In work, of course, the first requirement is that it should
be well done; but this does not hinder quickness and despatch. There
are those who, when they have anything to do, seem to go round it and
round it, instead of attacking it at once and getting it out of the
way; and when they do begin it they do so in a listless and
half-hearted fashion. There are those who look at their work,
according to the simile of Sidney Smith, like men who stand shivering
on the bank instead of at once taking the plunge. "In order," he says,
"to do anything that is worth doing in this world, we must not stand
shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in
and scramble through as well as we can. It will not do to be
perpetually calculating and adjusting nice chances; it did all very
well before the Flood, when a man could consult his friends upon an
intended publication for a hundred and fifty years, and then live to
see its success for six or seven centuries afterwards, but at present a
man doubts, and waits, and hesitates, and consults his brother, and his
uncle, and his first cousin, and his particular friends, till one day
he finds that he is sixty-five years of age, that he has lost so much
time in consulting first cousins and particular friends that he