n in the longest
possible life,--how many things one will still be obliged to leave
undone.

But there is one thing, boys and girls, that you can realize if you will
try--if you will stop and think about it a little; and that is, how fast
and how steadily the present time is slipping away. However long life
may seem to you as you look forward to the whole of it, the present hour
has only sixty minutes, and minute by minute, second by second, it is
"going! going! gone!" If you gather nothing from it as it passes, it is
"gone" forever. Nothing is so utterly, hopelessly lost as "lost time."
It makes me unhappy when I look back and see how much time I have
wasted; how much I might have learned and done if I had but understood
how short is the longest hour.

All the men and women who have made the world better, happier or wiser
for their having lived in it, have done so by working diligently and
persistently. Yet, I am certain that not even one of these, when
"looking backward from his manhood's prime, saw not the specter of his
mis-spent time." Now, don't suppose I am so foolish as to think that all
the preaching in the world can make anything look to young eyes as it
looks to old eyes; not a bit of it.

But think about it a little; don't let time slip away by the minute,
hour, day, without getting something out of it! Look at the clock now
and then, and listen to the pendulum, saying of every minute, as it
flies,--"Going! going! gone!"

_Helen Hunt Jackson._

From "Bits of Talk." Copyright, Little, Brown & Co., Publishers.

* * * * *

PROSING, talking in a dull way.

In the following sentences, instead of the words in italics, use others
that have the same general meaning:

I heard these words _ringing_ out from a _room_ so _crowded_ with
_people_ that I could _but_ just _see_ the man's _face._ How _fast_ and
_steadily_ the present time is _slipping_ away!

Punctuate the following:

Go to the ant thou sluggard consider her ways and be wise.

* * * * *

_51_

yearn
car' ol
mus' ing
stee' ple
mag' ic al

SEVEN TIMES TWO.

You bells in the steeple, ring, ring out your changes,
How many soever they be,
And let the brown meadowlark's note, as he ranges,
Come over, come over to me!

Yet birds' clearest carol, by fall or by swelling,
No magical sense conveys;
And b