The Art of Manliness - Manvotionals - Brett McKay [32]
The days come to us like friends in disguise, bringing priceless gifts from an unseen hand; but, if we do not use them, they are borne silently away, never to return. Each successive morning new gifts are brought, but if we failed to accept those that were brought yesterday and the day before, we become less and less able to turn them to account, until the ability to appreciate and utilize them is exhausted. Wisely was it said that lost wealth may be regained by industry and economy, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance and medicine, but lost time is gone forever.
“Oh, it’s only five minutes or ten minutes till meal-time; there’s no time to do anything now,” is one of the commonest expressions heard in the family. But what monuments have been built up by poor boys with no chance, out of broken fragments of time which many of us throw away! The very hours you have wasted, if improved, might have insured your success.
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? … 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 hardworking merchant, physician, statesman, judge, or soldier.
Oh, the power of ceaseless industry to perform miracles!
One hour a day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits and profitably employed would enable any man of ordinary capacity to master a complete science.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. … In an hour a day a boy or a girl could read twenty pages thoughtfully—over seven thousand pages, or eighteen large volumes in a year.
An hour a day might make all the difference between bare existence and useful, happy living. An hour a day might make—nay, has made—an unknown man a famous one, a useless man a benefactor to his race. Consider, then, the mighty possibilities of two—four—yes, six hours a day that are, on the average, thrown away by young men.
Every young man should have a hobby to occupy his leisure hours, something useful to which he can turn with delight. It might be in line with his work or otherwise, only his heart must be in it.
If one chooses wisely, the study, research, and occupation that a hobby confers will broaden character and transform the home.
“He has nothing to prevent him but too much idleness, which, I have observed,” says Burke, “fills up a man’s time much more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever.”
Some boys will pick up a good education in the odds and ends of time which others carelessly throw away, as one man saves a fortune by small economies which others disdain to practise. What young man is too busy to get an hour a day for self-improvement?
Great men have ever been misers of moments. Cicero said: “What others give to public shows and entertainments, nay, even to mental and bodily rest, I give to the study of philosophy.” Lord Bacon