n prevalent among the students. He "cannot tell how much Burgundy
he could really drink." Lost days--lost days! And now the great old man,
with Europe at his feet and the world awaiting his lightest word with
eagerness, turns regretfully sometimes to think of the days thrown away.
A haze seems to hang before the eyes of such as he; and it is a haze
that makes the future seem dim and vast, even while it obscures all the
sharp outlines of things. The child is not capable of reasoning
coherently, and therefore its disposition to fritter away time must be
regarded as only the result of defective organization; but the young man
and young woman can reason, and yet we find them perpetually making
excuses for eluding time and eternity. Look at the young fellows who are
preparing for the hard duties of life by studying at a University. Here
is one who seems to have recognized the facts of existence; his hours
are arranged as methodically as his heart beats; he knows the exact
balance between physical and intellectual strength, and he overtaxes
neither, but body and mind are worked up to the highest attainable
pressure. No pleasures of the destructive sort call this youngster
aside; he has learned already what it is to reap the harvest of a quiet
eye, and his joys are of the sober kind. He rises early, and he has got
far through his work ere noon; his quiet afternoon is devoted to
harmless merriment in the cricket-field or on the friendly country
roads, and his evening is spent without any vain gossip in the happy
companionship of his books. That young man loses no day; but unhappily
he represents a type which is but too rare. The steady man, economic of
time, is a rarity; but the wild youth who is always going to do
something to-morrow is one of a class that numbers only too many on its
rolls. To-morrow! The young fellow passes to-day on the river, or spends
it in lounging or in active dissipation. He feels that he is doing
wrong; but the gaunt spectres raised by conscience are always exorcised
by the bright vision of to-morrow. To-morrow the truant will go to his
books; he will bend himself for that concentrated effort which alone
secures success, and his time of carelessness and sloth shall be far
left behind. But the sinister influence of to-day saps his will and
renders him infirm; each new to-day is wasted amid thoughts of visionary
to-morrows which take all the power from his soul; and, when he is
nerveless, powerless, tired