D.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.--SHAKESPEARE.

Believe me when I tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after
life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that
waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature
beyond your darkest reckoning.--GLADSTONE.

Lost! Somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set
with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone
forever.--HORACE MANN.

"What is the price of that book?" at length asked a man who had been
dawdling for an hour in the front store of Benjamin Franklin's newspaper
establishment. "One dollar," replied the clerk. "One dollar," echoed
the lounger; "can't you take less than that?" "One dollar is the price,"
was the answer.

The would-be purchaser looked over the books on sale a while longer, and
then inquired: "Is Mr. Franklin in?" "Yes," said the clerk, "he is very
busy in the press-room." "Well, I want to see him," persisted the man.
The proprietor was called, and the stranger asked: "What is the lowest,
Mr. Franklin, that you can take for that book?" "One dollar and a
quarter," was the prompt rejoinder. "One dollar and a quarter! Why,
your clerk asked me only a dollar just now." "True," said Franklin, "and
I could have better afforded to take a dollar than to leave my work."

The man seemed surprised; but, wishing to end a parley of his own
seeking, he demanded: "Well, come now, tell me your lowest price for this
book." "One dollar and a half," replied Franklin. "A dollar and a half!
Why, you offered it yourself for a dollar and a quarter." "Yes," said
Franklin coolly, "and I could better have taken that price then than a
dollar and a half now."

The man silently laid the money on the counter, took his book, and left
the store, having received a salutary lesson from a master in the art of
transmuting time, at will, into either wealth or wisdom.

Time-wasters are everywhere.

On the floor of the gold-working room, in the United States Mint at
Philadelphia, there is a wooden lattice-work which is taken up when the
floor is swept, and the fine particles of gold-dust, thousands of
dollars' yearly, are thus saved. So every successful man has a kind of
network to catch "the raspings and parings of existence, those leavings
of days and wee bits of hours" which most people sweep into the waste of
life. He who hoards and turns to account all odd m