spare time while Secretary to the Lord
Deputy of Ireland. Sir John Lubbock's fame rests on his prehistoric
studies, prosecuted outside of his busy banking-hours. Southey, seldom
idle for a minute, wrote a hundred volumes. Hawthorne's notebook shows
that he never let a chance thought or circumstance escape him. Franklin
was a tireless worker. He crowded his meals and sleep into as small
compass as possible so that he might gain time for study. When a child,
he became impatient of his father's long grace at table, and asked him if
he could not say grace over a whole cask once for all, and save time. He
wrote some of his best productions on shipboard, such as his "Improvement
of Navigation" and "Smoky Chimneys."

What a lesson there is in Raphael's brief thirty-seven years to those who
plead "no time" as an excuse for wasted lives!

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's fame springs from
the work of his leisure hours while Chancellor of England. During an
interview with a great monarch, Goethe suddenly excused himself, went
into an adjoining room and wrote down a thought for his "Faust," lest it
should be forgotten. Sir Humphry Davy achieved eminence in spare moments
in an attic of an apothecary's shop. Pope would often rise in the night
to write out thoughts that would not come during the busy day. Grote
wrote his matchless "History of Greece" during the hours of leisure
snatched from his duties as a banker.

George Stephenson seized the moments as though they were gold. He
educated himself and did much of his best work during his spare moments.
He learned arithmetic during the night shifts when he was an engineer.
Mozart would not allow a moment to slip by unimproved. He would not stop
his work long enough to sleep, and would sometimes write two whole nights
and a day without intermission. He wrote his famous "Requiem" on his
death-bed.

Caesar said: "Under my tent in the fiercest struggle of war I have always
found time to think of many other things." He was once shipwrecked, and
had to swim ashore; but he carried with him the manuscript of his
"Commentaries," upon which he was at work when the ship went down.

Dr. Mason Good translated "Lucretius" while riding to visit his patients
in London. Dr. Darwin composed most of his works by writing