his thoughts
on scraps of paper wherever he happened to be. Watt learned chemistry
and mathematics while working at his trade of a mathematical
instrument-maker. Henry Kirke White learned Greek while walking to and
from the lawyer's office where he was studying. Dr. Burney learned
Italian and French on horseback. Matthew Hale wrote his "Contemplations"
while traveling on his circuit as judge.

The present time is the raw material out of which we make whatever we
will. Do not brood over the past, or dream of the future, but seize the
instant and _get your lesson from the hour_. The man is yet unborn who
rightly measures and fully realizes the value of an hour. As Fenelon
says, God never gives but one moment at a time, and does not give a
second until he withdraws the first.

Lord Brougham could not bear to lose a moment, yet he was so systematic
that he always seemed to have more leisure than many who did not
accomplish a tithe of what he did. He achieved distinction in politics,
law, science, and literature.

Dr. Johnson wrote "Rasselas" in the evenings of a single week, in order
to meet the expenses of his mother's funeral.

Lincoln studied law during his spare hours while surveying, and learned
the common branches unaided while tending store. Mrs. Somerville learned
botany and astronomy and wrote books while her neighbors were gossiping
and idling. At eighty she published "Molecular and Microscopical
Science."

The worst of a lost hour is not so much in the wasted time as in the
wasted power. Idleness rusts the nerves and makes the muscles creak.
Work has system, laziness has none.

President Quincy never went to bed until he had laid his plans for the
next day.

Dalton's industry was the passion of his life. He made and recorded over
two hundred thousand meteorological observations.

In factories for making cloth a single broken thread ruins a whole web;
it is traced back to the girl who made the blunder and the loss is
deducted from her wages. But who shall pay for the broken threads in
life's great web? We cannot throw back and forth an empty shuttle;
threads of some kind follow every movement as we weave the web of our
fate. It may be a shoddy thread of wasted hours or lost opportunities
that will mar the fabric and mortify the workman forever; or it may be a
golden thread which will add to its beauty and luster. We cannot stop
the shuttle or pull out the unfortunate thread which stretch