s every minute.
What power there is in promptness to take the drudgery out of a
disagreeable task.

"A singular mischance has happened to some of our friends," said
Hamilton. "At the instant when He ushered them into existence, God gave
them work to do, and He also gave them a competency of time; so much
that if they began at the right moment and wrought with sufficient
vigor, their time and their work would end together. But a good many
years ago a strange misfortune befell them. A fragment of their allotted
time was lost. They cannot tell what became of it, but sure enough, it
has dropped out of existence; for just like two measuring lines laid
alongside the one an inch shorter than the other, their work and their
time run parallel, but the work is always ten minutes in advance of the
time. They are not irregular. They are never too soon. Their letters are
posted the very minute after the mail is closed. They arrive at the
wharf just in time to see the steamboat off, they come in sight of the
terminus precisely as the station gates are closing. They do not break
any engagement nor neglect any duty; but they systematically go about it
too late, and usually too late by about the same fatal interval."

Of Tours, the wealthy New Orleans ship-owner, it is said that he was as
methodical and regular as a clock, and that his neighbors were in the
habit of judging of the time of the day by his movements.

"How," asked a man of Sir Walter Raleigh, "do you accomplish so much and
in so short a time?" "When I have anything do, I go and do it," was the
reply. The man who always acts promptly, even if he makes occasional
mistakes, will succeed when a procrastinator will fail--even if he have
the better judgment.

When asked how he got through so much work, Lord Chesterfield replied:
"Because I never put off till morrow what I can do to-day."

Dewitt, pensionary of Holland, answered the same question: "Nothing is
more easy; never do but one thing at a time, and never put off until
to-morrow what can be done to-day."

Walter Scott was a very punctual man. This was the secret of his
enormous achievements. He made it a rule to answer all letters the day
they were received. He rose at five. By breakfast time he had broken the
neck of the day's work, as he used to say. Writing to a youth who had
obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel:
"Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from no