was saying, these three hours are at my disposal, and I
must decide what to do with them here and now. In deciding
concerning hours I must sit in the judgment-seat whether I like it or
not. Tomorrow evening I shall have other three hours to dispose of
the same as these, and the next evening three others, and my decision
to-night may be far-reaching. In six days I shall have eighteen such
hours, and in fifty weeks nine hundred. I suppose that a generous
estimate of a college year would be ten hours a day for one hundred
and eighty days, or eighteen hundred hours in all. I am quite aware
that some college boys will feel inclined to apply a liberal discount
to this estimate, but I am not considering those fellows who try to
do a month's work in the week of examination, and spend their
fathers' money for coaching. Now, if eighteen hundred hours
constitute a college year then my nine hundred hours are one-half a
college year, and it makes a deal of difference what I do with these
three hours.

If I had only started this joke on Atropos earlier and had applied
these nine hundred hours on my college work, I could have graduated
in three years instead of four, and that surely would have been in
the line of efficiency. But in those days I was devoting more time
and attention to Clotho than to Atropos. I would fain have ignored
Lachesis altogether, but she made me painfully conscious of her
presence, especially during the finals when, it seemed to me, she was
unnecessarily diligent in her vocation. I could have dispensed with
much of her torsion with great equanimity. I suppose that now I am
trying to square accounts with her by playing this joke on her sister.

So I have decided that I shall read a play of Shakespeare to-night,
another one to-morrow evening, and continue this until I have read
all that he wrote. In the fifty weeks of the year I can easily do
this and then reread some of them many times. I ought to be able to
commit to memory several of the plays, too, and that would be good
fun. If those chaps back yonder could recite the Koran word for word
I shall certainly be able to learn equally well some of these plays.
It would be worth while to recite "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Othello,"
"Hamlet," "The Tempest," and "As You Like It," the last week of the
year just before I take my vacation of two weeks. If I can recite
even these six plays in those six evenings I shall feel that I did
well in deciding for