Economy of time again is essential towards using one's life to the best advantage. It does not mean a continual bustle and hurry, but doing things at the right time and working and living with some definite end in view--the final end of all ends being, as the motto says, the glory and honour of God in our lives. Again, true economy of time does not imply that each hour in which we have not actually achieved some work with brain or hand is consequently wasted, for it may often be truer economy to spend an hour in quiet talk with a friend or in taking suitable recreation, but it does demand some method in our distribution of time, and protests against the best hours of the day being devoted solely to amusement or to mutually profitless gossip. Milton prettily says--
"Hours have wings, fly up to the author of time and carry news of our usage. All our prayers cannot entreat one of them either to return or slacken his pace. The misspents of every minute are a new record against us in heaven. Sure if we thought thus, we should dismiss them with better reports and not suffer them to fly away empty or laden with dangerous intelligence. How happy is it when they carry up not only the message, but the fruits of good, and stay with the Ancient of Days to speak for us before His glorious throne."
Sir James Y. Simpson, the celebrated surgeon, was very fond of speaking to the students on the duty of saving the moments and letting the minutes look after themselves. But in his estimate, as it should ever be in ours, the quality of the work was the all-important element in life. And of a hard-working thoughtful doctor who died young, he said, "He was older than some of us who are twice his age!"
Kingsley had the same thought in his mind when he wrote those well-known lines--
"Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever; Do lovely things, not dream them, all day long, And so make Life, and Death, and that For Ever One grand sweet song."
He did not intend to deprecate cleverness and learning, but to point out that our first endeavour should be to be good and live a noble life, and if we could accomplish that, not to fret or be grieved if outstripped in intellectual attainments by others; because whilst "to do lovely things" lies in everybody's power, the higher intellectual acquirements are not within the reach of all. With due arrangement of time it is marvellous how much can be accomplished. You will be surprised to find how many books you can read in a year if you devote one hour a day to them. It is often said that it is the busiest people who can always find time to undertake yet some more work or do a service for others, while idle people never have time for anything, and the truth of this paradox is proved by the vast amount of reading accomplished and the intense interest taken in extraneous matters by our very busiest statesmen, surgeons and clergymen. Try then, all of you, to acquire such habits of regularity and punctuality whilst at school, that they may remain with you afterwards and make it an easy and pleasant task for you to apportion your time to the best advantage, when freed from the rules necessary in scholastic life.