tion — what other people think of him. No one is willing to praise or help a dawdler. A young man must have the reputation of being prompt, energetic, decisive, earnest, and true, if he would have the assistance of others; and, without this, success is impossible.

An old sea captain so dreaded this habit of dawdling among his crew, because it demoralized all discipline, that when he could find nothing else for them to do he would make them scour the anchor.

Who does not know some member of the "Idle Family"? Idleness is a sly thief; she snatches a minute here and a few minutes there; she clips a quarter of an hour from your music lesson, or your other duties. We determine every morning that she shall have none of this day, but every night we have to confess her petty thefts with chagrin. She holds you "just a minute" till your train has gone, "just a minute" till the bank has closed; she induces you to get your house insured to-morrow, but it burns to-night; to apply for the situation to-morrow, but it is taken today. She makes you tardy at school, just a little late. for your engagements, until you have lost your reputation for promptness and ruined your credit.

It is well for every youth to post up in his study or room a list of "thieves" or "time wasters," such as dawdling, half working, listless working, working without energy, aimless working, oversleeping, late rising, loafing, useless visiting, fooling, working merely for the sake of working, overworking, studying with jaded, weary mind and flagging energies, useless letter writing, idle calling, amusements which are not necessary for health or recreation, callers and visitors who steal away precious hours and minutes, dreaming, talking nonsense, building air castles, killing time traveling without a purpose, reading foolish stories, procrastination, sloth, half doing things which never amount to anything because not finished.

A printer's handbook contains the following items:

SOCIETY TO PROMOTE HABITS OF INDUSTRY.

Initiation of Members. Knowing that the Human Hand, intelligently educated and skillfully employed, has delivered man from Barbarism, and made his position far superior to that of animals not possessing this most useful appendage, I therefore truly and Faithfully Covenant

That my hands, and those of others placed under my charge, shall be carefully trained in some Handicraft beneficial to the race, and that I will on all occasions endeavor to keep them diligently employed.

PHILANTHROPIC BUSYBODY.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON EXTENSION OF USEFULNESS.

Recommendations for Future Activity. In the prosecution of our labors we find many persons living under trees expecting fruit to drop into their mouths, others waiting for something to turn up, numbers lingering around hoping to step into other people's shoes, some who appear anxious to shovel snow in summer or harvest grain in mid-winter, many sighing for Luck to come their way or looking for a Big Prize from the lottery or race track, and a multitude who in other ways are waiting for the improbable; we therefore advise that a number of the most energetic of our co-laborers be sent to stir them up to a sense of practical duty.

"I remember," says Hillard, "a satirical poem, in which the devil is represented as fishing for men, and adapting his bait to the tastes and temperaments of his prey; but the idlers were the easiest victims, for they swallowed even the naked hook." The mind of the idler preys upon itself.

It is the holidays, the evenings, the spare moments that try character; the great strain does not come in the busy day.

If you want to know a young man's character, find out what he does with his spare minutes. What do they mean to him? What does he see in them? Does he see education, self-culture, a coveted book, in the odd

moments and half-holidays which others throw away; or does he see a sparring-match, a saloon, a gamblingplace, horse-racing, or a pool table?

Many a man, after acquiring a fortune by habits of industry and economy, has retired to enjoy the leisure. to which he has so long looked forward as the goal of competence, only to find a life of idleness so intolerable that he must choose between a renewal of business activity or death from the lack of anything to keep the vital forces in motion. For the first time he learns that the command to live for a purpose is intended for our good, as without some purpose we cannot long exist. As digestion is measured by appetite, our hold on life is measured by our interest in various objects of thought.

The mind must be active, and if we do not furnish worthy employment, it will feed upon itself and consume its own substance. The man without definite work soon becomes the victim of a diseased mind. Melancholy and disappointment prey upon him and rob him. of aspiration and happiness.

Nature demands that you labor until you are tired before she will reward you with sweet, refreshing sleep and a ravenous appetite, — luxuries which the idle and the lazy never enjoy. She reserves these boons for her hard-handed toilers. As their pay is small she gives them this additional compensation for doing the world's drudgery.

The bicycle falls the moment it stops; industry keeps many a life from falling.

The man who stands with his hands in his pockets month after month while others are working will soon have them in other folks' pockets.

The let-alone principle is dangerous. alone and you will become an imbecile. alone and you will become a pauper. bor alone and you will become selfish. alone and you will become devilish.

Let your brain

Let your land Let your neighLet your sou

A lazy man is of no more use in the world than a dead man, and he takes up more room. Who waits for something to turn up, often turns up himself in jail.

"There is a perennial nobleness and even sacredness in work," said Carlyle. "Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man who honestly and earnestly works; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair."

"Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work. Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all these like hell-dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day-worker, as of every man; but he bends himself with free valor against his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink, murmuring far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow of labor in him, is it not as purifying fire?"

There is great competition in shirking, and pretty hard work is made of it sometimes. Perhaps the most humiliating exhibition which shirks make of themselves, as Holland says, is on the occasion of a change in the national administration. One hundred dollars in borrowed money, three clean shirts, a long petition, an anxious face, and a carpet bag form the outfit of something less than 100,000 able-bodied men who make pilgrimages to Washington once in four years. They consider this a government of the politician, for the politician, and by the politician.

"If ever this free people this government-is utterly demoralized," said Lincoln, "it will come from this human struggle for office, a way to live with

out work."

"There is one plain rule of life," says John Stuart Mill, "eternally binding, and independent of all variations in creeds, embracing equally the greatest moral

ists and the smallest. It is this: try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it." Ruskin, on being told of a man who was a genius, immediately inquired, "Does he work?"

Thousands of honest people who would cut their hands off sooner than steal a penny from me do not hesitate to drop in on me and steal an hour of my time which no money can replace. He who steals the time of a public

servant trespasses on a nation's time.

"Nothing is worse for those who have business than the visits of those who have none," was the motto of a Scotch editor.

Not until the wounds of the world are healed, not until the last thirsty soul has been led to the River of Life, has an able-bodied man a right to lay down his armor and call a halt.

Time is exactly what we make it: in the hands of the wise, a blessing; in the hands of the foolish, a curse; in the hands of the wise, a preparation for life eternal; in the hands of the foolish, a preparation for the condemnation that is everlasting. To you it is much; to your neighbor, it is naught.

John Ruskin keeps before him constantly, inscribed upon a large piece of chalcedony, "TO-DAY."

Could I give the youth of this country but one word of advice it would be this: Let no moment pass until you have extracted from it every possibility. Watch every grain in the hourglass.

Make each day stand for something. Neither heaven nor earth has any place for the drone; he is a libel on his species. No glamour of wealth or social prestige can hide his essential ugliness. It is better to carry a hod or wield a shovel in honest endeavor to be of some use to humanity than to be nursed in luxury and be a parasite.