“No Time.”

Western Star, Issue 2152, 30 October 1897, Page 4

“No Time.”

Great Work Done in Odd Minutes. Who is there, from a schoolboy who is hard pressed on one side by his lessons and on the other by his sports, to the rich man of affairs with a great many “ irons in the fire,” who does not lament that he has not time enough to do what he wants to do ? This mourning over a want of time is so common, and almost so constitutional, that with a good many it takes up no little time in Itself. There is no telling how much we might accomplish if we used for some useful or recreative purpose the very moments that we spend in lamenting and despairing because we have not the time to do this, that, and the other.

Has the reader ever thought what a great amount of reading he can do in a year’s time by baking no more than ten minutes, morning and night, which he has not been accustomed to devoting to that purpose ?

A good reader can read (silently) from two hundred to three hundred words per minute, and some people, in reading books which do not require close attention, read more rapidly than that. Supposing that one desires to read attentively, and makes his maximum of speed for this purpose two hundred words per minute ; at the end of twelve days, in ten minutes, morning and night, he will have read 48,000 words, which would make a very respectable-sized book.

A learned divine, whose time was very fully occupied with his labours and studies, used to say that he had no patience with people who claimed that they had no time to read books, because, by baking ten minutes, night and morning, he was able to keep well up with the literature of his time, leaving the greater part of his day for serious studies.

Dr. John Mason Good, the translator of “ Lucretius,” performed that memorable literary work while going to and from Ms patients in his carry-all. John Stuart Mill composed his Logic” while walking up and down bis study in the intervals between other and laborious duties.

Perhaps as singular an instance as was ever heard of this employment of odd minutes is recorded in the case of D’Aguesseau, Chancellor of Prance, who wrote many important works on law. He had noticed that there was always a little interval of waiting between the moment when dinner was announced and the time when it was completely served. This interval of time D’Aguesseau employed in writing on one corner of the sideboard In Ms dining-room. In a year’s time he made this little period suffice for the composition of an important work.

Many people who have occasion to travel dally upon railroad trains occupy the time thus spent in serious work of some sort, though it is by no means advisable either to read or to write on railroad trains, on account of possible danger to the eyes. A certain literary gentleman, it is said, having to travel in and out of town by train each day, and being unable to read on the train on account of weakness .of eyes, made up Ms mind to compose one ioke on each of these two daily railroad journeys. He carried out Ms project, and had the satisfaction of disposing of nearly every joke he thus produced to the humorous journals.

Such cases as these of the employment of what would otherwise be waste time do not by any means argue that one should never be idle. To most people, a certain amount of idleness is profitable and necessary. But they prove that, the need for recreation filled, there are still a good many odd bits of time left which can be profitably employed. Even misfortune may, with a happy disposition, be turned to some advantage. A learned man who had been stricken with blindness said to a friend : Well, well'. I have never yet had time to taste the sweets of my recollections ; now 1 can enjoy them !” There is a proverb which says, Every time the sheep bleats, she loses a bite of grass ; and every time a man complains be loses a chance to be happy. The “ Household.”