All time is precious; but the time of our childhood and of our youth is more precious than any other portion of our existence. For those are the periods when alone we can acquire knowledge and develop our faculties and capacities. If we allow these morning hours of life to slip away unutilized, we shall never be able to recoup the loss. As we grow older, our power of acquisition gets blunted, so that the art or science which is not acquired in childhood or youth will never be acquired at all. Just as money laid out at interest doubles and trebles itself in time, so the precious hours of childhood and youth, if properly used, will yield us incalculable advantages. "Every moment you lose" says Lord Chesterfield "is so much character and advantage lost; as on the other hand, every moment you now employ usefully is so much time wisely laid out at prodigious interest."

A proper employment of time is of great benefit to us from a moral point of view. Idleness is justly said to be the rust of the mind and an idle brain is said to be Satan"s workshop. It is mostly when you do not know what to do with yourself that you do something ill or wrong. The mind of the idler preys upon itself. As Watt has said:

In works of labour or of skill

Let me be busy too;

For Satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do. (249 words

(686 words)

By Robert William Service