Napoleon said that quarter hours decide the destinies of nations.  How many quarter hours do we let drift by aimlessly!  Robert Louis Stevenson conserved all his time; every experience became capital for his work—­for capital may be defined as “the results of labor stored up to assist future production.”  He continually tried to put into suitable language the scenes and actions that were in evidence about him.  Emerson says:  “Tomorrow will be like today.  Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.”

Why wait for a more convenient season for this broad, general preparation?  The fifteen minutes that we spend on the car could be profitably turned into speech-capital.

Procure a cheap edition of modern speeches, and by cutting out a few pages each day, and reading them during the idle minute here and there, note how soon you can make yourself familiar with the world’s best speeches.  If you do not wish to mutilate your book, take it with you—­most of the epoch-making books are now printed in small volumes.  The daily waste of natural gas in the Oklahoma fields is equal to ten thousand tons of coal.  Only about three per cent of the power of the coal that enters the furnace ever diffuses itself from your electric bulb as light—­the other ninety-seven per cent is wasted.  Yet these wastes are no larger, nor more to be lamented than the tremendous waste of time which, if conserved would increase the speaker’s powers to their nth degree.  Scientists are making three ears of corn grow where one grew before; efficiency engineers are eliminating useless motions and products from our factories:  catch the spirit of the age and apply efficiency to the use of the most valuable asset you possess—­time.  What do you do mentally with the time you spend in dressing or in shaving?  Take some subject and concentrate your energies on it for a week by utilizing just the spare moments that would otherwise be wasted.  You will be amazed at the result.  One passage a day from the Book of Books, one golden ingot from some master mind, one fully-possessed thought of your own might thus be added to the treasury of your life.  Do not waste your time in ways that profit you nothing.  Fill “the unforgiving minute” with “sixty seconds’ worth of distance run” and on the platform you will be immeasurably the gainer.

Let no word of this, however, seem to decry the value of recreation.  Nothing is more vital to a worker than rest—­yet nothing is so vitiating to the shirker.  Be sure that your recreation re-creates.  A pause in the midst of labors gathers strength for new effort.  The mistake is to pause too long, or to fill your pauses with ideas that make life flabby.

Choosing a Subject

Subject and materials tremendously influence each other.

“This arises from the fact that there are two distinct ways in which a subject may be chosen:  by arbitrary choice, or by development from thought and reading.