The mind is rarely broad enough in youth to survey the field of life with an impartial view.  “The years creep slowly by, Lorena,” was written in the true youthful, spendthrift spirit.

“Coal-oil Johnny”

was left, as he supposed, inexhaustible riches.  He threw away his money as many of us throw away our lives, and his money lasted him two years.  Had his life been equally at his disposal, he would have been in the hands of the pale Receiver, Death, when his oil-wells passed to other owners.  Having so precious a pearl, therefore, as this life, let us make its setting a thing of beauty.  Let us invest our moments as

THE WISE MAN,

who, instead of buying on time and paying eight per cent. interest, saves his earnings and puts them out at eight per cent. interest, thus reaping a difference of sixteen per cent., or nearly one-sixth of his yearly surplus.  Every idea put into your head is invested at interest.  Every expenditure of time which is a waste is a payment of interest, a corroding, double-acting agency of evil to your welfare.

YOU WANT TO SUCCEED IN THE WORLD,—­

of course, you do!  Look out, and do not let the thrifty men of brains lend you their ideas at that fatal eight per cent., which, in reality, means fully sixteen!  Put into the deposit-vaults of your memory the diligent results of your study.  Those you put in earliest will pay the most profit.  When you are thirty years old there will be few with heavier coffers.  You will have little need to complain of

FAVORITISM AND DISCRIMINATION

then.  On the contrary, you will, strangely enough, hear many lay that very charge against those wise old men who have been observing you and peeping into your treasure-chests when you were not on the watch.  To the man, fortunate in his youth in having been

ADVISED RIGHTLY,

who has not misspent a moment of his time, “the thought of the last bitter hour” will not “come like a blight,” and there will be no “sad images of the stern agony.”  The wise and good man, who has the unmixed reverence of the great and the humble, whose “hoary head is a crown of glory,” approaches his grave “like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”  “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me!” is the cry of a misspent life.  If you have cast away a portion of your existence, I beg of you to transfix this public notice before your companions that they may profit by your experience: 

“Lost!

“Yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes, the gift of a kind Father!”

HASTE AND WASTE.