The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1885-11-06
/" NO TIME"
A Miserable Plea Given as an Excuse for
Dereliction of Duty.

|
A Miserable Plea Given as an Excuse fol
/ Dereliction of Duty.
Many devices have been put forth to
economic time, to ward off old age
and to avert an early DEATH There is
a peculiar contradiction involved in the
conduct of certain persons who com
plain Of the breyity Of life; who excuse
their sins of omission by the trans
parent plea that they have mo time, y
and yet who are continually devising
means ito kill time,'' and bridge the
hours that intervene between their bust
ness engagements. Red jacket. poor
Indian chief, ''made a wiser reply than
any philosopher" says Emerson, when,
in reproying some one who complained
that he had not time enough, he said:
/ '.Well, | suppose you have all there
is. 1t is with time as it is with wealth.
Men of means, who buy gold plate,
costly equipages, contribute to cam
/ paign funds, pay their club dues and
give fetes and banquets, have certainly
no money for furthering any active
1 philanthropic work. So the indolent
/ person. as well as the Woodworking
industrious laborer, appropriates his
time to certain ends which yield him
more or less profit as he values the uses
of time and the rewards which are con-
tingent upon his labors, before he has
fairly considered the value of time and
| its utility.
Men speak Of time as if it were an
article of little value, save as means
of prolonging life and enabling them
to buy and sell at a profit. When the
shopkeeper counts his cash, puts up
the shutters, blows out the lights and
turns the key in his shop door, does he
open the door of his thinEtnq-shop and
retire his mind from his business, or
does he foot up imaginary columns of
figures, and wait on spectral customers
with few snatches of sleep at inter-
walls, until he opens his day-books in
the morningP What a weary routine
where there are no books nor compan-
ionship, no music, pictures, nor inno-
cent diversion, no rest for the mind, no
/ serious thought, no desire to know the
real meaning of life, because one has
no time! In tie impatient desire to
I get rich men are cheated by time out
of their just reckonings. They waste
SO much time in amassing wealth that
they have no time left for enjoying it..
Their early habits teach them false sys-
TENS OF computing time, and in after
years they gaze in blind and stupid
amazement at their calendars. Old age
comes before they have suffered any
loss of vitality in their dull, calculating
brain, and Yields them no resources for
enjoying their latter days. They lack
the ingenuity to kill time. Having
neglected, when the mind was young,
to improve the spare hours, aid having
made even these an excuse for money
getting, they can not draw as it were
on early deposits, so die like Midas in
the midst of their wealth.
| Thackeray, while in this country, re-
! marked one evening to friend of the
writer that he had met great many
men and women in the United States.
but no children. Incredible as 1t NAV
seem, this terrible evil of money getting
takes possession of the minds of the
young before they know anything of
the value of time or of money. Thew
mature in the ways OF the world and
catch the feverish spirit of the times be-
fore they have attained their stature
1.-The great lesson of life, as exemplifed
on every hand, is money-making. They
are hidden to emulate the men who
have risen from obscurity to be n1er-
chant princes and money kings. Boys
are sent to preparatory schools with
this sole end in view; they obtain sham
fits are rushed through college, are
drawn or driven into business, and
thence follow in the footsteps of their
fathers, all of whom are practical men,
and wish their sons to be practical men
after them. In the hurry and worry of
business and professional life they sell
dom learn the uses of time and it's
value. '.How little leisure can con-
tent myself withP'' is asked self-inter-
negatively. What real, practical in
terest have | in affairs that do not per-
tain directly or indirectly to my bust
| nessP What are you reading now
adays?" we will ask a business man.
'Reading! Bless you, l never get
time for reading. Haven't read a book
in years. No leisure in the daytime;
| when night comes ON am tired and
sleepy. It's all can do to skim the
newspapers. Life is too short to devote
much time to books"
g No timer "a shameful and a sor-
| rowful excuse for men who have time
for making money. Bunyan was a
poor travelling tinker; what time had
he for readingp What time had Bur-
rift, the blacksmith? What time had
a now venerable editor and successful
man of affairs, who, when a boy, did
his reading at night by the light of a
pine knot while feeding the sap kettle
OF sugar manufactoryp Ignorance
IS not the result of no time, but of
misspent time. 1t would be as absurd
to say that a laborer has no time for
eating his dinner as TO claim that a
man of whatsoever occupation has no
time for. reading.
The plea of '.no time" is a n1iser-
able, shuffiing plea when given as an
excuse for the dereliction of duty. #
we do not take time now it may be too
late, for soon time will merge into
eternity. 1t is doubtful, too, whether
we lengthen life by living fast, and
crowding as many incidents and events
into the day as the day will hold; for
it is impossible TO interfere with the
laws of nature and set back her clock,
as we regulate the hands of our own
timepieces. They live the longest who
make the best use of time; and when
good deeds are made the links of the
chain which constitutes mans tenure
or tie to the things of this life, he is
happier and more secure than the man
OF the world, whose life is "a series of
broken links or a rope of sand
Christian al Work
Rev Samuel Jones, Of Georgia, is