Connecticut western news., 1905-01-12

Look Out For the Half Hours.
 Young man, be careful about the few moments which you have been wasting each day Guard those extra few mo- ments for intelligent study. Look out for that wasted half hour during the midday meal. Look out for the time you have been accustomed to spend every morning and evening ill the street car on your way to business looking idly around or trying to pass it away in reading the advertisements or the sporting columns in the daily newspapers. Look out for that half hour which you fool away in your room before you turn in for the night. A gigantic work of intellectual growth can be done if only the few wasted mo- mentS of each day are gathered up for close application to books. One day Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, was talking to Dionysius, the son of Dionysius, the great general of Syracuse. He said to the son: II do not believe your father could have ever written the odes and tragedies attrib- uLCd lO pNh AlI lll3 hlo bdoJ AiiAAtiAJ life" My father" the son replied, wrote those masterpieces during the time you and 1 have wasted at our tables in feasting." Young man, better improve your stray moments as did Dionysius the Great than fritter them away as most folks are doing, with their lips pressed against the chalice of T, in life's journey to making yourself better and truer than to drop them into uselessness, as we lost our Thursday in the smooth waters of the Pacific in our journey around the world.
 But, though many minutes, which in the aggregate amount to many days, are lost to the service of Christ on ac- count of our own follies, how many are lost to Christ by reason of people who seem to have nothing to do them selves and who seem to be possessed with the idea that we have nothing to do? Alas, how many mornings there have been when we arose with clear minds and hearts anxious for study! These thoughts, like a great flock of flying doves, seemed ready to roost on our study desk. Then ideas came not as solitary scouts, but marshaied in great armies, ready to wheel in line to attack at our command. Then horror seemed to palsy our fingers. The door bell rang. In came a threatening no- mad ready to encamp upon our prem i5es for the next two hours. Though "squatter," he came notsempty hand ed. He had piled upon his back all the gossip and the small talk" of the neighborhood. He had great caravans halted in your front yard, with all the scandals and the besoiled regulations of the homes he had been lately poster ing. And he talks and he talks until he drives away all our ideas and all our desire for work and all our ambi- ton, and he leaves in his wake a wrecked day.
 ssDestroyers of Time"
 How many errands of mercy and pressing duties in the home have been ruined in the busy housewife's life by prolonged visit of one ofsthese "daugh- ters of tniQuity" called the 'destroyers of timer They criticise your husbands and your children. They find fault with the arrangements of your homes. They find fault with your dressmakers, and they try to steal your cooks. They find fault with everything, yet they stay on. 4hey gre respectable thieves of your time, who cannot be landed in jail, but they are bigger nuisance to you than if they stole the meat out of your ice chest or the bread and cake from your cupboards. An, these destroyers of time! How many precious moments, which in the aggregate have amounted to precious days of work, have been lost for us in the journey of life, with it's vital opportunities, through their unwelcome visits! Well wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes in reference to such as these:
 Shun such as lounge through afternoons
 and eyes
 And on thy dial write, Beware of
 thieves"
 Felon of minutes, never, taught to feel The worth of treasures which thy fingers
 steal
 Pick my left pocket of it's silver dime, But spare the right-it holds my golden
 time.
 God says: Work, work, work! Work, for the night cometh when no man can work" That means we must fight against those who would waste our precious moments as well as against our own slothful natures, and of all warnings for busy men I think this one of the most important. Where there is one busy man who would voluntarily waste his time there are ten lazy fel- lows who are ready to waste 1t for him. Look out that these despised ''nomads" may not ruin any more of your days of usefulness.
 In heather mythology there lived god by the name of Baldur. His moth CT, Frigga, wanted to make him immor- trees, from fire and water and all met als and reptiles and birds and poisons, an oath that they never would kill him. These all gave willing oath. Then the gods, believing that Baldur was immor- tai, began to strike him with swords, spears, battleaxes and darts, but they harmed him not. At last one of the gods picked up a piece of mistletoe. He threw 1t at Baldur. The little twig pierced the skin and the heart and Bal dur dropped corpse. Many of these visits of the "destroyers of time'' may seem to be harmless. But are they2 Like the despised mistletoe of heather mythology, they may be fatal for whole days, whole months and years, that should have been used in service of the Master.
 Time Belongs to God.
 Would God we might one and all fight relentlessly against these de stroyers of time." You cannot afford to give away what is not your own. Your time belongs not to you, but to another "Go with me to a concert this after noon," said one salesman to another who was employed in a large ware house. "I cannot go this afternoon"