DEAR Boy: There is nothing which I more wish that you should know, and
which fewer people do know, than the true use and value of time. It is in
everybody’s mouth; but in few people’s practice. Every fool, who
slatterns away his whole time in nothings, utters, however, some trite
commonplace sentence, of which there are millions, to prove, at once, the
value and the fleetness of time. The sun-dials, likewise all over Europe,
have some ingenious inscription to that effect; so that nobody squanders
away their time, without hearing and seeing, daily, how necessary it is
to employ it well, and how irrecoverable it is if lost. But all these
admonitions are useless, where there is not a fund of good sense and
reason to suggest them, rather than receive them. By the manner in which
you now tell me that you employ your time, I flatter myself that you have
that fund; that is the fund which will make you rich indeed. I do not,
therefore, mean to give you a critical essay upon the use and abuse of
time; but I will only give you some hints with regard to the use of one
particular period of that long time which, I hope, you have before you; I
mean, the next two years. Remember, then, that whatever knowledge you do
not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never
be the master of while you breathe. Knowledge is a comfortable and
necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not
plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old. I
neither require nor expect from you great application to books, after you
are once thrown out into the great world. I know it is impossible; and it
may even, in some cases, be improper; this, therefore, is your time, and
your only time, for unwearied and uninterrupted application. If you
should sometimes think it a little laborious, consider that labor is the
unavoidable fatigue of a necessary journey. The more hours a day you
travel, the sooner you will be at your journey’s end. The sooner you are
qualified for your liberty, the sooner you shall have it; and your
manumission will entirely depend upon the manner in which you employ the
intermediate time. I think I offer you a very good bargain, when I
promise you, upon my word, that if you will do everything that I would
have you do, till you are eighteen, I will do everything that you would
have me do ever afterward.
I knew a gentleman, who was so good a manager of his time, that he would
not even lose that small portion of it, which the calls of nature obliged
him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the
Latin poets, in those moments. He bought, for example, a common edition
of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, carried them
with him to that necessary place, read them first, and then sent them
down as a sacrifice to Cloacina: this was so much time fairly gained; and
I recommend you to follow his example. It is better than only doing what
you cannot help doing at those moments; and it will made any book, which
you shall read in that manner, very present in your mind. Books of
science, and of a grave sort, must be read with continuity; but there are
very many, and even very useful ones, which may be read with advantage by
snatches, and unconnectedly; such are all the good Latin poets, except
Virgil in his “AEneid”: and such are most of the modern poets, in which
you will find many pieces worth reading, that will not take up above
seven or eight minutes. Bayle’s, Moreri’s, and other dictionaries, are
proper books to take and shut up for the little intervals of (otherwise)
idle time, that everybody has in the course of the day, between either
their studies or their pleasures. Good night.