I have a friend who is a very busy woman, but she reads many good books,
knows what is going on in the world, and manages to do a great deal of
very beautiful fancy-work. One day I asked her how it happened that she
accomplished so much more than some other people could, and she said,
"Oh, I look out for the odd minutes."
I have no doubt that among my readers there are girls and boys who have
so much real work to do that they have not a great deal of leisure.
Johnny finds weeding and hoeing very tiresome, and as for wood-chopping
and the running of errands, he has his full share of both. Sophy, too,
would have good times if it were not that there is always the baby to be
taken care of, the old sheets to be turned, the parlors to be dusted, or
the messages to be carried to the minister's wife.
How both John and Sophy, and ever so many other young people, dislike
kind old ladies and gentlemen, who have a way of glaring at them through
their spectacles, and observing: "Dear, me! how you grow, to be sure!
You must be quite a help to your mother by this time." Or, worse still,
they inquire about the school and the studies, and propose some problem
or other in mental arithmetic quite different from anything in the book.
Now please don't think Aunt Marjorie is that sort of an old lady, or has
any greater liking for that sort of old gentleman than you have,
children. But listen to her advice. Suppose for the next month you keep
a definite bit of work on hand just for odd times. Let it be a volume of
history, and read it in the nows and thens when you are waiting for
father to finish a note; let it be a piece of embroidery or
crochet-work, and take it up when there is time for only a few stitches
at once. At the end of the month you will be surprised to see how much
you have gained by using these odd minutes.