"ON TIME," OR THE TRIUMPH OF PROMPTNESS
"On the great clock of time there is but one word--NOW."
Note the sublime precision that leads the earth over a circuit of five
hundred millions of miles back to the solstice at the appointed moment
without the loss of one second,--no, not the millionth part of a
second,--for ages and ages of which it traveled that imperiled
road.--EDWARD EVERETT.
"Who cannot but see oftentimes how strange the threads of our destiny
run? Oft it is only for a moment the favorable instant is presented.
We miss it, and months and years are lost."
By the street of by and by one arrives at the house of
never.--CERVANTES.
"Lose this day by loitering--'t will be the same story tomorrow, and
the next more dilatory."
Let's take the instant by the forward top.--SHAKESPEARE.
"Haste, post, haste! Haste for thy life!" was frequently written upon
messages in the days of Henry VIII of England, with a picture of a
courier swinging from a gibbet. Post-offices were unknown, and letters
were carried by government messengers subject to hanging if they
delayed upon the road.
Even in the old, slow days of stage-coaches, when it took a month of
dangerous traveling to accomplish the distance we can now span in a few
hours, unnecessary delay was a crime. One of the greatest gains
civilization has made is in measuring and utilizing time. We can do as
much in an hour to-day as they could in twenty hours a hundred years
ago.
"Delays have dangerous ends." Caesar's delay to read a message cost
him his life when he reached the senate house. Colonel Rahl, the
Hessian commander at Trenton, was playing cards when a messenger
brought a letter stating that Washington was crossing the Delaware. He
put the letter in his pocket without reading it until the game was
finished, when he rallied his men only to die just before his troops
were taken prisoners. Only a few minutes' delay, but he lost honor,
liberty, life!
Success is the child of two very plain parents--punctuality and
accuracy. There are critical moments in every successful life when if
the mind hesitate or a nerve flinch all will be lost.
"Immediately on receiving your proclamation," wrote Governor Andrew of
Massachusetts to President Lincoln on May 3, 1861, "we took up the war,
and have carried on our part of it, in the spirit in which we believe
the Administration and the American people intend to act, namely, as if
there were not an inch of red tape in the world." He had received a
telegram for troops from Washington on Monday, April 15; at nine
o'clock the next Sunday he said: "All the regiments demanded from
Massachusetts are already either in Washington, or in Fortress Monroe,
or on their way to the defence of the Capitol."
"The only question which I can entertain," he said, "is what to do; and
when that question is answered, the other is, what next to do."
"The whole period of youth," said Ruskin, "is one essentially of
formation, edification, instruction. There is not an hour of it but is
trembling with destinies--not a moment of which, once passed, the
appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on
the cold iron."
Napoleon laid great stress upon that "supreme moment," that "nick of
time" which occurs in every battle, to take advantage of which means
victory, and to lose in hesitation means disaster. He said that he
beat the Austrians because they did not know the value of five minutes;
and it has been said that among the trifles that conspired to defeat
him at Waterloo, the loss of a few moments by himself and Grouchy on
the fatal morning was the most significant. Blucher was on time, and
Grouchy was late. It was enough to send Napoleon to St. Helena, and to
change the destiny of millions.
It is a well-known truism that has almost been elevated to the dignity
of a maxim, that what may be done at any time will be done at no time.
The African Association of London wanted to send Ledyard, the traveler,
to Africa, and asked when he would be ready to go. "To-morrow
morning," was the reply. John Jervis, afterwards Earl St. Vincent, was
asked when he could join his ship, and replied, "Directly." Colin
Campbell, appointed commander of the army in India, and asked when he
could set out, replied without hesitation, "To-morrow."
The energy wasted in postponing until to-morrow a duty of to-day would
often do the work. How much harder and more disagreeable, too, it is
to do work which has been put off! What would have been done at the
time with pleasure or even enthusiasm, after it has been delayed for
days and weeks, becomes drudgery. Letters can never be answered so
easily as when first received. Many large firms make it a rule never
to allow a letter to lie unanswered overnight.
Promptness takes the drudgery out of an occupation. Putting off
usually means leaving off, and going to do becomes going undone. Doing
a deed is like sowing a seed: if not done at just the right time it
will be forever out of season. The summer of eternity will not be long
enough to bring to maturity the fruit of a delayed action. If a star
or planet were delayed one second, it might throw the whole universe
out of harmony.
"There is no moment like the present," said Maria Edgeworth; "not only
so, there is no moment at all, no instant force and energy, but in the
present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are
fresh upon him can have no hopes from them afterward. They will be
dissipated, lost in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the
slough of indolence."
Cobbett said he owed his success to being "always ready" more than to
all his natural abilities combined.
"To this quality I owed my extraordinary promotion in the army," said
he. "If I had to mount guard at ten, I was ready at nine; never did
any man or anything wait one minute for me."
"How," asked a man of Sir Walter Raleigh, "do you accomplish so much,
and in so short a time?" "When I have anything to do, I go and do it,"
was the reply. The man who always acts promptly, even if he makes
occasional mistakes, will succeed when a procrastinator, even if he
have the better judgment, will fail.
When asked how he managed to accomplish so much work, and at the same
time attend to his social duties, a French statesman replied, "I do it
simply by never postponing till to-morrow what should be done to-day."
It was said of an unsuccessful public man that he used to reverse this
process, his favorite maxim being "never to do to-day what might be
postponed till to-morrow." How many men have dawdled away their
success and allowed companions and relatives to steal it away five
minutes at a time!
"To-morrow, didst thou say?" asked Cotton. "Go to--I will not hear of
it. To-morrow! 'tis a sharper who stakes his penury against thy
plenty--who takes thy ready cash and pays thee naught but wishes,
hopes, and promises, the currency of idiots. _To-morrow_! it is a
period nowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless
perchance in the fool's calendar. Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds
society with those that own it. 'Tis fancy's child, and folly is its
father; wrought of such stuffs as dreams are; and baseless as the
fantastic visions of the evening." Oh, how many a wreck on the road to
success could say: "I have spent all my life in pursuit of to-morrow,
being assured that to-morrow has some vast benefit or other in store
for me."
"But his resolutions remained unshaken," Charles Reade continues in his
story of Noah Skinner, the defaulting clerk, who had been overcome by a
sleepy languor after deciding to make restitution; "by and by, waking
up from a sort of heavy doze, he took, as it were, a last look at the
receipts, and murmured, 'My head, how heavy it feels!' But presently
he roused himself, full of his penitent resolutions, and murmured
again, brokenly, 'I'll take it to--Pembroke--Street to--morrow;
to--morrow.' The morrow found him, and so did the detectives, dead."
"To-morrow." It is the devil's motto. All history is strewn with its
brilliant victims, the wrecks of half-finished plans and unexecuted
resolutions. It is the favorite refuge of sloth and incompetency.
"Strike while the iron is hot," and "Make hay while the sun shines,"
are golden maxims.
Very few people recognize the hour when laziness begins to set in.
Some people it attacks after dinner; some after lunch; and some after
seven o'clock in the evening. There is in every person's life a
crucial hour in the day, which must be employed instead of wasted if
the day is to be saved. With most people the early morning hour
becomes the test of the day's success.
A person was once extolling the skill and courage of Mayenne in Henry's
presence. "You are right," said Henry, "he is a great captain, but I
have always five hours' start of him." Henry rose at four in the
morning, and Mayenne at about ten. This made all the difference
between them. Indecision becomes a disease and procrastination is its
forerunner. There is only one known remedy for the victims of
indecision, and that is prompt decision. Otherwise the disease is
fatal to all success or achievement. He who hesitates is lost.
A noted writer says that a bed is a bundle of paradoxes. We go to it
with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret. We make up our minds
every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning
to keep it late.
Yet most of those who have become eminent have been early risers.
Peter the Great always rose before daylight. "I am," said he, "for
making my life as long as possible, and therefore sleep as little as
possible." Alfred the Great rose before daylight. In the hours of
early morning Columbus planned his voyage to America, and Napoleon his
greatest campaigns. Copernicus was an early riser, as were most of the
famous astronomers of ancient and modern times. Bryant rose at five,
Bancroft at dawn, and nearly all our leading authors in the early
morning. Washington, Jefferson, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun were all
early risers.
Daniel Webster used often to answer twenty to thirty letters before
breakfast.
Walter Scott was a very punctual man. This was the secret of his
enormous achievements. He rose at five. By breakfast-time he had, as
he used to say, broken the neck of the day's work. Writing to a youth
who had obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this
counsel: "Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you
from not having your time fully employed--I mean what the women call
dawdling. Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of
recreation after business, never before it."
Not too much can be said about the value of the habit of rising early.
Eight hours is enough sleep for any man. Very frequently seven hours
is plenty. After the eighth hour in bed, if a man is able, it is his
business to get up, dress quickly, and go to work.
"A singular mischance has happened to some of our friends," said
Hamilton. "At the instant when He ushered them into existence, God
gave them a work to do, and He also gave them a competence of time; so
much that if they began at the right moment, and wrought with
sufficient vigor, their time and their work would end together. But a
good many years ago a strange misfortune befell them. A fragment of
their allotted time was lost. They cannot tell what became of it, but
sure enough, it has dropped out of existence; for just like two
measuring-lines laid alongside, the one an inch shorter than the other,
their work and their time run parallel, but the work is always ten
minutes in advance of the time. They are not irregular. They are
never too soon. Their letters are posted the very minute after the
mail is closed. They arrive at the wharf just in time to see the
steamboat off, they come in sight of the terminus precisely as the
station gates are closing. They do not break any engagement or neglect
any duty; but they systematically go about it too late, and usually too
late by about the same fatal interval."
Some one has said that "promptness is a contagious inspiration."
Whether it be an inspiration, or an acquirement, it is one of the
practical virtues of civilization.
There is one thing that is almost as sacred as the marriage
relation,--that is, an appointment. A man who fails to meet his
appointment, unless he has a good reason, is practically a liar, and
the world treats him as such.
"If a man has no regard for the time of other men," said Horace
Greeley, "why should he have for their money? What is the difference
between taking a man's hour and taking his five dollars? There are
many men to whom each hour of the business day is worth more than five
dollars."
When President Washington dined at four, new members of Congress
invited to dine at the White House would sometimes arrive late, and be
mortified to find the President eating. "My cook," Washington would
say, "never asks if the visitors have arrived, but if the hour has
arrived."
When his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance by saying
that his watch was too slow, Washington replied, "Then you must get a
new watch, or I another secretary."
Franklin said to a servant who was always late, but always ready with
an excuse, "I have generally found that the man who is good at an
excuse is good for nothing else."
Napoleon once invited his marshals to dine with him, but, as they did
not arrive at the moment appointed, he began to eat without them. They
came in just as he was rising from the table. "Gentlemen," said he,
"it is now past dinner, and we will immediately proceed to business."
Blücher was one of the promptest men that ever lived. He was called
"Marshal Forward."
John Quincy Adams was never known to be behind time. The Speaker of
the House of Representatives knew when to call the House to order by
seeing Mr. Adams coming to his seat. Once a member said that it was
time to begin. "No," said another, "Mr. Adams is not in his seat." It
was found that the clock was three minutes fast, and prompt to the
minute, Mr. Adams arrived.
Webster was never late at a recitation in school or college. In court,
in congress, in society, he was equally punctual. Amid the cares and
distractions of a singularly busy life, Horace Greeley managed to be on
time for every appointment. Many a trenchant paragraph for the
"Tribune" was written while the editor was waiting for men of leisure,
tardy at some meeting.
Punctuality is the soul of business, as brevity is of wit.
During the first seven years of his mercantile career, Amos Lawrence
did not permit a bill to remain unsettled over Sunday. Punctuality is
said to be the politeness of princes. Some men are always running to
catch up with their business: they are always in a hurry, and give you
the impression that they are late for a train. They lack method, and
seldom accomplish much. Every business man knows that there are
moments on which hang the destiny of years. If you arrive a few
moments late at the bank, your paper may be protested and your credit
ruined.
One of the best things about school and college life is that the bell
which strikes the hour for rising, for recitations, or for lectures,
teaches habits of promptness. Every young man should have a watch
which is a good timekeeper; one that is _nearly_ right encourages bad
habits, and is an expensive investment at any price.
"Oh, how I do appreciate a boy who is always on time!" says H. C.
Brown. "How quickly you learn to depend on him, and how soon you find
yourself intrusting him with weightier matters! The boy who has
acquired a reputation for punctuality has made the first contribution
to the capital that in after years makes his success a certainty."
Promptness is the mother of confidence and gives credit. It is the
best possible proof that our own affairs are well ordered and well
conducted, and gives others confidence in our ability. The man who is
punctual, as a rule, will keep his word, and may be depended upon.
A conductor's watch is behind time, and a terrible railway collision
occurs. A leading firm with enormous assets becomes bankrupt, simply
because an agent is tardy in transmitting available funds, as ordered.
An innocent man is hanged because the messenger bearing a reprieve
should have arrived five minutes earlier. A man is stopped five
minutes to hear a trivial story and misses a train or steamer by one
minute.
Grant decided to enlist the moment that he learned of the fall of
Sumter. When Buckner sent him a flag of truce at Fort Donelson, asking
for the appointment of commissioners to consider terms of capitulation,
he promptly replied: "No terms except an unconditional and immediate
surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your
works." Buckner replied that circumstances compelled him "to accept
the ungenerous and unchivalrous terms which you propose."
The man who, like Napoleon, can on the instant seize the most important
thing and sacrifice the others, is sure to win.
Many a wasted life dates its ruin from a lost five minutes. "Too late"
can be read between the lines on the tombstone of many a man who has
failed. A few minutes often makes all the difference between victory
and defeat, success and failure.