Few men need complain of the want of time, if they are not conscious of
a want of power, or of desire to ennoble and enjoy it. Perhaps you are a
man of genius yourself, gentle reader, and though not absolutely, like
Sir Walter, a witch, warlock, or wizard, still a poet--a maker--a
creator. Think, then, how many hours on hours you have lost, lying
asleep so profoundly,
"That the cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more could rouse you from your lazy bed."
How many more have you, not absolutely lost, but to a certain extent
abused, at breakfast--sip, sipping away at unnecessary cups of sirupy
tea, or gob, gobbling away at jam-buttered rolls, for which nature never
called--or "to party giving up what was meant for mankind"--forgetting
the loss of Time in the Times, and, after a long, blank, brown, and blue
study, leaving behind you a most miserable chronicle indeed! Then
think--O think--on all your aimless forenoon saunterings--round and
round about the premises--up and down the avenue--then into the garden
on tiptoe--in and out among the neat squares of onion-beds--now humming
a tune by the brink of abysses of mould, like trenches dug for the slain
in the field of battle, where the tender celery is laid--now down to the
river-side to try a little angling, though you well know there is
nothing to be had but Pars--now into a field of turnips, without your
double-barreled Joe Manton, (at Mr. Wilkinson's to be repaired,) to see
Ponto point a place where once a partridge had pruned himself--now home
again, at the waving of John's red sleeve, to receive a coach-full of
country cousins, come in the capacity of forenoon callers--endless
talkers all--sharp and blunt noses alike--and grinning voraciously in
hopes of a lunch--now away to dress for dinner, which will not be for
two long, long hours to come--now dozing, or daized on the drawing-room
sofa, wondering if the bell is ever to be rung--now grimly gazing on a
bit of bloody beef which your impatience has forced the blaspheming cook
to draw from the spit ere the outer folds of fat were well melted at the
fire--now, after a disappointed dinner, discovering that the old port is
corked, and the filberts all pluffing with bitter snuff, except such as
enclose a worm--now an unwholesome sleep of interrupted snores, your
bobbing head ever and anon smiting your breast-bone--now burnt-beans
palmed off on the family for Turkish coffee--now a game at cards, with a
dead partner, and the ace of spades missing--now no supper--you have no
appetite for supper--and now into bed tumbles the son of Genius,
complaining to the moon of the shortness of human life, and the
fleetness of time!
_Blackwood's Magazine_.
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