It is not wealth of time, but what Mr. Gladstone has aptly called
"thrift of time," which brings ripeness of mind within reach of the
great mass of men and women. The man who has learned the value of five
minutes has gone a long way toward making himself a master of life and
its arts. "The thrift of time," says the English statesman, "will
repay in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine
dreams, and waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual
and moral stature beyond your darkest reckoning." And Matthew Arnold
has put the same truth into words which touch the subject in hand
still more closely: "The plea that this or that man has no time for
culture will vanish as soon as we desire culture so much that we begin
to examine seriously into our present use of time." It is no
exaggeration to say that the mass of men give to unplanned and
desultory reading of books and newspapers an amount of time which, if
intelligently and thoughtfully given to the best books, would secure,
in the long run, the best fruits of culture.
There is no magic about this process of enriching one's self by
absorbing the best books; it is simply a matter of sound habits
patiently formed and persistently kept up.
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