Making the most of one's
time is the first of these habits; utilising the spare hours, the
unemployed minutes, no less than those longer periods which the more
fortunate enjoy. To "take time by the forelock" in this way, however,
one must have his book at hand when the precious minute arrives. There
must be no fumbling for the right volume; no waste of time because one
is uncertain what to take up next. The waste of opportunity which
leaves so many people intellectually barren who ought to be
intellectually rich, is due to neglect to decide in advance what
direction one's reading shall take, and neglect to keep the book of
the moment close at hand. The biographer of Lucy Larcom tells us that
the aspiring girl pinned all manner of selections of prose and verse
which she wished to learn at the sides of the window beside which her
loom was placed; and in this way, in the intervals of work, she
familiarised herself with a great deal of good literature. A certain
man, now widely known, spent his boyhood on a farm, and largely
educated himself. He learned the rudiments of Latin in the evening,
and carried on his study during working hours by pinning ten lines
from Virgil on his plough,--a method of refreshment much superior to
that which Homer furnished the ploughman in the well-known passage in
the description of the shield.
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