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Show PUNCTUALITY- Some one defines punctuality to be "fifteen minutes before the time. At any rate, it is not one minute after the time. I must tell you an anecdote of the first marquis of Abercorn: He invited a number of friends to dinner. The hour for dinner was five, and all those invited knew it, of course. Well, the hour arrived and but one of the guests had come. Down sat the marquis and this one guest to the table. The marquis was punctual, if only one of the others was. By and by another guest dropped in, and was very much mortified to find dinner being eaten. And one by one the rest came, and were likewise mortified. But the marquis had taught them all a good lesson, and I venture to say that the next time they were invited none of them got in to the coffee only, but were on hand for soup. General Washington was so very punctual that on one occasion, some friends who were expecting him at a certain hour on finding that he had not arrived, all concluded that their watches must have got wrong; and sure enough they had, for Washington soon came, and was not a minute late. No doubt his habits of punctuality helped to make him the great man that he was. I know a clergy man who once threw himself into the Mississipi [Mississippi]river and swam eighteen miles down stream to keep an appointment for afternoon services. I traveled through the upper Mississipi [Mississippi] region shortly after, and for hundreds of miles from the place where he lived, out toward the border, I heard of his great feat. The border men respected such a man, and called him "the minister who made the big swim." Nor is any one too young to begin the cultivation of punctuality. The boy who is on time at school, on time in class, on time when sent on an errand and so on, is apt to be the punctual business or professional man. The habit of promptness is likely to cling all through life. Some persons, on the contrary, go all through life in a slip-shod, down-at-the heel way, and never prosper. They get to a wedding as people are coming off. They are late at church; don't meet their notes, go to protest, and are in trouble generally. Washington's way was the best. The Marquis of Abercorn was in the right. That Mississippi clergyman did nobly. And these three are good examples for our boys and girls to follow. Never be behind time, and if you can, be a little ahead of it, and you will never repent of the habit of punctuality. -Golden Days |