How very much do they err who consider the absence of order and method as supplying greater liberty or removing a sense of restraint. Such freedom is galling to me; and in my eyes, the want of punctuality is a want of honest principle; for however people may think themselves authorized to rob God and themselves of their own time, they can plead no right to lay a violent hand on the time and duties of their neighbor. I say it deliberately, that I have been defrauded of hundreds of pounds, and cruelly deprived of my necessary refreshment in exercise, in sleep, and even in seasonable food, through this disgraceful want of punctuality in others, more than through any cause whatsoever besides. It is also very irritating; for a person who would cheerfully bestow a piece of gold, does not like to be swindled out of a piece of copper; and of many an hour have I been ungenerously wronged, to the excitement of feelings in themselves far from right, when I would gladly have so arranged my work as to bestow upon the robbers thrice the time they made me wantonly sacrifice. To say, "I will come to you on such a day," leaving the person to expect you early, and then, after wasting her day in that uncomfortable, unsettled state of looking out for a guest, which precludes all application to present duties, to come late in the evening--or to accept an invitation to dinner, and either break the engagement or throw the household into confusion by making it wait--to appoint a meeting, and fail of keeping your time--all these, and many other effects of this vile habit are exceedingly disgraceful, and wholly opposed to the scriptural rules laid down for the governance of our conduct one to another. I say nothing of the insult put upon the Most High, the daring presumption of breaking in upon the devotions of his worshippers, and involving them in the sin of abstractedness from the solemn work before them, by entering late into the house of prayer. Such persons may one day find they have a more serious account to render on the score of their contempt of punctuality, than they seem willing to believe.