In Howell's "Old Sayed Sawes" it is given as "All time's no time when time's past." Hence we are warned to take Time by the forelock. Life is a loan to man, and, while we complain that our days are few, we act practically as though there could come no end to them. "The shortest day is too long to waste," therefore "Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." The French say: "Il n'est si grand jour qui ne vienne à vespre." So that it becomes us well, in the words of a fifteenth century poem, to "Thinke on the end or thou begyn, And thou schalt never be thral to syn."[136:A] The Italians very graphically and poetically say: "La notte è la madre di pensieri"--night is the mother of thoughts, a quiet resting time, a pause in life when we can honestly take stock of ourselves.[136:B] Death hath its special proverbs and warning saws: thus one warns the young and careless that "The churchyard graves are of all sizes," while another dwells on its inevitableness, declaring that "Death is deaf and takes no denial," and that all, fit or unfit, must face the fact, for "Death is the only master who takes his servants without a character." The Romans had the proverb, "Finis coronat opus," and an English proverb hath it: "'Tis not the fight that crowns us, but the end." The Italians say: "A ogni cosa è remedio fuora qu'alla morte"--there is a remedy for everything save death; but "Men must endure their going hence, even as in their coming hither; ripeness is all," and what death has of terror is what the life has made to be terrible. A well-known proverb will be recalled as to the folly of waiting to step into dead men's shoes. Thomas Fuller, in his essay on "Marriage," very happily says: "They that marry ancient people, merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves, in hope that one will come and cut the halter"--a sufficiently painful position. Though it seem impossible that the place of some great philanthropist or statesman could ever, on his removal, be adequately filled up, we soon learn that no one is really indispensable. The torch is handed on: "God buries his workman, but carries on his work." The trials of life are many, and their lessons have their place in the proverbial wisdom of our forefathers, and we learn thereby how best to face them, and to see in them not evil but good. "The worse the passage the more welcome the port," and "Bitter to endure may be sweet to remember." How excellent, too, the advice: "Make a crutch of your cross"--no longer a thing to harass but to support and help. It is well, too, to remember that, in any real and high sense, "'Tis not the suffering but the cause that makes the martyr."[137:A]