I would not quote Lord Chesterfield as generally a safe guide, but there is certainly much shrewd wisdom in his advice to his son with reference to time. "Every moment you now lose, is so much character and advantage lost; as, on the other hand, every moment you now employ usefully, is so much time wisely laid out, at prodigious interest." And again, "It is astonishing that any one can squander away in absolute idleness one single moment of that small portion of time which is allotted to us in the world ... Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it." "Are you in earnest? seize this very minute, What you can do, or think you can, begin it." [3] There is a Turkish proverb that the Devil tempts the Idle man, but the Idle man tempts the Devil. I remember, says Hilliard, "a satirical poem, in which the Devil is represented as fishing for men, and adapting his bait to the tastes and temperaments of his prey; but the idlers were the easiest victims, for they swallowed even the naked hook." The mind of the idler indeed preys upon itself. "The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on--and grinds itself away." [4] It is not work, but care, that kills, and it is in this sense, I suppose, that we are told to "take no thought for the morrow." To "consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" It would indeed be a mistake to suppose that lilies are idle or imprudent. On the contrary, plants are most industrious, and lilies store up in their complex bulbs a great part of the nourishment of one year to quicken the growth of the next. Care, on the other hand, they certainly know not. [5] "Hours have wings, fly up to the author of time, and carry news of our usage. All our prayers cannot entreat one of them either to return or slacken his pace. The misspents of every minute are a new record against us in heaven. Sure if we thought thus, we should dismiss them with better reports, and not suffer them to fly away empty, or laden with dangerous intelligence. How happy is it when they carry up not only the messages, but the fruits of good, and stay with the Ancient of Days to speak for us before His glorious throne!" [6] Time is often said to fly; but it is not so much the time that flies; as we that waste it, and wasted time is worse than no time at all; "I wasted time," Shakespeare makes Richard II. say, "and now doth time waste me."