The Golden Censer | Page 7

thou satst while all
around thee smiled; So live that, sinking in thy last long sleep, Calm
thou mayst smile while all around thee weep."

THE FLIGHT OF TIME.
Age steals Upon us like a snowstorm in the night: How drear life's
landscape now!--Henry Guy Carleton.
Whose hand, Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away Richer than all

his tribe.--Shakspeare.
We are intrusted with a few short years, and yet with more than we
deserve. It is our misfortune to value those fleeting moments only when
our stock of them is in danger of utter exhaustion. When the bright,
beautiful days have vanished, and we find that, like the base Judean's
pearl, those days were richer than all our tribe--our Vanderbilts, our
Stanfords, and our Goulds--then we turn, in human kindness, to our
younger associates, and sound our warning in their ears. According as
our earnestness impresses them, they listen or they hearken not. A
golden thought which the young should learn by heart, would run thus:
_However highly I have valued this day, I have "sold it on a rising
market," and too cheaply. It would grow in value as I looked back upon
it, even if I were to live to my eightieth year_. This may not seem true
to you, who wish for Saturday night, that you may receive your
salary,--or to you, who long for Sunday, that you may gaze into a pair
of eyes that have deep beauties for you--but when your mother in your
babyhood, said a certain letter was "A,"
YOU HAD TO ACCEPT THE STATEMENT
without reservation, or you would not now be able to exercise the
grandest of human faculties--to read, to glean the thoughts of the ages,
and to receive, without toiling through the rugged regions of experience,
the impressions and the inspirations which have come to man through
all his labors and his pains. Sir William Hamilton has well said that
implicit belief is at the foundation of all human happiness--the
knowledge of the mind, as well as the certainty of the future life.
The mind is rarely broad enough in youth to survey the field of life
with an impartial view. "The years creep slowly by, Lorena," was
written in the true youthful, spendthrift spirit.
"COAL-OIL JOHNNY"
was left, as he supposed, inexhaustible riches. He threw away his
money as many of us throw away our lives, and his money lasted him
two years. Had his life been equally at his disposal, he would have been

in the hands of the pale Receiver, Death, when his oil-wells passed to
other owners. Having so precious a pearl, therefore, as this life, let us
make its setting a thing of beauty. Let us invest our moments as
THE WISE MAN,
who, instead of buying on time and paying eight per cent. interest,
saves his earnings and puts them out at eight per cent. interest, thus
reaping a difference of sixteen per cent., or nearly one-sixth of his
yearly surplus. Every idea put into your head is invested at interest.
Every expenditure of time which is a waste is a payment of interest, a
corroding, double-acting agency of evil to your welfare.
YOU WANT TO SUCCEED IN THE WORLD,--
of course, you do! Look out, and do not let the thrifty men of brains
lend you their ideas at that fatal eight per cent., which, in reality, means
fully sixteen! Put into the deposit-vaults of your memory the diligent
results of your study. Those you put in earliest will pay the most profit.
When you are thirty years old there will be few with heavier coffers.
You will have little need to complain of
FAVORITISM AND DISCRIMINATION
then. On the contrary, you will, strangely enough, hear many lay that
very charge against those wise old men who have been observing you
and peeping into your treasure-chests when you were not on the watch.
To the man, fortunate in his youth in having been
ADVISED RIGHTLY,
who has not misspent a moment of his time, "the thought of the last
bitter hour" will not "come like a blight," and there will be no "sad
images of the stern agony." The wise and good man, who has the
unmixed reverence of the great and the humble, whose "hoary head is a
crown of glory," approaches his grave "like one who wraps the drapery
of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." "I wasted
time, and now doth time waste me!" is the cry of a misspent life. If you

have cast away a portion of your existence, I beg of you to transfix this
public notice before your companions that they may profit by your
experience:
"LOST!
"Yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours,
each set with sixty diamond