The Golden Censer | Page 8

minutes, the gift of a kind Father!"
HASTE AND WASTE.
The value of Time should never be so foolishly conceived as to urge a
man or a woman to that hurry which shows a thing to be too big for
him who undertakes it. God makes Time. Can you, then, add to it?
"Stay a while to make an end the sooner." You do not gain an hour by
robbing yourself of your sleep. You do not gain in force by enlarging
the wheel that carries your belting. If your constitution require eight
hours' sleep, then go to your bed at ten o'clock and rise like "the sun
rejoicing in the east," fresh-nerved and forceful, apt to carry all before
you. Do not encourage those tempters who come to you asking you to
break into the storehouse of your vitality and rob yourself of two, three,
and often four hours of your rest, leaving you, in the bankruptcy of
after-life a trembling alarmist, subject to the replevins of rheumatic
muscles and the reprisals of revengeful nerves. Remember that age
comes upon us like a snowstorm in the night, and that the mill will
never grind with the water that has passed. Time is the stern corrector
of fools; "Wisdom walks before it, Opportunity with it, and
Temperance behind it. He that has made it his friend will have little to
fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little
to hope from his friends."
[Illustration]

HOME.
'Tis sweet to hear the honest watchdog's bark Bay deep-mouthed
welcome as we draw near home; 'Tis sweet to know that there is an eye

will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we come.--Byron.
An elegant sufficiency, content, Retirement, rural, quiet, friendship,
books, Ease and alternate labor, useful life, Progressive virtue, and
approving Heaven.--Thomson.
'Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam, Be it ever so humble,
there's no place like home. --J.H. Payne, in the Opera of "Clari."

No word in the English language approaches in sweetness the sound of
this group of letters. Out of this grand syllable rush memories and
emotions always chaste, and always noble. The murderer in his cell, his
heart black with crime, hears this word, and his crimes have not yet
been committed; his heart is yet pure and free; in his mind he kneels at
his mother's side and lisps his prayers to God that he, by a life of
dignity and honor, may gladden that mother's heart; and then he weeps,
and for a while is not a murderer. The Judge upon his bench deals out
the dreaded justice to the scourged, and has no look of gentleness. But
breathe this word into his ear, his thoughts fly to his fireside; his heart
relents; he is no longer Justice, but weak and tender Mercy.
What makes that small, unopened missive so precious to that great
rough man? Why, 'tis from Home--from Home, that spot to which his
heart is tied with unseen cords and tendrils tighter than the muscles
which hold it in his swelling chest. Perhaps he left his Home caring
little for it at the time. Perhaps harsh necessity drove him from its
tender roof to lie beneath
THE THATCH OF AVARICE.
It does not matter. As the great river broadens in the Spring, so do his
feelings swell and overflow his nature now. Why does he tremble,--that
rough, weather-beaten man? Because there is but one place on the great
earth where "an eye will mark his coming and grow brighter." If that
beacon still burns for him, he can continue his voyage. If it has gone
out, if anything has happened to it, his way is dark; nothing but the

abiding hand of the Great Father can steady his helm and hold him to
his desolate course.
[Illustration: CHILDHOOD.
"Childhood is the bough where slumbered Birds and blossoms
many-numbered; Age, that bough with snows encumbered."]
The man who wandered "mid pleasures and palaces," had no Home,
and when he died he died on the bleak shores of Northern Africa, and
was buried where he died, at the city of Tunis, where he held the office
of United States Consul. "To Adam," says Bishop Hare, "Paradise was
Home. To the good among his descendants,
HOME IS PARADISE."
"Are you not surprised," writes Dr. James Hamilton, "to find how
independent of money peace of conscience is, and how much happiness
can be condensed in the humblest home? A cottage will not hold the
bulky furniture and sumptuous accommodations of a mansion; but if
love be there, a cottage will hold as much happiness as might stock a
palace." "To be happy at home," writes Dr. Johnson in the Rambler, "is
the ultimate result of all ambition, the