pany, music, and sunshine in the cottage of Content: for a contented mind is a continual feast. Content is an easy spring-carriage which bears one comfortably over the roughest road; discontent is a bare-boned steed without a saddle. Gratitude, Good Temper, and Peace of Mind are the fair children of Content; but evil-eyed Envy, harsh-voiced Anger, carking Care, and haggard Wretchedness are Discontent's unlovely offspring. Discontent is no friend of Piety, but Contentment holds companionship with Faith, Hope, and Charity, and is inseparably associated with true Christianity. And now, as I like a verse for a tailpiece, let us hear Joshua Sylvester, who wrote thus about "A Contented Mind" nearly three hundred years ago :— "I weigh not Fortune's frown or smile, "I see ambition never pleas'd, I see some Tantals starv'd in store; I see e'en Midas gape for more. I neither want, nor yet abound: Enough's a feast; content is crown'd. I feign not friendships where I hate, I fawn not on the great in show, I prize, I praise a mean estate, Neither too lofty nor too low ! This, this is all my choice, my cheer, A mind content, a conscience clear." IT such, for they dwell everywhere. But there is this consolation that, though I cannot speak to all the tribe of dilly-dalliers, there will be a pretty good proportion of them among those whom my words can reach. Talk of castles in the air, chateaux-en-Espagne, and the rest, the fact is there are hosts of people who do worse than live amid aerial nothings, they never live at all. They are always going to live; always going-going, -till they are gone! They know no present tense, life is all to-morrows with them. "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, With such, life is one long anticipation and resolve, till suddenly their career is closed, and no time is left for action and fulfilment. Much of the unhappiness and ill-success many experience in life is the result of this habit of delay. The languid idler sees the day go by before he has decided how he shall use it. Lets opportunity slip and the advantage pass into other men's hands. Fails to take the tide at the flood, and so "All the voyage of his life Is bound in shallows, and in miseries." The The active man's life is a history, the procrastinator's an unfulfilled prophecy. dilatory life is an empty dream, a plan never wrought into solid stone but only looking pretty on paper; it has no pleasures of memory and no confidence of hope. And these people not only injure and distress themselves, but they annoy and trouble others. They are the obstructors of the active and systematic. Their delay causes the break in the machinery, the defeat of plans, and loss and vexation to many. We are so connected and associated in life, that we all suffer or benefit by our relation to others. Every link in the chain feels the tension or slackness. Every atom of water in a pool is displaced by the addition or removal of a single drop. One man keeps another waiting for him, another is hindered by the detention of the second, and a fourth by the delay of the third, and so on through all the connection. A man who keeps others idle by his delay is the waster of their time. as well as his own. Idleness generally consoles itself by great activity of intention, but is idle still. Procrastination s the offspring of Idleness, for Indolence would die of sheer ennui, if it did not occupy itself with busy resolves as to what is to be done. But alas! "the street of By-and-bye leads to the house of Never." Indolence is the rust of genius, the Delilah who denudes Samsons of their strength, the subtle thief who despoils the intellectually wealthy. Poverty treads on the heels of procrastination, and indigence is begotten of Idleness. The true livery of sloth is rags, this is the real motley of fools. How many wear it, and how many deserve to be so arrayed! Procrastination grows by indulgence. It becomes a moral paralysis, crippling and chaining all the faculties of the man. It is perilous and often fatal to worldly success, |