Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1876 — Killing Time. [ARTICLE]

Killing Time.

If there is any occupation under the sun from which every right-minded man and woman should pray to be delivered, i it is that of “ killing time.” : We have seen people engaged in it, and we always pity them immensely. Just think of it! To get up in the morning, with no definite employment for the day! To eat breakfast, and be as long as possible in doing it, so that din* ner may come the sooner. To eat dinner with the same end in view, that supper may not be too far off. Meanwhile,, nothing to occupy the mind or the hands; he only idea present being the desire to pass the time, somehow. Why, i* is enough to make a well man sick, and to drive a rational man crazy. The idea of killing time when the world is full of work, and not half hands enough to do it. Killing time when men and women are suffering for the help these idle hands might render them; and innocent children axe being sent to the almshouses for the very bread these lazy drones might earn for tlienaKilling time, when there are forests to be leveled, cities to be built, deserts to be made to blossom like the rose, and whole nations of human beings yet to be Christianized, and taught that the first duty of man to-man is to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Fie, young man! for shame! take oft your kid glovesy lay aside your diamonds,, and consign, your eye-glasses to their ease, and go to work. Don’t complain to us of weak stomachs, and trembling nerves, and. flaccid muscles, you who have no more ennobling life-work on hand than killing time. The man. who follows a legitimate business never has any time to kill. He has not time enough. He has to calculate in. order to make his allowance of time and the demand which labor makes upon it.. And he will live longer and happier than, the idler who works hard to get rid of the time allotted him, and the world wjjl feel his loss ten. times as much, for “ it is better to wear out than to rust out.’* Young women whose cheeks are pallid, and whose lips have lost their bloom,, leave this wretched occupation of killing time, and go to work. Hunt up the motherless and desolatechildren around you, and teach them to read and. write, and make them some frocks and petticoats to keep, the cold winds of winter from thei? shivering forms. Help the poor widow woman across the way with the garments of that flock of boys of hers; for who knows but somewhere among them there may be found the future President of these United States ? Nothing more likely. And then, if such an event should come to pass, just think how proud you will be to say to your grand-children on Inauguration Day, “ Well, I made him a pair of trousers once.” Do anything honorable rather than kill time. Time! the most priceless of all oar treasures. Time, which is slipping away from us so last that in a little while it will have passed forever, and eternity will have begun. Think of England’s unhappy Queen, who on her death-bed cried in despair-. “ My kingdom for a moment of time.” —KaU Thorn, inN. Y. Weekly.