EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.

Original.

BY THE EDITOR.

THAT "time is knowledge" is equally as true, and equally as deserving of immortal perpetuity as the adage, so long current, that "time is money." If economists can, by acting always upon the belief that the latter saying is a perfect and reliable truism, accumulate, in the transaction of business, immense affluence, so can the student, under the actuating impulses of the former, amass an almost boundless treasure of pure intellectual wealth, and lay it up in the mental store-house, as perfectly at his command, and as ready for use, when he wills it, or when any emergency calls for it, as is the gold of the millionaire's coffers.

We are not dealing in mere assertions, incapable of proof. That "time is knowledge," can, by a few plain and simple arithmetical calculations, be demonstrated to the satisfaction of every one.

In the lives of a vast majority of the human race, there are many leisure hours, which are spent to no practical or useful purpose hours, in which neither mind nor physical energy is employed — hours suffered to pass away unnoticed, in a sort of dreaming, listless, half-waking reverie, entirely unproductive of anything valuable.

Now, were those squandered hours properly redeemed from waste, what beneficial consequences would be the result? For the sake of demonstrating the entire truthfulness of the proposition, that "time is knowledge," suppose, for instance, that, in the life of most persons, there is an average waste, in unproductive reverie, of at least one hour each day, which is, doubtless, a low estimate; and suppose, too, that this hour were redeemed from total loss by the attainment of only one single, new, clear, and important idea, the aggregate amount of knowledge accumulated in a year, even upon the basis of this limited supposition, would be three hundred and sixty-five new, clear, and important ideas, and in forty years, fourteeen thousand six hundred-really, of itself, quite a princely intellectual fortune.

By the prudent and active use of the supposed hour, however, minds of common calibre could accumulate and treasure up, at least, four distinct, well-digested ideas, being one for every fifteen minutes, which would amount to one thousand four hundred and sixty in a year, or fifty-eight thousand and six hundred in forty years. So the man who employed that hour, which would otherwise be wasted in useless reverie, in the accumulation of but four ideas, would, at that ratio, acquire a much greater fund of useful and practical knowledge in forty years, than do many sluggish, dreaming minds, in the same period, although they profess to devote their whole time to mental application, and yet he could, during all the balance of his life, be engaged in some active business of a mechanical, agricultural, or mercantile character, and accumulate a fortune, perhaps, in addition to his intellectual treasures.

Thus have we, by a few plain illustrations, attempted to demonstrate the value of time in the acquisition of knowledge as well as wealth. The subject is truly worthy of the attentive consideration of youth, and if extensive intellectual acquirements be of any benefit, it can be seen, in the light of those illustrations, how easily and surely they can be obtained by acting steadily upon the belief, that "time is knowledge."

THE only things in which we can be said to have any property, are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken from us by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot that we shall nothing with us when we die, neither that we say, carry shall go naked out of the world. Our actions must clothe us with an immortality, loathsome or glorious; these are the only title-deeds of which we cannot be disinherited; they will have their full weight in the balance of eternity, when everything else is as nothing; and their value will be confirmed and established by those two sure and sateless destroyers of all other things,-Time and Death.

The old man gazed at the bolted door,

And muttered to himself,

For he thought of his heaps of shining ore,
And all his ill-got pelf

In the good strong chests that, side by side,
Stood locked on his cellar shelf.

Then paler and paler waxed his cheek,
For the storm-wind fiercer grew,

And the raven with a dismal shriek

Against the window flew,

And the lightning through the pitch-black night, The glare of a demon threw.

And the gloomy thunder moaned on high,

As the huge clouds, dark with rain,
Like an army of ragged fiends, swept by
From the wind-tossed ocean main ;
Slowly and solemn, and black as death,
'Mid the roar of the hurricane.

Long years passed over that lonely house,
But the foot of man no more

Was heard by the small, gray garret mouse,
That gnawed on the shattered floor,

Till a wild, grim-visaged outlaw came

And unbolted that oaken door.

But he rushed from the room with cheeks as white

As the cheeks of dead men are ;

Ah me!-such a sad and woeful sight

That strong-nerved man saw there!

"Twould have curdled the blood in his flinty heart,

Had it been like the heart of a bear!

For his arms had clasped a skeleton cold,
That sat in the solemn gloom
Beside a coffer of precious gold,
In that dark and lonely room,
And this is all that ever was known
Of the gray-haired miser's doom.

THE REPRIMAND.

Original.

MRS. DOMBEY was a proud and aristocratic old lady, who regarded wealth as the very summum bonum of all human attainments, and estimated, as too many do, the value of a person's character by the amount of property he might be worth.

Mr. Dombey, her husband, was a millionaire, and the gold of his well-filled coffers was the idol she worshiped, and upon which, night and day, her thoughts were chiefly concentered.

It is not at all to be wondered at, then, that she should endeavor to inspire her offspring with the same unlimited devotion to this yellow god of the miser's adoration which inspired herself; that she should assiduously, and with a mother's solicitude and watchfulness, inculcate the idea, that it would be an act of absolute degradation, should any of them stoop from their wealthy dignity to associate with any one beneath their rank in affluence, no matter what might be their learning, intelligence, and intrinsic excellence of character.

But, notwithstanding her solicitude and watchfulness on this point, she was by no means as successful as she wished, in inculcating the same sentiment of aristocratic and purse-proud exclusiveness, in all her children, which actuated herself. Extremes of character entirely diverse, are frequently exhibited, and contrast most singularly in the same family, and there was exhibited a striking exemplification of the fact in that of Mr. Dombey's.

Lucilla Dombey, a beautiful and accomplished damsel of eighteen, although ardently and affectionately attached to her mother, was, nevertheless, her very reverse in respect to her estimation of the relative importance of wealth. Both their characters and the striking contrast between them, appear in the following reprimand and defence:

"Why, Lucilla! Lucilla! what does all this mean? Why this familiarity on the part of Henry Sommers, as though he was upon a