still more closely: "The plea that this or that man has no time for
culture will vanish as soon as we desire culture so much that we begin
to examine seriously into our present use of time." It is no
exaggeration to say that the mass of men give to unplanned and
desultory reading of books and newspapers an amount of time which, if
intelligently and thoughtfully given to the best books, would secure,
in the long run, the best fruits of culture.

There is no magic about this process of enriching one's self by
absorbing the best books; it is simply a matter of sound habits
patiently formed and persistently kept up. Making the most of one's
time is the first of these habits; utilising the spare hours, the
unemployed minutes, no less than those longer periods which the more
fortunate enjoy. To "take time by the forelock" in this way, however,
one must have his book at hand when the precious minute arrives. There
must be no fumbling for the right volume; no waste of time because one
is uncertain what to take up next. The waste of opportunity which
leaves so many people intellectually barren who ought to be
intellectually rich, is due to neglect to decide in advance what
direction one's reading shall take, and neglect to keep the book of
the moment close at hand. The biographer of Lucy Larcom tells us that
the aspiring girl pinned all manner of selections of prose and verse
which she wished to learn at the sides of the window beside which her
loom was placed; and in this way, in the intervals of work, she
familiarised herself with a great deal of good literature. A certain
man, now widely known, spent his boyhood on a farm, and largely
educated himself. He learned the rudiments of Latin in the evening,
and carried on his study during working hours by pinning ten lines
from Virgil on his plough,--a method of refreshment much superior to
that which Homer furnished the ploughman in the well-known passage in