intelligence. How happy is it when they carry up not only the messages,
but the fruits of good, and stay with the Ancient of Days to speak for us
before His glorious throne!" [6]

Time is often said to fly; but it is not so much the time that flies; as
we that waste it, and wasted time is worse than no time at all; "I wasted
time," Shakespeare makes Richard II. say, "and now doth time waste me."

"He that is choice of his time," says Jeremy Taylor, "will also be choice
of his company, and choice of his actions; lest the first engage him in
vanity and loss, and the latter, by being criminal, be a throwing his time
and himself away, and a going back in the accounts of eternity."

The life of man is seventy years, but how little of this is actually our
own. We must deduct the time required for sleep, for meals, for dressing
and undressing, for exercise, etc., and then how little remains really at
our own disposal!

"I have lived," said Lamb, "nominally fifty years, but deduct from them
the hours I have lived for other people, and not for myself, and you will
find me still a young fellow."

The hours we live for other people, however, are not those that should be
deducted, but rather those which benefit neither oneself nor any one else;
and these, alas! are often very numerous.

"There are some hours which are taken from us, some which are stolen from
us, and some which slip from us." [7] But however we may lose them, we can
never get them back. It is wonderful, indeed, how much innocent happiness
we thoughtlessly throw away. An Eastern proverb says that calamities sent