want of honest principle; for however people may think themselves
authorized to rob God and themselves of their own time, they can plead
no right to lay a violent hand on the time and duties of their neighbor.
I say it deliberately, that I have been defrauded of hundreds of pounds,
and cruelly deprived of my necessary refreshment in exercise, in sleep,
and even in seasonable food, through this disgraceful want of
punctuality in others, more than through any cause whatsoever besides.
It is also very irritating; for a person who would cheerfully bestow a
piece of gold, does not like to be swindled out of a piece of copper;
and of many an hour have I been ungenerously wronged, to the excitement
of feelings in themselves far from right, when I would gladly have so
arranged my work as to bestow upon the robbers thrice the time they made
me wantonly sacrifice. To say, "I will come to you on such a day,"
leaving the person to expect you early, and then, after wasting her day
in that uncomfortable, unsettled state of looking out for a guest, which
precludes all application to present duties, to come late in the
evening--or to accept an invitation to dinner, and either break the
engagement or throw the household into confusion by making it wait--to
appoint a meeting, and fail of keeping your time--all these, and many
other effects of this vile habit are exceedingly disgraceful, and wholly
opposed to the scriptural rules laid down for the governance of our
conduct one to another. I say nothing of the insult put upon the Most
High, the daring presumption of breaking in upon the devotions of his
worshippers, and involving them in the sin of abstractedness from the
solemn work before them, by entering late into the house of prayer. Such
persons may one day find they have a more serious account to render on
the score of their contempt of punctuality, than they seem willing to
believe.

But I have run away from my ship--yet not so; for as every thing shines