GOLDEN MOMENTS.



How sorry one would be for a man who, starting out upon a journey, had his pockets full of golden coin, which, one by one, had slipped through some unmended hole or rent, so that when he came to the end of his trip he had not one left, but lay down upon his bed a beggar! How strictly we would look to our own pockets after hearing the tale, and make very sure that what coin we had should be well spent or hoarded carefully, and not scattered in the road-side dust! Yet we start upon our lives, each one of us, with a store of golden moments of which we keep little account. 

Rapidly they slip away through the rents of sloth or ignorance. Many a one, rich in all the golden moments of seventy years, lies down at last scarcely able to remember how he has frittered and scattered them, knowing only that he has no more—that all are gone, and that he cannot say that he has purchased anything of use to himself or another with what might have bought so much.