song of pleasure or the burst of revelry?  No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song.  There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living.  Oh, the grave! the grave!  It buries every error—­covers every defect.  From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.  Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel remorse that he should ever have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him?

LESSON LXIII

ECONOMY OF TIME

One of the most important lessons to be learned in life is the art of economizing time.  A celebrated Italian was wont to call his time his estate; and it is true of this as of other estates of which the young come into possession, that it is rarely prized till it is nearly squandered.  Habits of indolence, listlessness, and sloth, once firmly fixed, cannot be suddenly thrown off, and the man who has wasted the precious hours of life’s seed-time finds that he cannot reap a harvest in life’s autumn.  Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine; but lost time is gone forever.  In the long catalogue of excuses for neglect of duty, there is none which drops more often from men’s lips than the want of leisure.  People are always cheating themselves with the idea that they would do this or that desirable thing, “if they only had the time.”  It is thus that the lazy and the selfish excuse themselves from a thousand things which conscience dictates should be done.  Now, the truth is, there is no condition in which the chance of doing any good is less than in that of leisure.

Go, seek out the men in any community who have done the most for their own and the general good, and you will find they are—­who?—­Wealthy, leisurely people, who have plenty of time to themselves, and nothing to do?  No; they are almost always the men who are in ceaseless activity from January to December.  Such men, however pressed with business, are always found capable of doing a little more; and you may rely on them in their busiest seasons with ten times more assurance than on idle men.

The men who do the greatest things do them, not so much by fitful efforts, as by steady, unremitting toil,—­by turning even the moments to account.  They have the genius for hard work,—­the most desirable kind of genius.

SELECTION XX

  RECESSIONAL

  God of our fathers, known of old—­
    Lord of our far-flung battle-line—­
  Beneath whose awful hand we hold
    Dominion over palm and pine—­
  Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
  Lest we forget—­lest we forget.

  The tumult and the shouting dies—­
    The captain and the kings depart—­
  Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
    An humble and a contrite heart. 
  Lord God of hosts, be with us yet,
  Lest we forget—­lest we forget.