Punctuality | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 29, 1876

Punctuality.

If everybody felt the importance of being on hand promptly at the appointed hour what a vast amount of valuable time could be saved, and how many unpleasant feelings could be prevented. The following hints are to the point:—“Method, is the very hinge of business; and there is no method without punctuality. Punctuality is important, because it subserves the peace and good temper of a family: the want of it not only infringes on necessary duty, but sometimes excludes this duty. Punctuality is important as it gains time; it is like packing things in a box; a good packer will get in half as much more as a bad one. The calmness of mind which it produces is another advantage of punctuality: a disorderly man is always in a hurry; he has no time to speak with you, because he is going elsewhere; and when he gets there he is too late for his business, or he must hurry away to another before he can finish it. It was a wise maxim of the Duke of Newcastle: ‘I do one thing at a time.’ And this generates punctuality in you; for, like other virtues, it propagates itself: servants and children must be punctual where their leader is so. Appointments, indeed, become debts. I owe you punctuality, if I make an appointment with you, and have no right to throw away your time if I do my own.”