Be Punctual | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jun 14, 1883

Be Punctual.

THERE are some people who are systematically late for everything, irritating their households in a remarkable degree, and always finding themselves in a flurry and bustle. The newspapers are full of accidents, heedlessness being the cause, and as often as not, unpunctuality merely in minutes. There is no virtue so necessary in the young as punctuality. Habits grow upon people, and it is as easy to cultivate habits of regularity and exactness with regard to time as it is to cultivate cleanliness or honesty. A young lady staying at a friend's house in the country was amazed to find that the eldest daughter of the house never came down in time for breakfast, but always half an hour late. Her astonishment was increased when she discovered that the too indulgent mother, instead of remonstrating with her daughter on this unpleasant habit, actually rose from her easy-chair as the girl came dwadling down and offered it to her!

Upon being asked the reason of this curious leniency, the mother said that it was "no use finding fault with Maria; of course she would grow out of it!"

At the age of thirty, Maria still comes down late for breakfast, and the soft-hearted mother—now sixty-five—still rises when her daughter enters, and offers her the chair! In our opinion, silliness could not go farther, and we feel sorry for both mother and daughter—the last a slave to habit the first a slave to her own offspring.

Reverence has long ceased to be a feature of the age; but we would counsel parents to cultivate by every means in their power habits of punctuality in their children from very early years.—Chambers' Journal.