p. 13 | Bits of Time-How to Use Them

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 24, 1872

Bits of Time—How to Use Them.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Few persons realize the value of the odd bits of time which are constantly occurring in every one's life. You have to wait at the office half an hour for a man, at the depot twenty minutes, in another place ten minutes, &c. This time is so short it seems hardly worth while to undertake to do anything. When we have more time and a better chance, then we will do what we have in mind. So it goes, day after day, and week by week, and still we find ourselves waiting for that “convenient season” of a whole day or week in which to read a coveted book, write an article, or something of the like.

How much precious time is lost in this way. Let us reckon up, a moment. One hour per day, that is small, easily made up; twenty minutes before breakfast, twenty at noon, and the balance at evening, this would be 313 hours for the working days in one year. In ten years, 3150 hours, or at eight hours a day, which is a good day's work for hard study, 391 days, or sixty-five weeks of six working days each. Just think of it! one year and a quarter of steady reading! What an immense sight one could learn in that time! All this by catching a few minutes only each day!

I once knew, years ago, a young man of about thirty years of age, who was trying to preach some. I asked him if he had read Rollin? No. Gibbon? No. Josephus? No. Mosheim? No. He said the fact was he had never had time. He was raised a poor boy, and always had to work hard for a living, teaching school, &c. He hoped sometime to read all these and others too, when he had time. I soon saw what the trouble was. Odd minutes, and even hours, he did not think were worth economizing. “When he could get a whole week, or month, then he would do all these things. There is where he failed.

I knew another young man of about the same age and occupation, much poorer, and laboring under greater disadvantages. When too poor to buy books, he borrowed them, and, while working by the day and by the month, even in harvest, would catch a few moments every day to read a little. In this way he learned to read, to write, learned geography, and astronomy, without any teacher, and has read extensively both in history and in general reading. Nor has he neglected his daily work to do this.

Much time may be, and generally is, lost while traveling. Suppose a man has to walk in all three miles a day in going to and from his work, or in visiting from house to house. It will take him an hour to walk that. If the thoughts are left to wander here and there, to flit from one object to another, without carefully considering anything, this time is worse than lost, so far as mental improvement is concerned. A slack, loose habit of thought is formed, which is very detrimental to any one.

These hours can be turned to great profit. It is the very best time for strong, vigorous thought. It is said of Erasmus, Edwards, and other great men, that they did their best thinking while walking or riding. As soon as they stopped, they would write down the result of these thoughts. I have seen many a hard lesson in Greek learned in this manner, without a teacher too. I sometimes think that it is not so much in the ability of the individual as it is in his steady, intense application, that makes the man. D. M. CANRIGHT.