Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

laSSINC, : ?'/-HE TIME Jr r \, *% \ It Is the Great Prob- /Y /\(\ \ ' lem of Many. They \ 1 Real Possession. V,'ill Find the Time jk ■ USE IT. It Is Short Passes Soon Enough, : and Will Look Back llr |MMF/ / Enough. to Regret the Time x\X/ \ \ Passed and Wasted V i’ A trFW? x tty, mz n/ W v\ 1 idir j<eqi ? w-M\ y?M! Sftft - -1' c MHBMBBMBBMBMBi /—— ,^ 1 ■ a 4& r° E X those who M WW'^ J jjF MS££D tiMRMMitBr; 1 : ACH of us has at the most a few vSpTTjA y ears to spend on this earth. We spend the first years hop mg great things, the next few .O/jWi years dropping illusions one by 3’V 1 ' one ’ the l as s few years regret -4,‘*' tmg ie mista heS’ he missed oppor tunities and the wasted drne of the whole life. And after that comes the grave, and perhaps a new shuf- I I file of the cards and a new I | beginning here where we left off. On this earth, so full of opportunities, filled with wonders, surrounded by the mystery of the infinite, man appears for a second—a sec ond at least in the eyes of infinitude. And dur ing his little second on earth HE ACTUALLY DEVOTES MOST OF HIS ATTENTION TO DISCOVERING SOME WAY “OF PASSING THE TIMES' ♦ ♦ « Have you noticed how the people pass the time, how they try to make the hours fly by unnoticed? They walk into a railroad station. They put a penny in a machine to make it play some foolish tune. Then they listen, passing the time, the brain dead. They go to a restaurant. They order what they want. Immediately a terrific noise be gins. A band is playing, and again the time, passes, and again thought is impossible. They meet each other. They talk certain definite platitudes, weather, baseball, jokes, nothing in particular and again the time passes—and it passes very fast. The husband goes home and tells his little trashy story of the day to his wile, and that passes time. And then she tells her little trashy story about nothing at all —and that passes some more time And by and by they go to bed and sleep— and that passes about one-third of all their time And so it goes. * « « Men play cards in the train to pass the time. Men lean back and sleep ori their way from one big city to another to pass the time. They forget how much time they will have to sleep in the grave; they forget how rapidly the time will pass then For a man dead, like a man asleep, when he wakes again doesn’t know whether a second or* a million years have passed “How shall we pass the time till supper?” and “How shall we pass the time till so and so comes home?” Those are the questions that modern human beings ask ft ft ft There are books that need reading, there is thinking that every man and woman and child can do. There are problems that need to be settled. There is work that can de done to develop the mind or the muscle or the char acter There is a good task for every hour, a task that is better for the mind than idle rest, which is death intellectual. .Take any one of the men and women who devote their energies now to “passing the time” and put that man or woman on another planet, on Mars with its great canals, or Saturn with the rings, or Jupiter with the many moons You could not imagine that human being content “to pass the time." Eyes and ears would be open, all of the senses would be awake, eager to study the wonders of the new and mysterious environment. There is nothing more marvellous on any planet, at least so far as our intellectual ca- / pacify for receiving impressions goes, than upon this planet of our own. Every little blade of grass growing, every change of the clouds and the wind, every ex pression on a child’s face, every indication of happiness m sorrow among human beings, is worthy of the earnest attention of a man—pro viding he is fit to be called a man. ft ft > There is occupation for every waking sec ond—but the great majority of us when not worrying about our mistakes in the past, or struggling for a dollar in the present, or fret ting about an uncertain future, ACTUALLY TRY TO PASS OUR TIME For this as a race we cannot blame our selves. For only since yesterday we have come up from the animal condition, where the brain was little developed, where the mind was noth ing and where the muscles and appetite were all. The latest faculty acquired is the faculty most easily fatigued—thought and abstract speculation are our recently acquired faculties. It is probable that not one man in a thou sand, even among the ablest men, is capable or four hours’ actual thought in the day. It is probable that the average human being lives and dies without four hours of real thought in his whole life. It is also probable that you. assuming you to be a good, fair individual, might be capable of fifteen minutes thought per day. If you should try it. the fifteen minutes would soon grow into thirty minutes, and eventually you might be able to spend an hour in actual thought on a problem of importance to your seif and to others. That would be better than many nickel-in the-slot machines or manj' brass bands, better than many bridge games, baseball games and poker games Better than many hours and weeks of gossip without meaning “The day I t will come, y F7 at the best, / when you 1 / will look hack from mtL l the edge or f /IJ the grave to the be- ginning, years ago, and wish RIfIMKS ihat you could have thoseyears again, 99 A good book in your pocket, a definite Gain of thought occupying and interesting your mind—those are the friends to take on a railroad journey, no s a pack of cards or a two legged gossip. The day will come, at the best, when you will look back from the edge of the grave to the beginning, years ago, and wish that you could have those years again. The day will come when you will long for the hour that you are wasting to-day, the hour that you are “passing,’ and wish that you had a chance to do what might have been done Happy the man for whom time passes all too quickly, and unhappy he who, living with two eyes and two ears and a brain that can read and understand ii such a world as this, actually finds it necessary “to pass the time.”