believing all the while that they are going to do the thing they first intended; or who, setting out to walk for the benefit of their health, drop in upon a pleasant acquaintance by the way, still thinking they are going to walk, until the time for doing so has expired, when they return home, with cold feet and aching heads, half fancying that they have really walked, and disappointed that exercise has produced no better effect.
Now, in these two cases, there may be as little harm in reading the book as in calling upon the acquaintance, and nothing wrong in either: but the habit of doing habitually what we had not intended to do, and leaving undone what we had intended, has so injurious an effect in weakening our resolutions, and impairing our capacity for making exact calculations upon time and means, that one might pronounce, without much hesitation, upon a person accustomed to this mode of action, the sentence of utter inability to fill any situation of usefulness or importance amongst mankind.
I am inclined to think we should all be sufficiently astonished, if we would try the experiment through a single day, of passing quickly and promptly from one occupation to another. It is, in fact, these 'goings to do,' which constitute so large an amount of wasted time, for which we are all accountable. Few persons deliberately intend to be idle; few will allow that they have been so from choice; yet how vast a proportion of the human race are living in a state of self-deception, by persuading themselves they are not idle, when they are merely going to act. Promptness in doing whatever it is right to do now, is one of the great secrets of living. By this means, we find our capabilities increased to an amazing amount; nor can we ever know what they really are, until this plan of conduct has been folly tried.
Wisely has it been said, by the greatest of moral philo-
