business men have similar watches which they forget to set ahead, and consequently fail to keep their engagements.

Very often when an unpunctual man makes up his mind, he has lost an opportunity which would have made his fortune.

Emerson could never think well of a man's intellectual or moral character if he was habitually unfaithful to his appointments. Cecil's opinion was that, "Appointments once made were like debts. If I have made an appointment with you, I owe you punctuality; I have no right to throw away your time, if I do my own."

It has been truly said that punctuality and method are the right and the left hand of time. The man who possesses them is never in a hurry, yet never too late. He does everything systematically, and every duty seems to fall involuntarily into its right place. The man devoid of order and method is very different. An excellent writer says of the unpunctual and unmethodical man: "He has got twenty or thirty letters and packets to carry to their several destinations; but instead of arranging them beforehand, and putting all addressed to the same locality in a separate parcel, he crams the whole into his promiscuous bag, and trudges off to the West End, for he knows that he has got a letter directed thither; that letter he delivers, and hies away to the City, when lo! the same handful which brings out the invoice for Cheapside contains a brief for the Temple, and a parliamentary petition, which should have been left, had he noticed it earlier, at Belgrave Square; accordingly he retraces his steps and repairs the omission, and then performs a transit from Paddington to Bethnal-green; till in two days he overtakes the work of one, and travels fifty miles to accomplish as much as a man of method would have managed in fifteen."

The unpunctual man can never be depended on, consequently such a character is ruinous if he is in business. What is still worse, if possible, is that the unpunctual man feels that he cannot depend on himself. The habit of procrastination and undue haste so grows upon him that the things he is most resolved on doing, his own conscience tells him, may very probably, for all that, never be done. He becomes in truth the slave

of a wretched habit of mind, as if he were the bondslave of another's will. Foster has pictured such a man as one who can never be said to belong to himself; since if he dared to assert that he did, "the puny force of some cause, about as powerful, you would have supposed, as a spider, may capture the hapless boaster the very next moment, and triumphantly show the futility of the determinations by which he was to have proved the independence of his understanding and his will. He belongs to whatever can seize him; and innumerable things do actually verify their claim on him, and arrest him as he tries to go along; as twigs and chips, floating near the edge of a river, are intercepted by every weed, and whirled in every little eddy. Having concluded on a design, he may pledge himself to accomplish it, if the five hundred diversities of feeling which may come within the week will let him. As his character precludes all foresight of his conduct, he may sit and wonder what form and direction his view and action are destined to take to-morrow; as a farmer waits the uncertain changes of the clouds to decide what he shall do.

"This man's opinions and determinations always depend very much on other human beings; and what chance for consistency and stability, while the persons with whom he may converse or transact are so various: This very evening he may talk with a man whose sentiments will melt away the present form and outline of his purposes, however firm and defined he may have fancied them to be. A succession of persons whose faculties were stronger than his own, might, in spite of his irresolute reaction, take him and dispose of him as they pleased. An infirm character practically confesses itself made for subjection, and passes like a slave from owner to owner.”

It is astonishing how much more work may be done with method than without it. In modern times the advantages resulting from a division of labor are better understood than they have ever been. Take an example given by Adam Smith in his "Wealth of Nations." He says in regard to the trade of pin making that a workman not educated to the business, nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it, could scarce make one pin in a day, and certainly not twenty.

"But in the way the business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire; another straightens it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, all performed by distinct hands."

I have seen a small manufactory of this kind, where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upward of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upward of 48,000 pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of 48,000 pins, might be considered as making 4,800 pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the 4,800th part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations.

Samuel Budgett was one of the most punctual of men, and he required his employees to be punctual. It is said of him that, "He was himself punctual as a chronometer, even out of business. If he had made an engagement with his neighbor, and was a minute late, he would apologize and account for it. So his men must be at work at the given moment, and his travelers must so arrange their journeys that every customer shall know at what hour to expect them. But as discipline and punctuality are not meant to abridge, but to defend happiness,

he contrived to place the arrangements enforcing these in a light which commended them to the men. The hour to begin work was six o'clock. By the gate hung a blackboard divided into squares, each square was numbered and contained a nail, on the nail hung a little copper plate. Each man had his number, and as he went out he took a plate with him, leaving his number exposed on the board. As he entered he placed the plate on the nail, so covering his number. The moment the bell ceased ringing, the board was removed, and all whose numbers were not covered were at once set down as defaulters. He who did not once appear on that list during a year received at its end a sovereign as his reward. But in the early days of the establishment it was usual to give porter's beer. This custom Mr. Budgett disapproved, and to it he would not submit; but close by the number board he placed another board laden with penny pieces; each man as he entered in the morning took a penny, on returning from breakfast a penny, and on returning from dinner a penny; thus making three in the day, which Mr. Budgett considered a full equivalent for beer, and of far greater value. If, however, the poor wight was late, he lost his penny; thus paying a fine out of what was considered his due, as well as forfeiting the reward which punctuality would secure at the year's end. At first even a single lapse occasioned the loss of the whole sovereign; but afterward that rule was relaxed; five shillings being deducted for one, and proportionate sums for additional faults. In the course of years the beer pence were counted for eighteen pence per week additional wages, and then every late comer was fined-if a porter a penny, and so on, in proportion to rank, with every one in the house, including the partners. The post hour was quarter past seven; at that hour the clerks must be in their places and one of the principals present to open the letters; if he was late, his fine was a half-crown. With such spirit was this discipline maintained that, though many of the men chose to live in Kingswood after the business was removed to Bristol, they made their four miles' journey and many were never late. Some who have been years in the establishment have not once been reported absent."

THE TRUE GENTLEMAN

Dress an Index to Character

By LORD CHESTERFIELD

[Philip Dormer Stanhope, a wit, orator, and statesman, a man of polished manners and urbane habit, was born at London, September 22, 1694, and in 1712 entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In 1715 he became gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, afterward George II., and entered the House of Commons. In 1726 he became fourth Earl of Chesterfield, and in the following year, George II. succeeding to the throne, he was sent as ambassador to The Hague, where he remained six years. In 1773, for opposing Walpole's excise scheme, he was summarily dismissed from office; and, a quarrel with the king ensuing, he absented himself from court for a long period. When the Duke of Newcastle became prime minister, he returned to power, though not to favor with the king, and in May 1745 became viceroy of Ireland. He administered the difficult affairs of that country with good sense and impartiality, and was recalled in April 1746 and became secretary of state. Retiring from office in 1748 he spent most of his remaining days in private life among his books. A deafness increasing with age rendered him more and more unfit for affairs, though he made one notable reëntrance into public life in 1757 to smooth the personal and political difficulties of Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Newcastle, and he advocated the cause of the American colonies. He died on March 24, 1773.]

I

CANNOT help forming some opinion of a man's sense and character from his dress; and I believe most people do, as well as myself. Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies in my mind a flaw in the understanding. . . . A man of sense carefully avoids any particular character in his dress; he is accurately clean for his own sake; but all the rest is for other people's. He dresses as well, and in the same manner, as the people of sense and fashion of the place where he is. If he dresses better, as he thinks-that is, more than they-he is a fop; if he dresses worse, he is unpardonably negligent: but of the two, I would rather have a young fellow too much than too