"Tell him to come in," said my father to the servant; and in a minute Tim stood at the parlour door looking as pleased and proud as if he had done some meritorious thing in having finished the work that ought to have been done weeks before.

"Why, Tim," said my father, "I thought you said you could not do my boots to-day."

"So I did, sir; but I have managed to do them, and I have brought them home."

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"Oh well, you needn't have come on purpose, but as you have brought them, so much the better."

"I did not come on purpose, sir. I had to go to Mr. Sharp's, and, as I passed your door, thought I would save myself another journey."

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Why, you will have a long walk to Mr. Sharp's, Tim," said my mother; "and it is a rough night to be out."

"Yes, ma'am," answered Tim. "But I ought to have been there yesterday; and now Mr. Sharp has sent to say, if I didn't go to-night, he wouldn't give me the job, so I am obliged to go."

"Just like you, Tim," said my father, laughing; "always putting off doing things till you are pushed. Well, it would be a bad thing for you to lose your customer; but remember, that if you carry the habit into every other thing as you do into your business, you may meet with a greater loss than if your best customer left you."

"What can that be?" inquired Tim,

"Can't you guess what I mean, Tim? Then I must tell you," my father said; and he spoke a few kindly words of warning, pointing out the danger of delay even in comparatively small matters, and showing the great danger there is of putting off till some future time the things that pertain to the after life. My father spoke very gently and impressively, and poor Tim seemed to listen to him attentively, and promised to think of what he had heard.

"And now," said my father, as Tim was going, “I will

give you a proverb to think of, one that will make an altered man of you if you will act up to it: 'Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring

forth.'"

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try and

Boys," said my father, after Tim was gone, take a lesson from Tim. He is a man that might have done well for himself if it had not been for his dreadful habit of delay. At one time, I remember, he kept two or three workmen, and had nearly all the trade of the country round. but he lost his customers, one by one, because he so constantly broke his word and disappointed them; and now, you see, he is obliged to work by himself, and unless he improves I am afraid he will lose his trade entirely. Nor is this the worst; for ever since I have known him he has been putting off attending to his eternal interests. He has promised me time after time that he will earnestly and seriously attend to religious instructions and strive to become a better man, but has never yet done so; and unless God takes pity on him and arouses him from his present state of carelessness, I fear he will delay too long, and at last lose all."

I may here say that although Tim was not what would usually be called a bad character, yet he was an entirely irreligious man, and, so far, had seemed to profit nothing by the kind and gentle persuasions of my father to look after the interests of his soul. Alas! that there should be so many who, like him, put off from time to time thinking of those things which should command the very first attention.

The habit of procrastination is one that is ruinous to the worldly interests of the man who allows himself to indulge in it. Many a fair prospect has been destroyed, and bright future spoiled, by this insidious foe. How many a man at the present moment is struggling with poverty, and living in obscurity who, if he had been able to conquer it, might have been prosperous and useful? It is utterly impossible to estimate the amount of suffering and misery that is

brought about by the habit of putting off till to-morrow what ought to be done to-day:

"To-morrow you will live, you always cry:
In what fair country does this morrow lie,
That 'tis so mighty long ere it arrive?
Beyond the Indies doth this morrow live?
'Tis so far-fetched this morrow, that I fear
'Twill be both very old and very dear.
To-morrow will I live, the fool does say,

To-day itself's too late, the wise lived yesterday."

The next morning I had to be early in the village, and as I was passing Tim's cottage I noticed two or three people outside the door, engaged in what appeared to be a very interesting gossip. I should not have noticed this so much, but another thing caught my attention-Tim's workshop was not opened. What could be the matter? Surely something must be wrong, for Tim was always an early riser, and I never remembered being in the village before his shop-shutter was down.

Passing by the people, I heard one of them say, "Do you think he will live ?" On hearing this question, I inquired what was the matter, and was told that on the previous night, as Tim was coming home from Mr. Sharp's, he had, in the dark, slightly diverged from the meadow path and walked over the edge of a chalk pit; he had a fall of several feet, and was considerably injured: at first he was quite stunned, and how long he remained unconscious he could not tell, but when he came to his senses he found himself so stiff and bruised that he could not move, and had to remain where he was until some labourers passed by in the early morning. He had just been brought to his cottage in one of Mr. Sharp's waggons, and the doctor had been sent for.

When I heard all this, my father's words seemed to ring in my ear: "Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth." Poor Tim! little did he think how soon those words would be proved true as regarded himself.

It was a long time before Tim quite recovered from the

:

effects of the fall it was found that his shoulder had been dislocated, and he had received severe injuries to his head; but he had a good constitution, and, with careful nursing and attention, he did eventually get well.

Tim always afterwards looked back to that day as one of the happiest in his life. He said that, after he left our house on the night of his accident, the advice my father had given kept a fast hold on him, at least so far as concerned procrastination in his trade, and he quite made up his mind to try to conquer his enemy, and apply himself with vigour to his business; for he had sense enough to see that if he did not alter his course he would soon have no trade left. But as regarded the more important advice, he thought that there was time enough for that, though he did mean some day or other to take it into consideration. Such were his thoughts before he met with the accident. But far different ones he had as soon as he recovered sensibility after his fall, and found himself unable to move. Then he began to think he had made a greater mistake in neglecting the things concerning his soul's salvation, than he had done in neglecting his trade. Now that death, as he thought, stared him in the face, he began to wish that he was prepared to meet the last enemy, and to meet his God. And as he lay where he had fallen, and hour after hour passed away, the poor fellow thought of what my father had said to him that evening, and from the depths of his heart he sent up a prayer to God that He would yet spare him, and help him from that time to live a better life.

He works

This prayer God graciously saw fit to answer; and when Tim was able to get about his work again, he did so in a far different way from what he had been used to. with a will now, and as he works he sings the praises of Him who by His providence has led him to the feet of his Saviour, and has called him out of darkness into His marvellous light.

If Tim ever relates his accident to any one, he is sure to dwell upon the danger of delay, and to point out how nearly

that habit had been his ruin, and earnestly to try to impress his hearers with the fact that "To-day is the accepted time;" "Now is the day of salvation"; not some future time; not even to-morrow, on which we should never depend, seeing we know not what a day may bring forth.

Uncle Will and the Extinguished Candle.

NCLE WILL and the writer of this sketch were working together underground in one of the tin mines of Cornwall, digging in a singularly narrow place after the precious ore. It was a very unfrequented part of the mine, where the sound of another miner's hammer was not heard on the rock. Uncle Will was an old man, and so I let him sit upon a board a very little way behind the working, charging him to take care and keep his light burning, whilst I used the pick and iron wedges, cutting through the lode. Nearly half-an-hour, perhaps, had thus passed, and not a word had been spoken between us, when, by some mischance, I happened to strike the candle which gave us light in the working, and which was stuck to a fragment of the rock with soft clay, called Saint Ann's, with the point of the pick, knocking it amongst the rubbish, so that it was extinguished immediately. Looking back on Uncle Will, I was perfectly astounded to find that his candle, too, had gone out, with the exception of a spark of fire in the wick, at which the old man was blowing with all his might, endeavouring in vain to enkindle it. A puff or two more, and we were in utter darkness. I questioned my unwatchful comrade about it, and his reply was, "Oh dear, I caught a nod, and awoke just in time to see my candle falling."

To cry for help would be wrecked mariner, floating

And now what could we do? utterly useless; as well might the on a board, call to the moon. To sound the rock, and give the understood signal with miners, would also be