Look at the young fellows who are
preparing for the hard duties of life by studying at a University. Here
is one who seems to have recognized the facts of existence; his hours
are arranged as methodically as his heart beats; he knows the exact
balance between physical and intellectual strength, and he overtaxes
neither, but body and mind are worked up to the highest attainable
pressure. No pleasures of the destructive sort call this youngster
aside; he has learned already what it is to reap the harvest of a quiet
eye, and his joys are of the sober kind. He rises early, and he has got
far through his work ere noon; his quiet afternoon is devoted to
harmless merriment in the cricket-field or on the friendly country
roads, and his evening is spent without any vain gossip in the happy
companionship of his books. That young man loses no day; but unhappily
he represents a type which is but too rare. The steady man, economic of
time, is a rarity; but the wild youth who is always going to do
something to-morrow is one of a class that numbers only too many on its
rolls. To-morrow! The young fellow passes to-day on the river, or spends
it in lounging or in active dissipation. He feels that he is doing
wrong; but the gaunt spectres raised by conscience are always exorcised
by the bright vision of to-morrow.
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