everything at the right time and applies to it adequate

resources.

The importance of system in the discharge of daily duties was strikingly illustrated in the experience of Dr. Kane, when he was locked up among the icebergs of the Arctic Circle, with the prospect of months of dreary imprisonment. With his men enfeebled by disease and privations, and when all but eight of his company had gone to search for a way of escape, he sustained the drooping spirits of the handful who clung to him, and kept up their energies, by systematic performance of duties and by moral discipline.

"It is," he observes, "the experience of every man who has either combated difficulties himself or attempted to guide others through them, that the controlling law must be systematic action. I resolved that everything should go on as it had done. The arrangement of hours, the distribution and details of duty, the religious exercises, the ceremonials of the table, the fires, the lights, the watch, the labors of the observatory, and the notation of the tides and the sky, nothing should be intermitted that had contributed to make up the day."

The necessity of accuracy to success in any calling is so obvious as hardly to need remark. Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well. It is better to do a few things carefully, precisely as they should be done, than to do ten times as many in a loose, slovenly way. It matters little what virtues a man has, if he is habitually inexact. Be he a lawyer, an architect, an accountant, or an artisan, his work is done so poorly that it has to be done over again, causing infinite trouble and perplexity.

The author of " Self Help" observes that it was one of the characteristic qualities of Charles James Fox that

he was thoroughly painstaking in all that he did. "When appointed Secretary of State, being piqued at some observation as to his bad writing, he actually went to a writing-master, and wrote copies like a school-boy, until he had sufficiently improved himself. The same accuracy in trifling matters was displayed by him in things of greater importance; and he acquired his reputation, like the painter, by neglecting nothing."

Punctuality is another virtue which must be cultivated by all who would succeed in any calling, whether lofty or humble. Nothing sooner inspires people with confidence in a business man than this quality, nor is there any habit which sooner saps his reputation than that of being always behind time. Thousands have failed in life from this cause alone. Unpunctuality is not only a serious vice in itself, it is also the cause of other vices; so that he who becomes its victim becomes involved in toils from which it is almost impossible to escape. He who needlessly breaks his appointment shows that he is as reckless of the waste of the time of others as he is of his own. His acquaintances readily conclude that the man who is not conscientious about his appointments will be equally careless about his other duties, and they will refuse to trust him with matters of importance.

It is a familiar truth, that punctuality is the soul of the universe. The planets keep exact time in their revolutions, each, as it circles round the sun, coming to its place yearly at the very moment when it is due. So, in business, punctuality is the soul of industry, without which all its wheels must come to a dead stand. "When a regiment is under march," wrote Sir Walter Scott to a young man who had asked his advice, "the rear is often thrown into confusion because the front does not

move steadily and without interruption. It is the same thing with business. If that which is first in hand be not instantly, steadily, and regularly despatched, other things accumulate behind, til affairs begin to press all at once, and no human brain can stand the confusion."

Punctuality should be made not only a point of courtesy, but also a point of conscience. The beginner in business should make this virtue one of his first objects. Let him not delude himself with the idea that he can practise it by and by, when the necessity of it will be more cogent. It is not easy to be punctual, even in youth; but in after life, when the character is fixed, when the mental and moral faculties have acquired a cast-iron rigidity, to unlearn the habit of tardiness is almost an impossibility.

The successful men in every calling have had a keen sense of the value of time. They have been misers of minutes. Nelson attributed all his success in life to having been a quarter of an hour before his time. Napoleon studied his watch as closely as he studied the map of the battle field. His victories were not won by consummate strategy merely, but by impressing his subordinates with the necessity of punctuality to the minute. Manoeuvring over large spaces of country, so that the enemy was puzzled to decide where the blow would fall, he would suddenly concentrate his forces and fall with resistless might on some weak point in the extended lines of the foe. The successful execution of this plan demanded that every division of his army should be at the place named at the very hour.

Washington was so rigidly punctual, that when Hamilton, his secretary, pleaded a slow watch as an excuse for being five minutes late, he replied, "Then

sir, either you must get a new watch or I must get a

new secretary."

Such habits as we have commended are not formed in a day, nor by a few faint resolutions. Not by accident, not by fits and starts are they acquired; not by being one moment in a violent fit of attention, and the next falling into the sleep of indifference; but by steady, persistent effort. Above all, it is necessary that they should be acquired in youth; for then do they cost the least effort. Like letters cut in the bark of a tree, they grow and widen with age. Once acquired, they are a fortune in themselves; for their possessor has disposed thereby of the heavy end of the load of life, — all that remains he can carry easily and pleasantly. On the other hand, bad habits, once formed, will hang for ever on the wheels of enterprise, and in the end will assert their supremacy, to the ruin and shame of their victim.

COMPOSITION.

Make out a list of all the nouns in the first paragraph, and give two substitutes for each (synonymes). Write three sentences containing the words bankrupt, book and muddle, — using each as a noun, verb or adjective, where possible. Name three places where icebergs are met, and give a very short account of any accident occurring through meeting with icebergs.

LE SISTERS OF THE POOR.

owever little accustomed to reflection, be something striking in the almost ner in which the Catholic Church wants of the poor, whom she always property," and not the burden of the rch in this proves the divinity of her uth of her claims as the teacher sent not whereon to place his head, and who stinctive mark of his Church, that its I be preached to the poor. It is this in the person of her Sisters of Charity

Sisters of the Poor, establishes her lestitute, not on some island where the sity may point to "our paupers," but heart of our large cities, near the busy thereby teaching a perpetual lesson that part of ourselves, a part that must be

not looked upon as some repulsive which we must bear, because we have to cut it off. In our own day, the spirit for the poor is notorious. Even public of charity have names which repel the s of educated Christians. Thus, instead h's Home for the Aged," "The Providence ne "Hotel Dieu," ("God's Hotel "), names elves give a lesson, and touch a responsive hearts, we have "BLACKWELL'S Islands," or y repulsive name, attached to the public open for the relief of distress.

one seen two young women in charge of a octogenarian of their own sex, a smile of might have played upon his countenance