214 I GO A-FISHING. 



" Effendi," said Dupont, as he laid down the last frag- 

 ment of a sandwich which he could not master, and then 

 stretched himself on the rock and lighted a cigar, " did 

 you ever make any estimate of the amount of time that 

 you have passed in this business of ' going a-fishing ?' " 



" What, all told ?" 



"Yes, all told and added up." 



" No, never ; but I fancy it would add up some years." 



" So much ?" 



"Yes, we are often astonished when we count up time 

 which we have spent without keeping the record. It slips 

 away more easily than money, and the sum total of ex- 

 penditure will sometimes startle, and may well alarm us 

 unless we have something to show for it. You sleep 

 somewhat more than six hours a day, but suppose it to 

 be only six ; that is, one fourth of twenty-four hours. If 

 you live to be eighty years old, you will have passed 

 twenty years of your life in a state of unconsciousness. 

 Your breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and coffee occupy you, 

 or should occupy you at least two hours each day, so that 

 at eighty you will have spent more than six years in feed- 

 ing. I know gentlemen who ride daily to and from their 

 places of business in railway cars, passing two or three 

 hours of the day in this transit, who would be surprised 

 if it were brought to their notice that they pass one month 

 or more each year, or one whole year in every twelve, in- 

 side of a railway carriage." 



"And men waste life in this fearful way?" 



" It is the order of nature, and the result of our modern 

 systems of life and kbor. The sleep is no waste of time. 

 The Creator intended it to be so ; but it is well for men, 

 in looking at life, to think that short as it is the working 

 hours are vastly shorter, and that one fourth is always to 



