ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 21 



FRAGMENTS WORTH SAVING— WHAT AND WHY ? 



H. W. AVERT, BELVIDERE. 



The greatest teacher and the wisest counselor that'ever lived upon this earth, 

 after miraculously increasing the five loaves and two fishes to an amount neces- 

 sary to satisfy the hunger of ten or fifteen thousand persons, said to His 

 disciples, "Gather up the fragments that remain." Why? That they might 

 preserve them as a foundation for the next meal ? No ! That they might sell 

 them in the market ? No! Simply "that nothing be lost." This, in short, 

 answers the question, Why are fragments worth saving ? Because they have a 

 value, and having a value, should not be lost. If it be true, as it is asserted, 

 that no particle of matter under the Divine supervision is ever lost, then cer- 

 tainly no fragment of any kind under human control should be lost, because 

 it has some value, the amount to be determined by the circumstances. There 

 must have been a value in those fragments which the disciples were commanded 

 to gather up, or He who understood the relation of things one'to another, per- 

 fectly, would never have given this injunction. 



Taking this example of our divine Guide, let us for a few moments con- 

 sider some of the fragments that we, as farmers generally, or as dairymen 

 especially, are losing, but which, if gathered up and put to proper use, would 

 represent a value by no means to be despised. Among the many fragments 

 lost, are fragments of time, of material, of force, of energy, of experience, of 

 opportunity, of equilibrium, and of moral character. These are so inseparable, 

 the one from the other, that any waste of one involves waste of another, 

 therefore our consideration of them must in the main be somewhat general. 

 The engineer who puts on more steam than is necessary to insure his safe 

 arrival at a given point at the required time, wastes not only water and fuel, 

 but the wear of the machinery, and the nerve power of .the passengers. The 

 person who loses a fragment of the early morning, the most valuable time of 

 all the day, thinking he can recover it before night, generally fails in his cal- 

 culations, for the late rising naturally causes irritability, or loss of equilibrium, 

 commonly called loss of temper, and results in harsh words to wife and 

 children, of which he ought to be ashamed, neglect of bible reading and family 

 prayer, the most valuable preparation for a prosperous and happy day, a hasty 

 devouring of the breakfast, involving an unnatural tax upon the digestive 

 organs, and he experiences a general uncomfortableness during the entire day. 



The farmer starts hurriedly for the field, to find that he has left some im- 

 portant article at the house or barn; a fragment of time is lost in going for it, 

 and with it a fragment of opportunity and of strength. 



Permit me to refer more particularly, first, to fragments of time. How 

 often do we hear people say, "I would have done this or that, but I did not have 

 time;" "I would like to attend that meeting or that convention, but really I have 

 not time ;" just as though we were entitled to more time than is given to us, or 

 that more is demanded of us than we can do in the time allotted to us. We 

 each have all the time there is, and if we fail to do this or that, or to be here or 

 there at any given time, it is because we are somewhere else by our own choice, 

 or by circumstances beyond our control. If by our own choice, no one else is 

 to be blamed : if from circumstances beyond our control, we are neither to be 

 condemned nor censured. 



