Their letters are posted the very minute after the mail is closed.

They arrive at the wharf just in time to see the steamboat off, they come in sight of the terminus precisely as the station gates are closing.

They do not break any engagement or neglect any duty; but they systematically go about it too late, and usually too late by about the same fatal interval." Some one has said that "promptness is a contagious inspiration." Whether it be an inspiration, or an acquirement, it is one of the practical virtues of civilization.
There is one thing that is almost as sacred as the marriage relation,--that is, an appointment.

A man who fails to meet his appointment, unless he has a good reason, is practically a liar, and the world treats him as such.
"If a man has no regard for the time of other men," said Horace Greeley, "why should he have for their money?
What is the difference between taking a man's hour and taking his five dollars?
There are many men to whom each hour of the business day is worth more than five dollars." When President Washington dined at four, new members of Congress invited to dine at the White House would sometimes arrive late, and be mortified to find the President eating.

"My cook," Washington would say, "never asks if the visitors have arrived, but if the hour has arrived." When his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance by saying that his watch was too slow, Washington replied, "Then you must get a new watch, or I another secretary." Franklin said to a servant who was always late, but always ready with an excuse, "I have generally found that the man who is good at an excuse is good for nothing else." Napoleon once invited his marshals to dine with him, but, as they did not arrive at the moment appointed, he began to eat without them.