'Had you not better send your passengers on board directly ?' I asked.

'Will you not lay by me until morning ?' replied Captain Herndon.

'I will try,' I answered 'but had you not better send your passengers on board _now_ ?' 'Lay by me till morning,' again shouted Captain Herndon.
"I tried to lay by him, but at night, such was the heavy roll of the sea, I could not keep my position, and I never saw the steamer again.
In an hour and a half after he said, 'Lay by me till morning,' his vessel, with its living freight, went down.

The captain and crew and most of the passengers found a grave in the deep." Captain Herndon appreciated the value of the opportunity he had neglected when it was beyond his reach, but of what avail was the bitterness of his self-reproach when his last moments came?
How many lives were sacrificed to his unintelligent hopefulness and indecision! Like him the feeble, the sluggish, and the purposeless too often see no meaning in the happiest occasions, until too late they learn the old lesson that the mill can never grind with the water which has passed.
Such people are always a little too late or a little too early in everything they attempt.

"They have three hands apiece," said John B.
Gough; "a right hand, a left hand, and a little behindhand." As boys, they were late for school, and unpunctual in their home duties.