When a child, he became impatient of his father's long grace at table, and asked him if he could not say grace over a whole cask once for all, and save time.

He wrote some of his best productions on shipboard, such as his "Improvement of Navigation" and "Smoky Chimneys." What a lesson there is in Raphael's brief thirty-seven years to those who plead "no time" as an excuse for wasted lives! Great men have ever been misers of moments.

Cicero said: "What others give to public shows and entertainments, nay, even to mental and bodily rest, I give to the study of philosophy." Lord Bacon's fame springs from the work of his leisure hours while Chancellor of England.

During an interview with a great monarch, Goethe suddenly excused himself, went into an adjoining room and wrote down a thought for his "Faust," lest it should be forgotten.

Sir Humphry Davy achieved eminence in spare moments in an attic of an apothecary's shop.