He had no idea that the master's eye
was upon him, till he finds himself suddenly supplanted at the job. In
a trice, it is done; and his master leaves him to digest the
stimulant. Now, a man comes up to tell him of some plan he has in his
mind, for improving something in his own department of the business.
"Yes, thank you, that's a good idea;" and putting half-a-crown into
his hand, he passes on. In another place he finds a man idling. You
can soon see, that of all spectacles this is the one least to his
mind. "If you waste five minutes, that is not much; but probably if
you waste five minutes yourself, you lead some one else to waste five
minutes, and that makes ten. If a third follow your example, that
makes a quarter of an hour. Now, there are about a hundred and eighty
of us here; and if every one wasted five minutes in a day, what would
it come to? Let me see. Why, it would be fifteen hours; and fifteen
hours a day would be ninety hours--about eight days, working-time, in
a week; and in a year, would be four hundred days. Do you think we
could ever stand waste like that?" The poor loiterer is utterly
confounded. He had no idea of eating up fifteen hours, much less four
hundred days, of his good employer's time; and he never saw before how
fast five minutes could be multiplied.
Pages:
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78