victories. Yet the rule is, that precipitation comes of levity.
Eagerness is shallow. Haste is but half-earnest. If an apple is found
to grow mellow and seemingly ripe much before its fellows on the same
bough, you will probably discover, upon close inspection, that there is
a worm in it.

To be sure, any time is too soon with those who dote upon Never. There
are such as find Nature precipitate and God forward. They would have
effect limp at untraversable distances behind cause; they would keep
destiny carefully abed and feed it upon spoon-victual. They play duenna
to the universe, and are perpetually on the _qui vive_, lest it escape,
despite their care, into improprieties. The year is with them too fast
by so much as it removes itself from the old almanac. The reason is that
_they_ are the old almanac. Or, more distinctly, they are at odds with
universal law, and, knowing that to them it can come only as judgment
and doom, they, not daring to denounce the law itself, fall to the trick
of denouncing its agents as visionaries, and its effects as premature.
The felon always finds the present an unseasonable day on which to be
hanged: the sheriff takes another view of the matter.

But the error of these consists, not in realizing good purposes too
slowly and patiently, but in failing effectually to purpose good at
all. To those who truly are making it the business of their lives to
accomplish worthy aims, this counsel cannot come amiss,--TAKE TIME.
Take a year in which to thread a needle, rather than go dabbing at the
texture with the naked thread. And observe, that there is an excellence
and an efficacy of slowness, no less than of quickness. The armadillo
is equally secure of his prey with the hawk or leopard; and Sir Charles
Bell mentions a class of thieves in India, who, having, through
extreme patience and command of nerve, acquired the power of motion