Time Enough
Elmer’s new suit had just come home.
It was brown, with dashes of green in it. It fitted him exactly, and everybody knows it makes one feel good-natured when his new clothes fit well. When he tried them on, nobody jerked his pantaloons down, said they were too short, nor twitched his jacket up and said it was too low in the neck.
He laid them carefully over the back of a chair that night before he went to bed, then got out a clean collar and a green necktie, tucked a handkerchief into the side pocket of the jacket, and surveyed them all with a satisfied look.
Morning came, bright and splendid as anybody could wish. The steamboat with flying flags stood at the wharf, and a happy company of boys and girls, dressed in white and pink and red and blue, marched through the streets to the sound of music.
The procession passed through the great gates and were all comfortably settled on the boat fifteen minutes before it was time to start.
Elmer’s home was a long walk from the church where the other scholars met, so he went directly to the steamboat landing.
He had just bought a new set of marbles. They were beauties, and when he met Will Porter, he could not resist the temptation to try his new marbles on the broad, smooth paving-stones just above the gates where no people were passing at this early hour. The game became so fascinating, that the boys played on, even after the procession had gone on board.
“Come on,” Will said; “we’ll be late.”
“Oh, no! We won’t be late. The boat will not start this quarter of an hour,” Elmer answered, aiming a great blue marble at a red one.
Now the superintendent and the teachers had warned the school many times, “The gates will be closed at seven o’clock. If you are not on the other side of them by that time, you cannot go.”
“Be prompt, boys and girls,” Mr. Willard had said as he dismissed the Sabbath-school. “Do not come hurrying along at the last minute. Our trip next Wednesday is one of our lessons, and it will teach punctuality in rather a severe manner if one of you stands sorrowfully peeping through that big gate at us, while we glide off down the river. It will certainly spoil your pleasure and ours too if you are too late.”
Not a boy who heard him thought that talk was meant for him. “‘I’ shall be in time,” they told themselves; “of course I shall.”
Elmer and Will had each a great fault. Elmer’s was procrastination. He was always saying, “Wait a minute,” “There’s plenty of time,” or “I’ll do it by and by.” Because of this habit, he was never known to be in time anywhere. His father had given him a watch at Christmas to see if that would not help him to improve, but it did not; he went on saying, “Time enough.” Everybody had to wait for him.
When the rest of the family were ready for church, he would rush through the house like a hurricane, pulling and panting, up-stairs and down, calling out:
“Oh, dear! Can’t somebody help me? Won’t Mary black my boots? Do come and fix on my collar! Has anybody seen my lesson paper?”
And so the whole house would run here and there, waiting upon one who had dawdled away the whole morning.
THE BOAT STEAMED DOWN THE RIVER.
Will’s fault was different. He had no mind of his own. He was always ruled by the person he happened to be with, and never could say “No” to anybody, no matter what his judgment or his conscience told him.
He was uneasy now, and thought they ought to go that minute, but he played on, though he did say: “It’s time to go, I know it is; the gates will be shut.”
“No, they won’t be shut either,” Elmer said, drawing out his watch; “it’s exactly ten minutes before they close. We can finish this game in five, and have plenty of time.”
Watches do not always do their duty, any more than boys. Elmer’s was five minutes slow—it must have caught the disease from him. The game went on. Will was going to win, he thought, and both boys grew excited over it; finally they fell into a slight dispute.
And—what was that? The steamboat bell! Clang! Ding, dong! Both boys scrambled up their marbles and rushed to the gate. It was shut! They shouted for the gate-keeper; he was nowhere in sight.
They cried to the captain, “Wait! Wait!”
But the clanging of the bell was their only answer.
Then the call “All aboard!”
The plank was drawn in, and the boat steamed down the river, the song of the children floating back on the breeze.
Sure enough! There they were, looking sorrowfully through the gate, just as Mr. Willard had said.
“It was all your fault,” Will said.
Then he turned and ran away as fast as he could lest Elmer should see him crying.
Elmer looked about, astonished to find himself alone and really left behind. He could not believe it possible that the boat would not turn about and take him. Everybody had always waited for him before. But there they were, speeding on their way. It was too much!
He was angry, and “so” disappointed. Left behind! And all for those miserable mean marbles! He took them from his pocket and threw them as far as he could. He would have scolded, but there was nobody there to hear. He would have cried, but he thought he was too big. Oh, what a fool he had been! Was there ever such a fool before?
He did not want to go home; he did not want to go anywhere or do anything. He sat down on a box and kicked his heels against it. What a mean old world it was!
Perhaps his good angel leaned over him just then, for his thoughts took a sudden turn:
“It was my fault,” he said to himself. “I’m always too late, and everybody’s poking at me about it. Why can’t I turn about and be like other folks! I declare I ‘will!’ I’ll begin this very day.”
He got down from his box at once and started towards home. In a little old-fashioned house which he passed lived auntie Simons, an old lady who was auntie to the whole town. She was out brushing off her front steps.
The old lady stopped, and leaning on her broom, looked over her spectacles a minute to make sure that it was really Elmer.
“Why, my child!” she said, as he came nearer. “What does all this mean? I thought you had gone to a picnic.”
“I got left,” Elmer said, his eyes fastened on the tree trunk near him.
“Now you don’t say! Too bad! Well, don’t look so downhearted. Come in and see me a spell. Come! I’m going to have flapjacks and maple syrup for breakfast, and I know you are half-starved by this time; didn’t have time to snatch only a bite, now did you?”
What boy could withstand the attractions of flapjacks and maple syrup? Besides, he really was hungry. Excitement had prevented his eating much breakfast, so in he went.
While auntie Simons helped him bountifully to smoking hot cakes and golden syrup, he told her all about it—how he came to be left, and how he had resolved to turn over a new leaf.
“Yes, it does seem foolish,” the old lady said when they sat on the porch after breakfast, “for you to lose a whole day’s pleasure just by waiting a little bit too long, when you might have gone as well as not; but what shall we say of one who puts off coming to Christ until it is too late? Don’t you, dear boy, say ‘Time enough’ to that. You can’t tell how little time there may be left. You know when the gate down by the wharf was shut on you, you had a chance to sit down and think it all over, and make up your mind that you would be all right the next time, anyhow; but you see when the door is shut at the last—in death—it is shut ‘forever.’ It is open now. Jesus says, ‘Come.’ Do not put it off, Elmer dear.”