Alexandria Daily Advertiser

From the Balance.

No serious and attentive reader can look on a page of Young's "Night Thoughts," without finding a striking and moral lesson. The following lines have been read and quoted until they are familiar to almost every person; still they may be again quoted and again read, and they will still be found to furnish new food for reflection:

"The bell strikes ONE. We take no note of time
But from its loss. To give it then a tongue
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke.
I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departed hours.
Where are they? With the years beyond the flood.
It is the signal that demands dispatch."

A clock, morally considered, is, perhaps, one of the most useful monitors that the genius of man can furnish. Look at it—you behold the progress of time. Hear it strike—you are told another hour is gone. What is the age of man? At best but a few years. Years are composed of days: days of hours: hours of minutes and minutes of seconds. Man's life is made up of seconds: a single second is all that separates him from eternity! Look at yonder clock! How fast these seconds succeed each other! How rapidly they come and go! Yet every one that passes shortens life. Therefore, man, be diligent.

MENTOR.