Instead
of that, he stood behind her chair like her lackey all day: for his dove
was as desperate a gambler as any in Europe. It was not that she bet very
heavily, but that she bet every day and all day. She began in the
afternoon, and played till midnight if there was a table going. She knew
no day of religion--no day of rest. She won, and she lost: her own
fortune and her husband's stood the money drain; but how about the golden
hours? She was losing her youth and wasting her soul. Yet the
administration gave her a warning; they did not allow the irretrievable
hours to be stolen from her with a noiseless hand. At All Souls' College,
Oxford, in the first quadrangle, grave, thoughtful men raised to the top
story, two hundred years ago, a grand sundial, the largest, perhaps, and
noblest in the kingdom. They set it on the face of the Quad, and wrote
over the long pointer in large letters of gold, these words, "Pereunt et
imputantur," which refer to the hours indicated below, and mean
literally, "They perish, and go down to our account;" but really imply a
little more, viz., that "they are wasted, and go to our debit." These are
true words and big words--bigger than any royal commissioner has uttered
up to date--and reach the mind through the senses, and have warned the
scholars of many a generation not to throw away the seed-time of their
youth, which never can come twice to any man.
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