Come,
Patroon:--the appetite will not await the laziness of a wilful girl; we
will to the table.--Dost think the wind will stand at west this morning?"
Thus saying, the Alderman led the way into the little parlor, where a neat
and comfortable service invited them to break their morning fast. He was
followed by Oloff Van Staats, with a lingering step for the young man
really longed to see the windows of the pavilion open, and the fair face
of Alida smiling amid the other beautiful objects of the scene. Francois
proceeded to take such measures to arouse his mistress, as he believed to
comport with his duty to her uncle, and his own ideas of bienseance. After
some little delay, the Alderman and his guest took their seats at the
table; the former loudly protesting against the necessity of waiting for
the idle, and throwing in an occasional moral concerning the particular
merit of punctuality in domestic economy, as well as in the affairs of
commerce.
"The ancients divided time," said the somewhat pertinacious commentator,
"into years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and moments, as they
divided numbers into units, tens, hundreds, thousands, and tens of
thousands; and both with an object. If we commence at the bottom, and
employ well the moments, Mr. Van Staats, we turn the minutes into tens,
the hours into hundreds, and the weeks and months into thousands--ay! and
when there is a happy state of trade, into tens of thousands! Missing an
hour, therefore, is somewhat like dropping an important figure in a
complex calculation, and the whole labor may be useless, for want of
punctuality in one, as for want of accuracy in the other.
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