PANAMA THE ISTHMUS AND THE CANAL BY C. H. FORBES-LINDSAY AUTHOR OF "India, Past and Present", "The Philippines, Under Spanish ILLUSTRATED PHILADELPHIA THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO. To the MEN ON THE ISTHMUS, WHO AMIDST DIFFICULTIES AND DISCOMFORTS ARE DEVOTING THE BEST THAT'S IN THEM TO THEIR COUNTRY'S WORK. Affected dispatch is one of the most dangerous things to business that can be: it is like that which the physicians call predigestion, or hasty digestion, which is sure to fill the body full of crudities, and secret seeds of disease: therefore measure not dispatch by the time of sitting, but by the advancement of the business; and, as in races, it is not the long stride, or high lift, that makes the speed; so in business, the keeping close to the matter, and not taking of it too much at once, procureth dispatch. It is the care of some only to come off speedily for the time, or to contrive some false periods of business, because they may seem men of dispatch; but it is one thing to abbreviate by contracting, another by cutting off.. The ripeness or unripeness of the occasion must be well weighed; and generally it is good to commit the beginnings of all great actions to Argus with his hundred eyes, and the ends to Briareus with his hundred hands; first to watch and then to speed. |
