Punctuality is a neccessary habit in all public affairs in civilized society.Without it,nothing
could ever be brought to a conclusion;everything would be in a state of chaos.Only in a
sparsely-populated rural community is it possible to disregard it.In ordinary living,there can
be some tolerance of unpunctuality.The intellectual,who is working on some abstruse problem,has
everything coordinated and organized for the matter in hand.He is therefore forgiven,if late for
a dinner party.But people are often reproached for unpunctuality when their only fault is tempted
to finish a job before setting out to keep an appointment.If no accidents occur on the way,like
punctured tyres,diversions of traffic,sudden descent of fog,they will be on time.They are often
more industrious,useful citizens than those who are never late.The over-punctual can be as much
as trial to others as the unpunctual.The guest who arrives half an hour too soon is the greatest
nuisance.Some friends of my family had this irritating habit.The only thing to do was ask them to
come half an hour late than the other guests.Then they arrived just when we wanted them.
If you are catching a train,it is always better to be comfortably early than even a fraction of a
minute too late.Although being early may mean wasting a little time,this will be less than if you
miss the train and thave to wait an hour or more for the next one;and you avoid the frustration
of arriving at the very moment when the train is drawing out of the station and being unable to
get on it.An even harder situation is to be on the platform in good time for a train and still to
see it go off without you.Such an wxperience befell a certain young girl the first time she was
travelling alone.
She entered the station twenty minutes before the train was due,since her parents had impressed
upon her that it would be unforgivable to miss it and cause the friends with whom she was going
to stay to make two journeys to meet her.She gave her luggage to a porter and showed him her
ticket.To her horror he said that she was two hours too soon.She felt in her handbag for the
piece of paper on which her father had written down all the details of the journey and gave it
to the porter.He agreed that a train did come into the station at the time on the paper and
that it did stop,but noly to take on mail,not passengers.The girl asked to see a limetable,feeling
sure that her father could not have made such a mistake.The porter went to fetch one and
arrived back with the station master,who produced it with a flourish and pointed out a microscopic
'o' beside the time of the arrival of the train at his station;this little 'o' indicated that the
train only stopped for mail.Just as that moment the train came into the station.The girl,tears
streaming down her face,begged to be allowed to slip into the guard's van.But the station master
was adamant:rules could not be broken.And she had to watch that train disappear towards her
destination while she was left behind.