Too Late — People Who Are Never On Time

1874

Some people are always too late, and therefore accomplish through life nothing worth naming. If they promise to meet you at such an hour, they are never present until thirty minutes after. No matter how important the business is to either yourself or to him, he is just as tardy. If he takes a passage in the steamboat, he arrives just as the boat has left the wharf, and the train has started a few minutes before he arrives. His dinner has been waiting for him so long that the cook is out of patience. This course the character we have described always pursues. He is never in season at a church, at a place of business, at his meals, or in his bed. Persons of such habits we cannot but despise. Always speak in season, and be ready at the appointed hour. We would not give a fig for a man who is not punctual to his engagements, and who never makes up his mind to a certain course till the time is lost. Those who hang back, hesitate and tremble — who are never at hand for a journey, a trading, a sweetheart or anything else — are poor sloths, and are ill-calculated to get a living in this stirring world.

Comment (2007): Yes, that is exactly true. It's not that I "despise" people who are always late, like the article says, but I don't care for the habit. A few minutes, maybe. But if you have an appointment, try to make it. I was in school and there was a classmate who was always late. Then it was his responsibility to take a few of us to a class outing. Since I'm a clock watcher and usually early, I probably would've been the first one there. But this nitwit, late as always, doesn't show up until way past the time he was supposed to be there to pick us up. So naturally we get to the class outing, a field trip kind of thing where people were actually going to meet us for a tour, way late. It's embarrassing. I actually knew then something of this guy's post graduate life and work, but only by hearsay. And what was it that I heard the people he worked with complaining about? Always late!