How to Live on 24 Hours a Day: Large Print

"Yes, he's one of those men that don't know how to manage. Good situation. Regular income.Quite enough for luxuries as well as needs. Not really extravagant. And yet the fellow's always indifficulties. Somehow he gets nothing out of his money. Excellent flat-half empty Always looks asif he'd had the brokers in. New suit-old hat Magnificent necktie-baggy trousers Asks you todinner: cut glass-bad mutton, or Turkish coffee-cracked cup He can't understand it. Explanationsimply is that he fritters his income away. Wish I had the half of it I'd show him-"So we have most of us criticised, at one time or another, in our superior way.We are nearly all chancellors of the exchequer: it is the pride of the moment. Newspapers arefull of articles explaining how to live on such-and-such a sum, and these articles provoke acorrespondence whose violence proves the interest they excite. Recently, in a daily organ, a battleraged round the question whether a woman can exist nicely in the country on L85 a year. I have seenan essay, "How to live on eight shillings a week." But I have never seen an essay, "How to live ontwenty-four hours a day." Yet it has been said that time is money. That proverb understates the case.Time is a great deal more than money. If you have time you can obtain money-usually. But thoughyou have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you cannot buy yourself aminute more time than I have, or the cat by the fire has.Philosophers have explained space. They have not explained time. It is the inexplicable rawmaterial of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a dailymiracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe ofyour life It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. A highly singular commodity, showeredupon you in a manner as singular as the commodity itself For remark No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more orless than you receive.Talk about an ideal democracy In the realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, and noaristocracy of intellect. Genius is never rewarded by even an extra hour a day. And there is nopunishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply willnever be withheld from you. No mysterious power will say: -"This man is a fool, if not a knave. Hedoes not deserve time; he shall be cut off at the meter." It is more certain than consols, and paymentof income is not affected by Sundays. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to getinto debt You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste to-morrow; it is kept for you.You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you