How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

"But," someone may remark, with the English disregard of everything except the point, "what ishe driving at with his twenty-four hours a day? I have no difficulty in living on twenty-four hours aday. I do all that I want to do, and still find time to go in for newspaper competitions. Surely it is asimple affair, knowing that one has only twenty-four hours a day, to content one's self with twentyfour hours a day "To you, my dear sir, I present my excuses and apologies. You are precisely the man that I havebeen wishing to meet for about forty years. Will you kindly send me your name and address, andstate your charge for telling me how you do it? Instead of me talking to you, you ought to be talkingto me. Please come forward. That you exist, I am convinced, and that I have not yet encounteredyou is my loss. Meanwhile, until you appear, I will continue to chat with my companions indistress-that innumerable band of souls who are haunted, more or less painfully, by the feeling thatthe years slip by, and slip by, and slip by, and that they have not yet been able to get their lives intoproper working order.If we analyse that feeling, we shall perceive it to be, primarily, one of uneasiness, of expectation, of looking forward, of aspiration. It is a source of constant discomfort, for it behaves like a skeletonat the feast of all our enjoyments. We go to the theatre and laugh; but between the acts it raises askinny finger at us. We rush violently for the last train, and while we are cooling a long age on theplatform waiting for the last train, it promenades its bones up and down by our side and inquires: "O man, what hast thou done with thy youth? What art thou doing with thine age?" You may urgethat this feeling of continuous looking forward, of aspiration, is part of life itself, and inseparablefrom life itself. Tru