How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Page: 1

by Arnold Bennett




PREFACE TO THIS EDITION

This preface, though placed at the beginning, as a preface must be,
should be read at the end of the book.

I have received a large amount of correspondence concerning this
small work, and many reviews of it--some of them nearly as long
as the book itself--have been printed. But scarcely any of the
comment has been adverse. Some people have objected to a
frivolity of tone; but as the tone is not, in my opinion, at all
frivolous, this objection did not impress me; and had no weightier
reproach been put forward I might almost have been persuaded that
the volume was flawless! A more serious stricture has, however,
been offered--not in the press, but by sundry obviously sincere
correspondents--and I must deal with it. A reference to page 43
will show that I anticipated and feared this disapprobation. The
sentence against which protests have been made is as follows:--
"In the majority of instances he [the typical man] does not
precisely feel a passion for his business; at best he does not dislike
it. He begins his business functions with some reluctance, as late
as he can, and he ends them with joy, as early as he can. And his
engines, while he is engaged in his business, are seldom at their
full 'h.p.'"

I am assured, in accents of unmistakable sincerity, that there are
many business men--not merely those in high positions or with fine
prospects, but modest subordinates with no hope of ever being
much better off--who do enjoy their business functions, who do not
shirk them, who do not arrive at the office as late as possible and

depart as early as possible, who, in a word, put the whole of their
force into their day's work and are genuinely fatigued at the end
thereof.

I am ready to believe it. I do believe it. I know it. I always knew
it. Both in London and in the provinces it has been my lot to spend
long years in subordinate situations of business; and the fact did
not escape me that a certain proportion of my peers showed what
amounted to an honest passion for their duties, and that while
engaged in those duties they were really *living* to the fullest