How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Page: 6

Hotel, you cannot buy yourself a minute 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 raw material of everything. With it, all is possible;
without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, 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 of your life! It is
yours. It is the most precious of possessions. A highly singular
commodity, showered upon 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 or less than you receive.

Talk about an ideal democracy! In the realm of time there is no aristocracy
of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is never rewarded by even
an extra hour a day. And there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely
precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be
withheld from you. Mo mysterious power will say:--"This man is a fool,
if not a knave. He does not deserve time; he shall be cut off at the meter."
It is more certain than consols, and payment of income is not affected by
Sundays. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into
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.

I said the affair was a miracle. Is it not?

You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have
to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your
immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest
urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your
happiness--the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends!--
depends on that. Strange that the newspapers, so enterprising and up-to-
date as they are, are not full of "How to live on a given income of time,"