) that has led
me to the minute practical examination of daily time-expenditure.

II

THE DESIRE TO EXCEED ONE'S PROGRAMME

"But," someone may remark, with the English disregard of everything
except the point, "what is he driving at with his twenty-four hours a
day? I have no difficulty in living on twenty-four hours a day. I do
all that I want to do, and still find time to go in for newspaper
competitions. Surely it is a simple affair, knowing that one has only
twenty-four hours a day, to content one's self with twenty-four hours a
day!"

To you, my dear sir, I present my excuses and apologies. You are
precisely the man that I have been wishing to meet for about forty
years. Will you kindly send me your name and address, and state your
charge for telling me how you do it? Instead of me talking to you, you
ought to be talking to me. Please come forward. That you exist, I am
convinced, and that I have not yet encountered you is my loss.
Meanwhile, until you appear, I will continue to chat with my companions
in distress--that innumerable band of souls who are haunted, more or
less painfully, by the feeling that the years slip by, and slip by, and
slip by, and that they have not yet been able to get their lives into
proper 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 skeleton at
the feast of all our enjoyments. We go to the theatre and laugh; but
between the acts it raises a skinny finger at us. We rush violently
for the last train, and while we are cooling a long age on the platform
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 urge that this feeling of
continuous looking forward, of aspiration, is part of life itself, and
inseparable from life itself. True!

But there are degrees. A man may desire to go to Mecca. His
conscience tells him that he ought to go to Mecca. He fares forth,
either by the aid of Cook's, or unassisted; he may probably never reach
Mecca; he may drown before he gets to Port Said; he may perish
ingloriously on the coast of the Red Sea; his desire may remain
eternally frustrate. Unfulfilled aspiration may always trouble him.
But he will not be tormented in the same way as the