Not very well," laughed his companion. "I suppose the majority of this
rushing mob is aiming to arrive somewhere at a specified time. There are
probably men with business engagements; women with dressmakers' and
dentists' appointments; students hastening to lectures; people going for
trains and cars. You may be reasonably certain it is the clock that is
spurring them forward. Earlier in the day the throngs would have been
denser than this, for then we should have seen the workers who pour into
the city every morning. As it is there are quite enough of them. So it
goes from dawn until dusk. Everybody moves on schedule and it is
precisely because the day is cut up into this checkerboard of hours that
we can fit our work and play together and accomplish so much in it."

"It doesn't leave us much time for play," suggested Christopher
mischievously.

"No, I am afraid it doesn't--not enough time. Somehow the proportions
have become distorted. We consider play almost a waste of time and with
life short as it is, to fool time away has become little short of a sin.
Certainly to waste another person's time is criminal--the actual
stealing of a valuable commodity that can never be replaced."

"People who are late never seem to consider themselves thieves," grinned
Christopher.

"They ought to," McPhearson answered solemnly. "Everybody's time has a
money equivalent in these days. If a man keeps me waiting or talks my
time away, he robs me of five or ten or twenty dollars, according to the
length of the interval he has kept me from my work."

"Great Scot!" exclaimed the boy in consternation. "At that rate I've run
up a whale of a bill."

McPhearson laughed at the ejaculation.

"Cheer up, son! I shall not attach your bank account yet," said he. "You
see, when I talk to you I can work at the same time, which puts quite a
different phase on the matter; and when I cannot both work and talk, why
I stop talking. But if I were with some one else it might be my work
that would have to stop, and my talk go on, and that would make all the
difference."

"Sure!"

"It is useless for us to kick against the rush of the age in which we
live," continued McPhearson. "We are here and must move with the tide.
But if we had been born a few hundred years ago, one day would have been
so like another that to waste moments or even hours would not have
greatly mattered. In fact, people expected to waste time and wait about
for nearly everything th