nd
its sun. But that is the measurement of time, not time itself. How would
you describe time?"

The Big Business Man smiled. "Time," he said, "is what keeps everything
from happening at once."

"Very clever," laughed the Chemist.

The Doctor leaned forward earnestly. "I should say," he began, "that
time is the rate at which we live--the speed at which we successively
pass through our existence from birth to death. It's very hard to put
intelligibly, but I think I know what I mean," he finished somewhat
lamely.

"Exactly so. Time is a rate of life-progress, different for every
individual and only made standard because we take the time-duration of
the earth's revolution around the sun, which is constant, and
arbitrarily say: 'That is thirty-one million five hundred thousand odd
seconds.'"

"Is time different for every individual?" asked the Banker
argumentatively.

"Think a moment," returned the Chemist. "Suppose your brain were to work
twice as fast as mine. Suppose your heart beat twice as fast, and all
the functions of your body were accelerated in a like manner. What we
call a second would certainly seem to you twice as long. Further than
that, it actually would be twice as long, so far as you were concerned.
Your digestion, instead of taking perhaps four hours, would take two.
You would eat twice as often. The desire for sleep would overtake you
every twelve hours instead of twenty-four, and you would be satisfied
with four hours of unconsciousness instead of eight. In short, you would
soon be living a cycle of two days every twenty-four hours. Time then,
as we measure it, for you at least would have doubled--you would be
progressing through life at twice the rate that I am through mine."

"That may be theoretically true," the Big Business Man put in.
"Practically, though, it has never happened to any one."

"Of course not, to such a great degree as the instance I put. No one,
except in disease, has ever doubled our average rate of life-progress,
and lived it out as a balanced, otherwise normal existence. But there is
no question that to some much smaller degree we all of us differ one
from the other. The difference, however, is so comparatively slight,
that we can each one reconcile it to the standard measurement of time.
And so, outwardly, time is the same for all of us. But inwardly, why, we
none of us conceive a minute or an hour to be the same! How do you know
how long a minute is to me? More than th