How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

by Arnold Bennett

Excerpts:

"Yes, he's one of those men that don't know how to manage. Good situation. Regular income. Quite enough for luxuries as well as needs. Not really extravagant. And yet the fellow's always in difficulties. Somehow he gets nothing out of his money. Excellent flat--half empty! 

Always looks as if he'd had the brokers in. New suit--old hat! Magnificent necktie--baggy trousers! Asks you to dinner: cut glass--bad mutton, or Turkish coffee--cracked cup! He can't understand it. 

Explanation simply is that he fritters his income away. Wish I had the half of it! I'd show him--"

So we have most of us criticised, at one time or another, in our superior way.

We are nearly all chancellors of the exchequer: it is the pride of the moment. Newspapers are full of articles explaining how to live on such-and-such a sum, and these articles provoke a correspondence whose violence proves the interest they excite. 

Recently, in a daily organ, a battle raged round the question whether a woman can exist nicely in the country on L85 a year. I have seen an essay, "How to live on eight shillings a week." But I have never seen an essay, "How to live on twenty-four hours a day." Yet it has been said that time is money. 

That proverb understates the case. Time is a great deal more than money. If you have time you can obtain money--usually. 

But though you have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have, or the cat by the fire has.

Rise an hour, an hour and a half, or even two hours earlier; and--if you must--retire earlier when you can. In the matter of exceeding programmes, you will accomplish as much in one morning hour as in two evening hours. "But," you say, "I couldn't begin without some food, and servants." 

Surely, my dear sir, in an age when an excellent spirit-lamp (including a saucepan) can be bought for less than a shilling, you are not going to allow your highest welfare to depend upon the precarious immediate co-operation of a fellow creature! 

Instruct the fellow creature, whoever she may be, at night. Tell her to put a tray in a suitable position over night.

On that tray two biscuits, a cup and saucer, a box of matches and a spirit-lamp; on the lamp, the saucepan; on the saucepan, the lid-- but turned the wrong way up; on the reversed lid, the small teapot, containing a minute quantity of tea leaves. 

You will then have to strike a match--that is all. In three minutes the water boils, and you pour it into the teapot (which is already warm). In three more
minutes the tea is infused. 

You can begin your day while drinking it. These details may seem trivial to the foolish, but to the thoughtful they will not seem trivial. 

The proper, wise balancing of one's whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.