THE WASTE OF TIME AND DAYLIGHT.
THE arrangement of one's time is a familiar cause of self-reproach. We do not map out our days, perhaps, so as to yield the best results in work and the greatest amount of leisure for play. We accordingly re-map them,—generally with no better results. Then we reach the stage of wondering whether the reason for failure is within ourselves, and has, after all, nothing to do with degrees of skill in making time- tables. Do we work at less high pressure than others ? Are we like those men of letters who are said to be unable to write unless a printer's "devil" stands at their elbow ? Are we unable to concentrate our attention unless the insensible pressure exerted by the consciousness of time almost lapsed is attacking our nerves ? Can it be that some people auto- matically supply their own nerve-pressure ? And if so, is this a constitutional effect—a manifestation of a headlong tem- perament—or one of mental discipline ? Is it one for which they are to be admired, or only to be envied ? These are questions which concern every man who finds that he has too little time for his daily task, and if they are less commonly discussed than diets, it is because they are more elusive, less capable of analysis. In the minds of all of us they are quite as vital. How many of us have not tacitly resented the existence of those invidious persons who "have time for everything," who "dine out" continually yet accomplish a prodigious amount of work, who never refuse an invitation to shoot or play at games yet never let their work fall into arrears ? It is as though fairies polished off their work for them while they slept. But do they sleep P Or, rather, how much do they sleep P And thus we arrive at the cognate but not less difficult problem of sleep. Indeed, this belongs inseparably to one's arrangement of time, because the less one sleeps the more time one will have to dispose of. On the other hand, an insufficiency of sleep must injure the quality of one's work. This is a comforting thought which at the last moment may considerably temper self-reproach. We have received two pamphlets which bear on these matters from quite different standpoints.
Let us take first the pamphlet called "The Early Bird : Why to Rise Early, and How" (David Nutt, is.) The cover bears a picture of the early bird in happy possession of a very large worm. Really, if the author had never heard of the gloss which illuminates the well-known proverb from the point of view of the worm, he could hardly have begged more questions than he does in his pamphlet. "Everybody," says the preface, "must have noticed at one time or another how much one can accomplish when one rises an hour earlier in the morning, and how much better in temper one is. If an occasional hour makes so great a difference, what advantages must there not be in two extra hours per- manently gained every day ? " But if the thing is as easy as this, there is no limit to the logic of it. Why stop at two hours ? Why not gain three, four, or five ? After begging several more questions, the author redness his argument to the rule : "Rise in summer at five, in winter at six." He recognises the appalling disparity between the attractions of a summer and a winter morning, and tries to make goad the defects of the latter with the allurements of a warm fire, hot cocoa, a bright lamp, and a cigar. He says seven hours' sleep is enough for an adult. This is the point above all which we should like to have argued. All the old proverbs, we fancy, underestimate the amount of sleep necessary. We are not sure that the nearest approach to truth was not made by the Bishop who said : "When you are young take all the sleep you want ; when you are old take all you can get." To sleep when sleep is needed is not waste of time. That, at all events, is certain. To talk as though two hours docked from one's sleeping-time were two hours saved is as though one should argue that the difference between the products of a twelve hours' working-day and of an eight hours' working-day were preeieely the difference between twelve and
eight. The meanest economist knows better than that. The writer of the pamphlet assumes not only that time not spent in sleep is time saved, but that work done in the time snatched from waste was worth doing. We cannot agree. Lamb was ready to wager that Milton's " Morning Hymn in Paradise" was written at midnight, and we venture to believe that this pamphlet was written when the author might profitably have been asleep. We object, of course, only to the author's logic, not to his plea for a habit of early rising. Any one Who has walked through sleeping English villages on a bright summer morning will remember moments when be felt not less con- temptuous than the author of men's purblind indifference to a glorious pleasure.
Lamb, of course, ridiculed the habit of "getting up with the sun," and declared that he never did it without suffering for it. But though it would be an impertinence to suppose that the sun was created in order to regulate our retiring and uprising, there is no reason why we should not arrange our time so as to fit in rather better with its inevitable movements. We are not meant by Providence always to sleep when the sun is gone, and always to wake and work when he is present, or we should have too much work in summer and too little in winter, when we are more inclined, and perhaps better able, to perform it. And, besides, in the Arctic circle no logical scheme of life at all would be possible. Man would have to believe himself a dormouse by the decree of Nature. How far can we adapt our present division of time in order to make more use of the sun ? We have before us a pamphlet written by Mr. William Willett, who has a scheme to which we see no objection what- ever, except that it will be difficult to bestir a conservative people—a people who are conservative even in their anomalies —to adopt it :—
" For nearly half the year," writes Mr. Willett, "the sun shines upon the land, for several hours each day, while we are asleep, and is rapidly nearing the horizon, having already passed its western limit, when we reach home after the work of the day is over. Under the most favourable circumstances there then remains only a brief spell of declining daylight in which to spend the short period of leisure at our disposal. Now, if some of the hours of wasted sunlight could be withdrawn from the beginning and added to the end of the day, how many advantages wOuld be gained by all, and particularly by those who spend in the open air, when light permits them to do so, whatever time they have at their command, after the duties of the day have been discharged. By a simple expedient these advantages can be secured. We can, if we like, have eighty minutes more daylight after 6 p.m. every day during May, June, July and August, and an average of forty-five minutes more every day during April and September. The expedient which I venture to propose is that at 2 a.m. on each of four Sunday mornings in April, standard time shall advance twenty minutes; and on each of four Sundays in September shall recede twenty minutes, or, in other words, that for eight Sundays of twenty-four hours each, we shall substitute four, each twenty minutes less than twenty-four hours, and four, each twenty minutes more than twenty-four hours. (Another means of arriving at approximately the same end would be to alter the clock thirty minutes on six Sundays, the last three in April and the first three in September.) Astonishing as it may seem, this is the whole cost of the scheme. We lose nothing, and gain most substantially. Having made up our minds to be satisfied on four occasions with a Sunday twenty-three hours and forty minutes long, or twenty-three hours and thirty minutes long on only three occasions, the advantages aimed at follow automatically, without any trouble whatever; everything will go on just as it does now, except that as the later hours of the day come round they will bring more light with them. Those who have travelled by sea east or west will remember how easily they accommodated themselves to the frequent alterations of time on board ship."
Mr. Willett calculates that on an average two hundred and ten hours of daylight are wasted every year by every person. The expense of the artificial light used in this time might be saved bodily. Let us bring home to our minds the significance of Mr. Willett's proposal by applying it. The man who left off work at 5 p.m. would have as much daylight before him as the man has now who leaves off at 3.40 p.m. On Sater-
days, if he left off at 12 o'clock, it would be equal to stopping work under the present conditions at 10.40. If there are any material objections to this scheme, we should be glad to know of them.
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