Project Gutenberg's How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, by Arnold Bennett

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

Author: Arnold Bennett

Posting Date: October 23, 2008 [EBook #2274]
Release Date: August, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A DAY ***

Produced by Tony Adam. HTML version by Al Haines.

How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day

by

Arnold Bennett

PREFACE TO THIS EDITION

This preface, though placed at the beginning, as a preface must be,
should be read at the end of the book.

I have received a large amount of correspondence concerning this small
work, and many reviews of it--some of them nearly as long as the book
itself--have been printed. But scarcely any of the comment has been
adverse. Some people have objected to a frivolity of tone; but as the
tone is not, in my opinion, at all frivolous, this objection did not
impress me; and had no weightier reproach been put forward I might
almost have been persuaded that the volume was flawless! A more
serious stricture has, however, been offered--not in the press, but by
sundry obviously sincere correspondents--and I must deal with it. A
reference to page 43 will show that I anticipated and feared this
disapprobation. The sentence against which protests have been made is
as follows:--"In the majority of instances he [the typical man] does
not precisely feel a passion for his business; at best he does not
dislike it. He begins his business functions with some reluctance, as
late as he can, and he ends them with joy, as early as he can. And his
engines, while he is engaged in his business, are seldom at their full
'h.p.'"

I am assured, in accents of unmistakable sincerity, that there are many
business men--not merely those in high positions or with fine
prospects, but modest subordinates with no hope of ever being much
better off--who do enjoy their business functions, who do not shirk
them, who do not arrive at the office as late as possible and depart as
early as possible, who, in a word, put the whole of their force into
their day's work and are genuinely fatigued at the end th