One of the things that struck him about the city was its
heedlessness of Time. On every side he saw people spending it
without adequate return. Perhaps he was young and doctrinaire:
but he devised this theory for himself--all time is wasted that
does not give you some awareness of beauty or wonder. In other
words, "the days that make us happy make us wise," he said to
himself, quoting Masefield's line. On that principle, he asked,
how much time is wasted in this city? Well, here are some six
million people. To simplify the problem (which is permitted to
every philosopher) let us (he said) assume that 2,350,000 of
those people have spent a day that could be called, on the whole,
happy: a day in which they have had glimpses of reality; a day in
which they feel satisfaction. (That was, he felt, a generous
allowance. ) Very well, then, that leaves 3,650,000 people whose
day has been unfruitful: spent in uncongenial work, or in sorrow,
suffering, and talking nonsense. This city, then, in one day, has
wasted 10,000 years, or 100 centuries. One hundred centuries
squandered in a day! It made him feel quite ill, and he tore up
the scrap of paper on which he had been figuring.

This was a new, disconcerting way to think of the subject. We are
accustomed to consider Time only as it applies to ourselves,
forgetting that it is working upon everyone else simultaneously.
Why, he thought with a sudden shock, if only 36,500 people in
this city have had a thoroughly spendthrift and useless day, that
means a net loss of a century! If the War, he said to himself,
lasted over 1,500 days and involved more than 10,000,000 men, how
many aeons--He used to think about these things during quiet
evenings in the top-floor room at Mrs. Purp's. Occasionally he
went home at night still wearing his store clothes, because it