One of them seemed suddenly to detach itself--he could almost
have sworn afterwards that he didn't reach out for it, but that it
hopped down into his hand....
"Sitting Up For The Dawn"! It was one of that sociological series by
which H.G. W*lls had first touched his soul to finer issues when he
was at the 'Varsity.
He opened it with tremulous fingers. Could it re-exert its old sway
over him now?
The page he had opened it at was headed "General Cessation Day," and
he began to read....
"The re-casting of the calendar on a decimal basis seems a simple
enough matter at first sight. But even here there are details that
will have to be thrashed out....
"Mr. Edgar Dibbs, in his able pamphlet 'Ten to the Rescue,'[1]
advocates a twenty-hour day, and has drawn up an ingenious scheme for
accelerating the motion of this planet by four in every twenty-four
hours, so that the alternations of light and darkness shall be
re-adjusted to the new reckoning. I think such re-adjustment would
be indispensable (though I know there is a formidable body of opinion
against me). But I am far from being convinced of the feasibility
of Mr. Dibbs' scheme. I believe the twenty-four hour day has come to
stay--anomalous though it certainly will seem in the ten-day week,
the fifty-day month, and the thousand-day year.
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