INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS 25 



especially his zest for natural history, so fostered 

 by the kind help of Darwin, he adopted a strenu- 

 ous mode of life, early rising and economising 

 the long hours thus gained to the very best 

 advantage. We shall find this a very notable 

 characteristic of the mature man — the time- 

 saving and the time-stretching faculty. His 

 day was not only several hours longer, through- 

 out his life, than that of most even of the busiest 

 men, but it was also packed with wonderful 

 closeness, and into wonderfully tight compart- 

 ments. He acquired the power of concentra- 

 tion on the subject of the moment, and developed 

 it to a very uncommon pitch, so that of him it 

 could be very rarely said that while doing one 

 thing he was thinking of another. He could 

 pass from a problem in finance or politics to a 

 question in Natural History without any effort 

 in the passage, and allowing no loose ends of 

 thoughts about the one to intrude on or interfere 

 with the unembarrassed consideration of the 

 other. 



His father gave him every encouragement in 

 his Natural History, but always maintained 

 that it stood distinctly on a lower level than 

 Astronomy and Mathematics, being essentially a 

 matter of approximation and estimate, whereas 

 they were exact Sciences. One evening, how- 

 ever, he came back from the City and said that 

 the results of the transit of Venus expedition had 

 been worked out, and that the mean distance 

 of the Earth from the Sun was 92,500,000 miles. 

 He pointed out to his father that they had been 

 brought up to believe it was 95,000,000, and 



