Another question much discussed in our time concerns the division of one’s working day. In great cities with their vast distances, in the case of unmarried persons engaged in more or less mechanical tasks, and in the case of all people who regard their work as a burden to be thrown off as soon as possible, there is some advantage in working continuously and without interruption. This is what we are in the habit of calling the English method. It is never possible, however, to accomplish in this way so much intellectual work of a productive character as may be done under the Swiss custom of a pause at midday. No one can continuously, or even with momentary pauses, devote himself for six or eight hours to work of an intellectual character. Even if he allow himself an hour’s interval, the sense of strain remains, together with an abbreviation of time for work in the afternoon. On the other hand, under the Swiss custom, it is perfectly easy to work for ten or eleven hours a day,--four in the morning, four in the afternoon, and two or three in the evening, and few of us could accomplish our work in that eight-hour day of which we hear so much, although we have not the honor of being reckoned as of the class known as “working-people.” The next essential point is not to have too much fussiness about one’s work, or, in other words, not to permit oneself elaborate preparations as to time, place, surroundings, inclination, or mood. The inclination to work comes of itself when one has begun his work, and it is even true that a kind of fatigue with which one often begins--unless, indeed, it has some positive or physical cause--disappears as one seriously attacks his work, and does not simply, as it were, defend himself from it. “_Begin with cheerfulness thy task Nor ask how it may end, Farther than all that thou couldst ask Its issues surely tend._”