to bring him a new eagle or a new leopard for a pet, and his father came home night after night and didn’t bring it, the Prehistoric Boy could not say, “When will you bring it, sir?” because there was no when, so he may have asked a great many other questions, and been told to sit in the back of the cave until he could do better. Nobody can have known how long to boil eggs or to bake bread, and people must have had to come to breakfast and just sit and wait and wait until things were done. Worst of all, nobody can have known that time is a thing to use and not to waste. Since they could not measure it, they could not of course tell how fast it was slipping away, and they must have thought that time was theirs to do with what they pleased, instead of turning it all into different things—this piece into sleep, this piece into play, this piece into tasks and exercise and fun. Just as, in those days, they probably thought that food is to be eaten because it tastes good and not because it makes the body grow, so they thought that time was a thing to be thrown away and not to be used, every bit—which is, of course, a prehistoric way to think. And nobody can have known about birthdays, and no
