CHRISTOPHER ASTONISHES HIMSELF
It does not take long for news to travel, and when Christopher entered
the shop the next morning it was to find himself quite a hero. On every
hand clerks saluted him with such greetings as:
"Well, how is Sherlock Holmes to-day?"
"Have you been landing any more bandits, Mr. Christopher?"
"Joined the secret service yet, Master Christopher?"
Poor Christopher, who was none too proud of the part he had played, was
a good deal abashed; nevertheless he tried to accept the banter
cheerfully, perceiving that it was kindly intentioned. But the glory of
it paled at last, and, weary of such jests, he fled to seek out
McPhearson, who, he felt sure, would offer him no flattery.
The Scotchman was so busy toiling over the bracket clock with the chimes
that he did no more than glance up when the boy dropped down on the
stool opposite.
"I hear you did a pretty bit of work yesterday," he at last remarked.
"No, I didn't. On the contrary I was darn stupid. I had the chance to be
a hero, but I muffed it."
"They didn't seem to think so downstairs," was the clockmaker's laconic
retort.
"Oh, I didn't do much of anything, honest I didn't, Mr. McPhearson. I
just happened along at the right time--or, perhaps--at the wrong,"
explained the boy with an embarrassed laugh.
"Apparently it was decidedly at the wrong," observed the old man,
continuing to file with extreme care a bit of brass he held between his
fingers.
Christopher watched, admiring the speed and skill of his gnarled
fingers.
"How's she getting along?" ventured he after a long silence.
"She's about O. K. now. Running fine--I'm just tinkering the catch on
the door, for even Richard Parsons cannot coax things into wearing
forever. She'll go home to-day."
There was a sigh from the Scotchman.
"I do believe you're sorry to be done with her," asserted the boy
mischievously. A second later, however, he regretted his impulsive jest,
for his companion answered gravely:
"I am. I've enjoyed working on her. I'd be far sorrier, though, did I
not know she is going where she will be appreciated. The woman that owns
her watches over her as if she were a live creature--and indeed she
is--almost."
"It's nice to feel she isn't being wasted on some dumbbell, isn't it?"
declared Christopher, catching the old man's enthusiasm.
"She's not being wasted. I can answer for that. I know the house where
she lives well, for I've been there times without number to regulate
clocks. There are some beauties and they have the history of every one
of them--the name of the maker, the date when they were made, the place,
and all. I like to handle clocks for people like that. It shows they are
intelligent and care. Some folks do not know one thing about their
clocks. They won't even take the trouble to wind them regularly.
Nevertheless they are the first ones to fuss if the poor things fail to
keep good time. I wonder how they would like, for example, to have their
meals served to them just whenever somebody happened to think of it."
Christopher nodded agreement with the sentiment.
"To be sure," McPhearson continued, "people sometimes own clocks that
aren't worth much pains. Still, it's only right to keep them cleaned and
help them to do the best they can, even at that. All clocks can't be
Tompions, or Grahams, or Quares, any more than we can all be Washingtons
and Lincolns. It isn't their fault nor ours."
"You care a lot about clocks, don't you?" meditated Christopher aloud.
"I suppose I do," the old man confessed. "Clocks have come to be almost
people to me; in fact, some of them are a good sight better than people.
By that, I mean they have finer traits. They go quietly ahead and do
their work without bluster or complaint. When they don't it is usually
because something's the matter with them. They are patient, faithful,
useful, and were they to be taken out of the world they would be
terribly missed and would leave it a pretty higgledy-piggledy place."
"I guess there is no danger of the world being without clocks," returned
Christopher comfortably. "There seem to be plenty to go round."
"But there weren't always plenty," broke in McPhearson quickly. "You
chance to live in a fortunate age, young man, and do not half appreciate
your blessings. Had you lived a few hundred years ago you would have had
no clocks."
"Mercy on us! Why, how on earth did people manage to get on without
them?"
"Primitive persons studied the sun and calculated by that," McPhearson
responded. "Then some ingenious creature thought out the sundial whereby
the hour could be gauged by a shadow; also marks were made where the sun
would strike at a given time--perhaps at noon. Such a notch was called
the noon mark."
"Oh, gee! But suppose there was no sun?"
"Exactly! Now you have put your finger on the pulse of the dilemma! What
was to be done when there was no sun? The sundial at best was none too
correct. In different latitudes, too, different markings were needed.
Moreover, a sundial, to be of practical value, had to be kept steady.
What was to happen on shipboard? On cloudy days? At night?"
"The sundial was about as much good as a fan would be in Greenland,"
grinned Christopher.
"Yes, just about. It was these sunless hours that were the problem."
"Humph! I never thought of that in my life."
"Most of us don't."
"I suppose that was why people began making clocks."
"You don't for a moment imagine men leaped from sundials to clocks, do
you?" interrogated the Scotchman quizzically.
"Oh, perhaps not such nice ones as ours," conceded the boy with easy
unconcern. "Still they had to tell time somehow."
"Clocks were a long way off from suns and shadows."
"But what did come next?"
"To sundials, you mean? Well, for a long, long time people could think
of nothing better. They introduced trifling remedies now and then,
however. For example, in the seventeenth century they evolved a portable
dial that could be carried from place to place. Sometimes this was
combined with a compass; sometimes it was made in the form of a ring. It
was an awkward substitute for the watch, but it was, nevertheless,
great-great-great-grandfather to it. Yet advantageous as it was to be
able to carry the time about with you, it did nothing to lessen the
long, unmarked stretch of darkness that descended upon the earth every
night. How was man to solve that difficulty?"
"How indeed?"
"That was his puzzle--his nut to crack. Throughout the ages it has been
conundrums like these that have taxed human ingenuity and made of life
such an alluring adventure. On the conquering of difficulties
civilization has been built up. Well, man now attacked this problem of
telling time. He did not aspire to narrow it down to any very fine
point, for at that period of history one day was very like another, and
he was a leisurely being with little to do but eat, sleep, fight or
hunt. Notwithstanding this, however, he did want to know _when_ it was
noon; _when_ it would be day. King Alfred, one of the English monarchs,
hit upon a plan for telling the hours of the night by means of tall
candles, made to burn a definite interval. When, for example, one of his
candles burned out, he knew that four or six hours had passed. Other
persons went further and had candles marked off into hours with black
and white wax--"
"That was a clever scheme!"
"Clever, yes; and all very well for kings who could afford to burn wax
tapers night after night. But there were, alas, many unfortunates who
couldn't. Accordingly the obstacle persisted, and urged the world on to
the next step up the time-telling ladder."
"And what was that?" demanded Christopher with interest.
"Telling time by water."
"By _water_! But how?"
"It was not so difficult as it sounds. In reality it was quite a simple
plan. The ancients would take a jar, make a tiny hole in the bottom of
it, fill it with water, and let the water drip slowly out. Having
measured how long it would take to empty the jar, they had a sort of
water clock."
"Bravo! That was certainly easy."
"Easy and far better than the sundial, too, for water would drip either
in light or darkness, on cloudy days as well as bright ones. By means of
marks on the jar, shorter intervals of time could also be determined.
The receptacle, however, had to be kept filled and the hole free so
there should be no variation in the regularity of the dripping. This
water clock was called a _clepsydra_, the name being taken from two
Greek words meaning 'thief of water.' Well, as you may imagine, the
populace were delighted with this contrivance. It seemed as if now they
certainly had the prize for which they had been searching. Moreover,
with the water clock a new factor in time came into being. Instead of
telling _when_, as the sundial did, the clepsydra, by measuring a given
interval, told _how long_, which was a very different thing indeed. In
other words it began to draw people's attention to the duration of
time."
"That is different, isn't it?" mused the boy.
"Quite another matter altogether," McPhearson said. "Immediately the
Athenians, who had invented the device, put it to work and proceeded to
limit the length of time speakers should talk in their courts of
justice. Evidently then, as now, men were fond of making speeches and
arguing and became so fascinated by hearing themselves talk that they
forgot to stop. Now here was something that would put a check on them.
When a case came up for a hearing, the accuser was allowed the first jar
of water, the accused the second, and the judge the third. Stationed
beside the clepsydra was a special officer whose duty it was not only to
fill it but to stop the flow whenever a speaker was interrupted, thereby
making certain he was not cheated of any of the time due him."
"A bully scheme!" Christopher remarked.
"It worked," McPhearson answered. "With such strict rules you may be
sure there was none of the thing the Athenians termed 'babbling.' Men
guarded their words like jewels when each word meant the dripping away
of his allotted time."
"And did people continue to use this water clock?"
"Yes, for quite a time, but after a while they began to find fault with
it. In the first place they noticed that when the vessel was full the
greater pressure of water caused it to drip much faster than when there
was not much in it. This they had not considered before, and the
discovery forced them to attempt to improve it. This they did by
concocting a sort of double jar. In the lower one there was a float that
rose as the container filled; and since the top one was constantly
replenished, it kept the pressure in the bottom one uniform."
"The best yet!"
"Much the best. In fact it was a stride ahead from several standpoints,
for although it could not really be termed a machine it nevertheless was
a device that did for man something he would otherwise have had to do
for himself, which is the aim of all machinery. In just that proportion
he moved toward a civilization where artificial methods relieved him of
his labor. Thus he advanced quite a distance from that primitive
condition when he did everything with his hands toward his next state of
fashioning tools that would do what he wished to do better and quicker;
here was something which worked independently of him."
"Why, so it was! I never thought before that man passed through those
three stages," ejaculated Christopher with pleasure; "it makes our old
forefathers twice as interesting, doesn't it?"
"Three times as interesting," the Scotchman laughingly responded. "Facts
make very delightful stories, if you fasten them together. Scattered,
unrelated information is both dry and worthless. It is only when linked
up in the chain of history that it becomes interesting and valuable."
"The trouble with me is I never know where the things I learn belong,"
observed the lad soberly. "It's like fitting pieces into a puzzle when
you've no notion what picture you are making."
"I know, sonny," returned the old man with sympathy. "But do not imagine
you are the only one who is not always able to put in the proper place
the scraps of knowledge in his possession. Many an older person has
wondered what part his learning had in the gigantic total of the ages.
World history is conceived on a pretty big scale, you see. But that all
we glean is somehow linked up with the rest, you may be very sure.
Certainly this clepsydra was."
"It's easy enough to see that _afterward_," asserted Christopher. "And
so the Greeks managed to fix up their water clock to their satisfaction,
after all."
"Alas, not wholly to their satisfaction," was the answer, "for presently
other difficulties concerning it arose. For example, unless the water
poured into it was absolutely clean, the hole would fill up and the drip
become slower; moreover, you must consider what happened in cold
weather, for not only were these water clocks in unheated buildings, but
you will recall they were set up in the market place or public square so
the villagers might consult them. Here assembled the watch, whose duty
it was to patrol the town and blow a horn for the changing of the guard;
here, too, was stationed the officer whose duty it was at stated hours
to refill the clepsydra."
"Oh, I suppose the darn thing froze--that probably was the next
obstacle," grinned Christopher.
"It was," nodded McPhearson.
"Then it couldn't have been much better than the old sundial," the lad
sniffed, with contempt.
"It had its outs. Nevertheless it held the front of the stage about two
thousand years, and then I am sure you will agree it was high time a
better device was substituted."
"And what was that?"
"The sand glass."
"Our hourglass, you mean?"
"Yes--or half-hour, quarter-hour--any fraction of an hour you choose.
The idea of the sand glass was not entirely new, because some form of
running sand had long before been used in the Far East. But the sand
glass as we know it was new to the European world, and you cannot but
agree it was a far more practical article than was the clepsydra for it
neither froze nor had to be replenished. Moreover, it was lighter, less
bulky, and could be carried about, and the old water clocks could
not--that is, not without great inconvenience and danger of breaking.
Oh, the sand glass was vastly better! Even now, after all these years,
it is not entirely out of date, for it is still used to mark definite
intervals of time."
"I have one at home to practice by."
"Many persons use them," the clockmaker averred. "It is not unusual to
have speakers limit their addresses by them. In fact, a two-minute glass
is still employed in the House of Commons and until 1839 the British
Navy measured the watch on shipboard by a glass that ran an hour and a
half. The marking off of time in such definite lengths as this, however,
did not take place in ancient times. At that period people seldom
attempted fine measurements of the day. The problem of hours, minutes,
seconds, and fractions of them was something they scarcely dreamed of.
Nor did they need to cut their time up into such small parts. Life, as I
before remarked, was not very rushing. Nobody expected to meet anybody
else at a particular instant in those far-away, lazy, easy-going times,
or to go anywhere on the minute. If you arrived at where you were going
before the darkness fell that was all even the most ambitious asked. The
splitting up of time with our present-day nicety is of comparatively
modern working out."
"That seems funny, doesn't it?" Christopher suggested.
"Yes, until you see how naturally it grew out of an advancing
civilization. After this slow-moving, sleepy interval of idleness and
ignorance, when there were no books, no schools, no learning of any
kind, there came a great waking up, or Renaissance, which stirred the
populace in every direction. Printing was invented, books written, and
people, hearing of other lands, began to travel. In consequence life
became busier and time more valuable. Moreover, with the spread of
Christianity, monasteries and convents were everywhere erected, and
attached to these religious orders were specified intervals for work,
prayer and various masses and services. Such periods were marked off by
the ringing of bells. Thus it happened quite consistently that the first
clocks introduced were in religious buildings and on the spires of
churches and were without faces or hands, merely indicating by the
stroke of one or more bells the termination of the hour."
"But I should not call that a clock at all," Christopher objected.
"Oh, it was a clock. Such a contrivance could not perform its function
without works. The bell or bells rung as a result of turning wheels.
Moreover, the very word 'clock' is derived from a root which in almost
every language means 'bell.' The French was _cloche_, the Saxon
_clugga_. Thus it came about that later on the works of more modern
clocks frequently had two distinct mechanisms: the bell portion that
chimed or struck the hour, and the section that included the moving of
the hands. Years afterward we find this distinction still maintained,
and discover old clockmakers speaking of a clock that did not strike
merely as a _timekeeper_."
"How curious!" murmured Christopher. "And who was it that evolved this
machine that would strike the hours?"
"That, I suppose, we shall never positively know; but in all probability
it was a monk, who, having considerable leisure at his command and
perhaps being held responsible for the ringing of the monastery bell
once in so often, bethought himself of a scheme whereby the bell could
be made to ring without him. History tells us that William, Abbott of
Hirschau, who died toward the end of the eleventh century, invented a
horologium modeled after the celestial hemisphere; therefore he may have
been the inventor of the clock, for soon after his death these striking
bells begin to make their appearance on church towers and in other
religious buildings.
"A couple of centuries later we read of clocks being sent as presents.
Sultan Saladin sent to Emperor Frederick II a very ambitious article
which by means of weights and wheels not only indicated the hours but
the course of the sun, moon, and planets. Now who invented such an
affair as that we do not know. It must, however, have been some
ingenious Saracen who certainly could have heard nothing about the
Abbott of Hirschau and his striking bells. Indeed, when one considers
the superstition of the age, we cannot but grant it was almost fortunate
a clock such as ours was not then invented, for people were great
believers in witchcraft and were liable to attribute to evil spirits
anything they did not understand, and forthwith destroy it."
"How ridiculous!" scoffed Christopher.
"They were children, remember--intellectual children--ignorant as babies
because, poor souls, they had had neither books nor teaching. Savages
are, you know, terrified at a thing they cannot fathom and these persons
were as yet little more. Well, at any rate, clocks began to make their
appearance. By 1286 one of these faceless mechanisms was put up on St.
Paul's Cathedral in London; and before 1300, others were, by order of
the clergy, installed at Canterbury and Westminster."
"And these just chimed or struck?"
"That is all. On some was a single bell; on others crudely carved wooden
figures beat out the hour on a series of bells. All these were known as
'clocks,' the term 'horologe' not yet being in common use."
"Horologe!" repeated Christopher slowly. "You don't suppose that word
has anything to do with the Latin _hora_, meaning hour, do you?"
"I suppose it has a good deal," McPhearson returned with a dry smile.
"Really!" Plainly Christopher was delighted by this discovery. "Well,
well! Old Caesar, Esquire, isn't so bad, after all. _Hora!_ I never
expected to see the day that stuff would be of any earthly use."
"I told you all you needed to do with what you learn is to link it to
something else."
"But I never seemed to be able to hook it on before," confided the lad
frankly. "Gee, but it makes me chesty! I'm pleased to death with
myself!"
To save himself the old Scotchman could not but chuckle at his
companion's naive satisfaction.
"Somehow it's a bit tough to get this linking-up idea just when I can't
do any more studying," added the boy a trifle wistfully.
"Oh, you will be back at school before long, son; and if you go back
more eager to learn will that not be a gain?"
"Sure it will! _Hora!_ Jove! I made a neat guess, didn't I? And that's
where that horologium you were talking about came from, too. I'm not so
worse. Miss Alden, my Latin teacher, would fall in a faint if she heard
me rolling out these Latin derivatives, I'll bet. I'm not often taken
this way. Say, Mr. McPhearson, I seem to be learning quite a lot if I'm
not in school. This is a darn pleasanter way to do it, too."