Part 9 (1/2)

”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 sc.r.a.ps 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_,” a.s.serted 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 a.s.sembled 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 subst.i.tuted.”

”And what was that?”

”The sand gla.s.s.”

”Our hourgla.s.s, you mean?”

”Yes--or half-hour, quarter-hour--any fraction of an hour you choose.

The idea of the sand gla.s.s was not entirely new, because some form of running sand had long before been used in the Far East. But the sand gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 Even now, after all these years, it is not entirely out of date, for it is still used to mark definite intervals of time.”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 gla.s.s is still employed in the House of Commons and until 1839 the British Navy measured the watch on s.h.i.+pboard by a gla.s.s 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 rus.h.i.+ng. n.o.body 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 ma.s.ses 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 superst.i.tion 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.”