Christopher And The Clockmakers Part 9

"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 Even now, after all these years, it is not entirely out of date, for it is still used to mark definite intervals of time."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 shipboard 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 rushing. 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."

"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 nave 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."

CHAPTER VI

CLOCKS THAT WERE GOOD AS PLAYS

By the end of two weeks, school with its games and its bells for recitation had become a thing of the past and Christopher felt as much at home in his father's shop as if his name was inscribed upon its payroll.

Nevertheless, despite the lapse of time, no trace either of the missing gems or of the two diamond robbers had been secured. Both Mr. Burton and Mr. Norcross were beginning to be discouraged, and feared the culprits would never be captured; even Christopher's hope of seeing his adventure brought to a favorable climax was fading. As for poor Hollings, he was another man altogether and it seemed as if he would never be able to hold his head up again. A part of the value of the gems was, to be sure, covered by burglar insurance, and therefore the loss to the firm would not be great; rather it was the disgrace of the episode that bowed the salesman to the ground. He was an old and trusted employee who took the matter so hard that within the fortnight he aged visibly and his hair actually seemed to whiten. Christopher pitied him and so did everybody else, and by and by public sentiment was almost more concerned with his unhappiness than with the tragedy that caused it.

"Dad doesn't harbor any grudge against you, Mr. Hollings!" repeated the lad for the twentieth time, in a hope of consoling the unfortunate clerk. "Neither does Mr. Norcross. I heard him tell my father so."

"That isn't the point, sonny," his listener responded dejectedly. "Of course it's kind of them not to blame me. They'd be well within their rights were they to turn me off. What bothers me is that I should let such a thing happen."

"You couldn't help it."

"I know--I know. It doesn't seem as if I could," the man answered, shaking his head. "But I ought to have helped it--somehow."

That was Hollings' constant lament.

Round and round in a circle went he and Christopher, the lad constantly trying to brighten and encourage, and the clerk as invariably bringing up with this same doleful plaint. He was not to be comforted.

In the meantime Christopher, along with offering optimistic and repeated a.s.sertions that the diamonds would surely be found, was gleaning a surprising amount of information as he flitted about the store. He learned not only of clocks but interesting bits concerning the value and cutting of gems, the repairing of jewelry; the patterns of silverware, strange facts about pearls.