Februarp 14.
As old Italian superstition, still potent in Southern Italy, says that if a tree cause a man's death, that tree must be hewn down und burnt. On the same principle Sir John Cockburn, M. D., desires that any public clock in London which refuses to tell the right time, after due warning and space for amendment, shall have its face cut off. In a letter to "The Times" of admirable brevity and force (which might serve asa model for many newspaper correspondents) Sir John points out that, "it is not unusual within a hundred yards to find clocks three or four minutes at variance with each other. A lying time-keeper is an abomination, and should not be tolerated and he sums up the situation with the pregnant reflexion that, ly desirable as vidualism many respects, it is out of place in horology." None of the socialists has taken up the challenge contained in the first part of Sir John's epigram, but many correspondents have hastened to endorse his complaint, though with nothing like jis conciseness; this proves that if the grievance against London's clocks is not new, it is still felt as acutely as ever it was. "The Times" devotes a leading article to the question, from which we learn that the Post Office is in the habit of suspending the telegraph service throughout the country every day at a given hour in orde: that all clocks may be corrected by message from Greenwich: it can only be said that Post Office clocks in London use the intervening hours very badly. One correspondent urges that as business houses are allowed to hang out clocks, for the purpose es of advertisement they should be compelled to keep them! accurate: to which other correspondents, owners of big shops,' protest that they at least are im-' peccable and only their neighbours'
error.
Yet another writer taarvels that the nation which has invented the proverb, "Time is money," cannot follow the well-known example of Paris, Berlin, Berne and other Continental cities where public clocks are standardized and controlled by an electric or pneumatic system; and the Standard Time Company, resenting the implied stigma, complains bitterly that such systems are available in, London also, but that consumers will not take advantage of them.
At this point the controversy was interrupted by the closure of the mails for Brindisi and, perhaps, nothing but a lying clock has prevented us from hearing that some tangible conclusion was reached; for all correspondents were agreed that something must be done and the beginning of a New Year is obviously the time to do it. Unfortunately reform in this particular as in so many others is likely to be blocked by the usual obstacle of public apathy, and the impossibility of obtaining a con-carted opinion. There are so many Londons and every one of them lives by a different standard of requirements. Some must hurry for the eight o'clock train, some may dawdle for the one at nine; some need no train at all and may leave the question of time entirely to their valets and couch men. From which it seems an unfair arrangements of things that the latter class should be able to purchase the most expensive lever watches, while the former have to rely upon the common Waterbury. Moreover from the philosophic point of view a difference of three or four minutes in a hundred yards is as nothing in eternity: and from the strictly moral point of view no well-regulated man allows his duties to be left so late that three or four minutes can make any difference in a day. Once again philosophers and moralists appear to be indulge ing their usual passion for "logic divorced from life." In cold blood it matters nothing to the passer-by that the clock on St. Clement Dane's points to one hour, the clock on the Law Courts to another, while the watch in disown pocketdisagrees with both, provided he has perfect confidence in his own watch. But in actual practice that confidence belongs only to the very strongest minds. For it is the evil genius of a lying time-keeper not only to destroy faith in itself but also the faith which we should like to feel in our own watches. We do not know how much the public clock is wrong and we dare not, consequently, be sure that our own watches are right, while we have still less security for those of our neigh-hours or business connexions with whom we are going to dine or deal. It is a fair contention that all clocks hung out in public should rigidly conform—or have their faces cut off.
As touching London only, it may be thought that we are not greatly affected by the success or failure of Sir John Gockburn's agitation. But in "the principle involved" we have a direct interest, since what has been laid to the charge of London time-keepers can be said of those of Shanghai with equal trath, and, in view of our meagre supply of public clocks, with more force. Great pains have been taken at the Sicawei Observatory as was shown by the annual report published recently in these columns, to correct Chinese time by that of Greenwich; but while the work of the Observatory has been presumably of value to mariners, it appears to have made little impression on the time measurements of the community at large. Beyond the Customs clock and the Raes Club clock, which may or may, not be regulated by telephone from Sicawei, we can point toa couple of small clocks in the Nanking Road which are merely to be depended peu, and the doc! on the Nanyang College, a fine and serviceable position for a timekeeper, which is not to be depended upon at all. In addition ta these, we have the midday gun at Pootang which is only fired on certain,—it might almost be said on uncertain,—days of the week and.a number of native clockmakers' signboards which, with their dumb and handless imitation of a clock face, appear to have been
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.