The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical Part 14

He that wears a watch, two things must do; _Pocket_ his _watch_ and _watch_ his _pocket_ too.

I labor here with all my might, To tell the hours of day and night; Therefore, example take by me, And serve the Lord as I serve thee.

_Echo Verse._

It was a sharp bit of echo verse that the _Sunday Times_ of London threw off in 1831, when tickets to hear the great violinist were very high-

What are they who pay three guineas To hear a tune of Paganini's?

Echo-Pack o' ninnies.

_Signature of the Cross._

The mark which persons who are unable to write are required to make instead of their signatures, is in the form of a cross; and this practice having formerly been followed by kings and n.o.bles, is constantly referred to as an instance of the deplorable ignorance of ancient times. This signature is not, however, invariably a proof of ignorance. Anciently, the use of the mark was not confined to illiterate persons; for among the Saxons the mark of the cross, as an attestation of the good faith of the persons signing, was required to be attached to the signature of those who _could_ write, as well as to stand in the place of the signature of those who could not write.

_Simply on Account of her Name._

Herrera, the Spanish historian, records an anecdote in which the choice of a queen entirely arose from her name. When two French amba.s.sadors negotiated a marriage between one of the Spanish princesses and Louis VIII., the names of the royal females were _Urraca_ and _Blanche_. The former was the elder and the more beautiful, and intended by the Spanish court for the French monarch; but they resolutely preferred Blanche, observing that the _name_ of _Urraca_ would never do! And for the sake of a more mellifluous sound, they carried off the happier-named but less beautiful princess.

_Richelieu's Boast._

Richelieu one day boasted among his courtiers that out of any four indifferent words he could extract matter to send any one to a dungeon.

One of his attendants immediately wrote upon a card: "_One and two make three._." "_Three_ make only _One!_" exclaimed the cardinal. "To the Bastile with him. It is a blasphemy against our Holy Trinity."

_Curious Parallel._

The story of Alnaschar, which is in the "Arabian Nights," tells how one Alnaschar had invested all his money in a basket of gla.s.sware, which he calculated to sell at a profit, and got into a day-dream of a splendid future.

Out of the profits of his gla.s.s he was to rise into the position of a merchant-prince, with the Grand Vizier's daughter for his wife.

Offended, in this day-dream, with the lady, he fancied that he would spurn her before forgiving her, and kicked out his foot, which broke all his gla.s.s and left him beggared.

Rabelais makes Echep.r.o.n, an old soldier, tell the advisers of King Picrochole, who wanted him to go to war, that a shoemaker bought a ha'p'orth of milk. This he intended to make into b.u.t.ter, and buy a cow with the money thus obtained. In due time the cow would have a calf; this calf would be sold, and so on money would pile up, until, having become a nabob, he should wed a princess. Only, just at this crisis, the jug fell, the milk was lost, and the dreamer sneaked, supperless, to bed.

_Earliest Clocks._

The first clock which appeared in Europe was probably that which Eginhard (Secretary to Charlemagne) describes as sent to his royal master by Abdallah, King of Persia. "A horologe of bra.s.s, wonderfully constructed, for the course of the twelve hours, while as many little brazen b.a.l.l.s dropped upon bells underneath, and sounded each other." The Venetians had clocks in 872, and sent a specimen of them that year to Constantinople.

_Famous Astronomical Clock._

This clock, in the Strasburg Cathedral, was invented by Isaac Habrecht, a Jewish astrologer, in 1439. He called it the "Clock of the Three Sages," because once in every hour the figures of the Three Kings of Orient came out from a niche in its side, and made a reverential bow before an image of the Virgin Mary, seated just above the dial-plate, on the front of the clock. It is built of dark wood, gilded and carved, and is sixty feet high. In shape it is somewhat similar to a church, with a tower on either side of the entrance; and these towers of the clock are encircled by spiral staircases, which are used when repairs are necessary. When Isaac Habrecht invented this wonderful clock, he meant it to run forever, always displaying to the good people of Strasburg the days of the month, phases of the sun and moon, and other celestial phenomena; and while he lived it worked admirably, but when he had been dead awhile, the clock stopped; and as n.o.body else understood its machinery, it had quite a vacation, which lasted until 1681, when it was repaired and improved.

It will now not only give the time of Strasburg, but every princ.i.p.al city in the world; also the day of the week and month, the course of the sun and planets, and all the eclipses of the sun and moon, in their regular order. In an alcove above the dial is an image of the Saviour, and every day, at noon, figures of the twelve apostles march around it and bow, while the holy image, with uplifted hands, administers a silent blessing. A c.o.c.k, on the highest point of the right-hand tower, flaps his wings and crows three times; and when he stops, a beautiful chime of bells rings out familiar and very musical tunes. A figure of Time, in a niche on one side, strikes the quarter hours from twelve to one, and four figures-Childhood, Youth, Manhood and Old Age-pa.s.s slowly before him. In a niche on the other side is an angel turning an hour-gla.s.s.

_Clock that Strikes Thirteen._

The Duke of Bridgewater was very fond of watching his men at work, especially when any enterprise was on foot. When they were boring for coal at Worsley, the duke came every morning, and looked on for a long time. The men did not like to leave off work while he remained there, and they became so dissatisfied at having to work so long beyond the hour at which the bell rang, that Brindley had difficulty in getting a sufficient number of hands to continue the boring. On inquiry, he found out the cause and communicated it to the duke, who from that time made a point of immediately walking off when the bell rang-returning when the men had resumed work, and remaining with them usually until six o'clock.

He observed, however, that though the men dropped work promptly as the bell rang, when he was not by, they were not nearly so punctual in resuming work-some straggling in many minutes after time. He asked to know the reason, and the men's excuse was, that though they could always hear the clock when it struck twelve, they could not so readily hear it when it struck only one. On hearing this, the duke had the mechanism of the clock altered so as to make it strike thirteen at one o'clock, which it continues to do to this day.

_Westminster Clock._

The winding up of the going part of the great clock at Westminster, London, takes ten minutes, the weight of the pendulum being six hundred and eighty pounds; but the winding up of the striking parts-the quarter part and the hour part-takes five hours each, and this has to be done twice a week. The contract cost of winding up the clock is $500 a year.

The error of the clock amounts to only about one second for eighty-three days in the year, and there is probably no other clock in the world of which the same can be said.

_Wonderful Clock._

Toward the end of the last century a clock was constructed by a Geneva mechanic named Droz, capable of performing a variety of surprising movements, which were effected by the figures of a negro, a shepherd and a dog. When the clock struck, the shepherd played six tunes on his flute and the dog approached and fawned upon him. This clock was exhibited to the King of Spain, who was highly delighted with the ingenuity of the artist. The king, at the request of Droz, took an apple from the shepherd's basket, when the dog started up and barked so loud that the king's dog, which was in the same room, began to bark also. We are, moreover, informed that the negro, on being asked what hour it was, answered the question in French, so that he could be understood by those present.

_Vocal Clock._

The subjoined description of a curious clock is given in the journal of the Rev. J. Wesley: "On Monday, April 27, 1762, being at Lurgan, in Ireland, I embraced the opportunity, which I had long desired, of talking to Mr. Miller, the contriver of that statue which was in Lurgan when I was there before. It was the figure of an old man standing in a case, with a curtain drawn before him, over against a clock which stood on the opposite side of the room. Every time the clock struck he opened the door with one hand, drew back the curtain with the other, turned his head, as if looking round on the company, and then said, with a clear, loud, articulate voice: 'Past 1,' or 2 or 3, and so on. But so many came to see this (the like of which all allowed was not to be seen in Europe), that Mr. Miller was in danger of being ruined, not having time to attend to his own business. So, as none offered to purchase it, or reward him for his pains, he took the whole machine to pieces."

_Harrison's Clock._

In 1735, John Harrison, a rural clock-maker, invented a time-piece which scarcely ever lost five seconds in six months. To him, in 1767, was paid $100,000, as the first prize for all but an infallible time-keeper.

_A Cat-Clock._

The following curious incident is to be found in Hue's "Chinese Empire:"-

"One day when we went to pay a visit to some families of Chinese Christian peasants, we met, near a farm, a young lad who was taking a buffalo to graze along our path. We asked him carelessly, as we pa.s.sed, whether it was yet noon. The child raised his head to look at the sun, but it was hidden behind thick clouds, and he could read no answer there. 'The sky is so cloudy,' said he; 'but wait a moment;' and with these words he ran toward the farm, and came back a few minutes afterward with a cat in his arms. 'Look here,' said he, 'it is not noon yet;' and he showed us the cat's eyes, by pus.h.i.+ng up the lids with his hands. We looked at the child with surprise, but he was evidently in earnest. 'Very well,' said we; 'thank you;' and we continued on our way.

"To say the truth, we had not at all understood the proceeding, but we did not wish to question the little pagan, lest he should find out that we were Europeans by our ignorance. As soon as we reached the farm, however, we made haste to ask our Christian friends whether they could tell the clock by looking into a cat's eyes. They seemed surprised at the question; but as there was no danger in confessing to them our ignorance of the properties of a cat's eyes, we related what had just taken place. That was all that was necessary; our complaisant neophytes immediately gave chase to all the cats in the neighborhood. They brought us three or four, and explained in what manner they might be made use of for watches. They pointed out that the pupils of their eyes went on constantly growing narrower until twelve o'clock, when they became like a fine line, as thin as a hair, drawn perpendicularly across the eye, and that after twelve the dilation recommenced."

_Curious Time-Piece._

About 1679 Nicholas Grallier de Servierre, an old soldier who had served in the Italian army, constructed a whimsical clock. A figure of a tortoise, dropped into a plate of water, having the hours marked on the rim, would float around and stop at the proper time, telling what o'clock it was. A lizard ascended a pillar, on which the hours were marked, and pointed to the time as it advanced. A mouse did the same thing by creeping along an hour-marked cornice.

_Clock Presented to Charlemagne._

The French historians describe a clock sent to Charlemagne in the year 807, by the famous eastern caliph, Haroun-al-Raschid, which was evidently furnished with some kind of wheel-work, although the moving power appears to have been produced by the fall of water. In the dial of it were twelve small doors forming the divisions for the hours, each door opened at the hour marked by the index, and let out small bra.s.s b.a.l.l.s which, falling on a bell, struck the hours-a great novelty at that time. The doors continued open until the hour of twelve, when twelve figures, representing knights on horseback, came out and paraded around the dial-plate.

_Delicate Machinery._