Sunbury American. [volume] (Sunbury, Pa.) 1848-1879, 1872-11-23
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SUNBURY, Pa. SATURDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER o. 1872

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shepherds, and all other men much alone
with nature, still keep familiar with her
habits and her moods. The Indian says !:
-Four moons have passed." or it was ten
sleeps ago." and the farmer, ut was be-
tween day and SUNRISE, +" or ut was halfan
hour by sum-,
Jobs expression, Gas a servant earnest
ly desreth the shadow" points to the ear
lier tinekeeper. The sun dial (didliS, dali
ly) originated, nobody knows when, with
some of the Eastern nations. Isaiah wrote
800 years before Christ, II will bring back
the shadow of the degrees which is gone
down in the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees
backward" Dals were common among
the Romans. One still preserved in Italy
perpetuates the pleasing fiction that it was
used by Cicero in his Villa at Tasculum.
Plautus (B. G. 2j0) declaims IN one of his
comedies
''The gods coufouud the man who frst found out
How to distinguish the hours Confound him, too,
Who in this place set up sun dial
To cut and hack my days rs wrctchedly
Into small portions. When was hoy
My belly was sun dial one more sure,
Truer, and more exact than any of them,
This dial told me when twas proper time
To 90 to dinner-when had ought to eat,
But now -a-days why even when have
| can't fail-to unless the sun gives leave,
The town & iull oil tncSe cOniOundeu Qlul5
The greatest part of its inhabitants
Shrunll up with hunger creep along the streets"
A dial, usually standing upon a stone
post or sunny knoll, is still preserved as
a relic of the past in almost every English
country churchyard. Around it on Sun
day mornings, an hour or two before SER
vice. the rustics were wont to gather. dis
cussing crops, the weather, and politics,
matrons gossipped soberly, and children
tumbled leap-frog over messy tomb. stones,
or played ball* against the tower till the
parsons tinkling bell summoned MI to
worship.
Only n few years ago, Keble, the author
of THE Christian Year, after conducting
the morning service at his little church in
Hampshire, used to spend Sunday after
moons in playing cricket with the young
men of his congregation. Imagine Jona-
than Edwards or Nehemiah Adams at such
n recreation
In the northern hemisphere the dial's in
dicator, guomon-''One that knows'-must
point uncrringly to the North Pole. In our
latitude its angle is about Al degrees. On
the Equator it must be fiat, directed toward
the horizon : at the North Pole upright
pointing directly overhead. In the South
crn hemisphere it must point TO the South
Pole.
The gnomon did ''know'' we'll enough
for the ancieuts but a dial does not indi-
cate seconds, and cannot be expected to tell
time within two or three minutes. So mod
crn life discards it, save when an ingeni-
Gus youth is charmed by the siren song of
some advertiser himself also Il youth
whom the uncertainties of fate may yet de-
vclop into forgcr, or a Director Of the
Erie Railway. In response TO the seduc-
tive announcement "A good watch for
one dollar - the ingenious youth RENTS
his groenback to Box ia, 144 New York
Post Office, aud receives in return a pock-
ct dial which may have cost ten cents, and
is of exactly the same form as that worn by
the fool whom Jacques me: in the forest
And then he drew dial from his poke,
Aud looking on it with lackluster eye,
Says, very wisely, ''It's 10 O'clock"
In clear weather the dial showed the hour
by day, as the stars did by night but
when clouds came, something more was
needed.
Many cOntrivances were introduced
Good King Alfred, so the story goes, burn
ed six wax candles, every day a foot long,
and marked with inch divisions. Each
lasted four hours, and was consumed at the
rate of one inch in every 20 minutes. To
prevent waste and iraegularity OF draught,
they were enclosed in horn lanterns. But.
many centuries before Alfred, the East had
originated the "Clepsydra" (''tO steal wa
ter,) a transparent graduated vase filled
with liquid, which slowly tricklcd or stole
away through little aperture in the bot
tom. The receding height marked the pas
sage of the hours. The Clepsydra was used
in ancient China, and in Egypt under the
Ptolemies. Caesar foDnd it among the ma
tive Britons. Pompey introduced it into
Roman Courts "to prevent 6abblng." One
OF Martiai's cpigrams counsels dull de-
caimer, who was constantly quatling from
IA glass Ofwatcr during his endless harangue,
to relieve both himself and his audience by
drinking from the Clepsydra instead.
In the Colony of Massachusetts Bay CEN
turies later, an hour glass stood before the
Puritan preachT, and was turned by a
tithine man when he began his sermon. If
he stopped long before the sand ran out,
his hearers were dissatisfied if he contin-
ued long after, they grew impatient The
hour glass is only Il modification of the
Cepsydra. 1t substitutes fine sand for wa
ter, as something that will neither freeze or
evaDorate, and which, when the glass is
full, will run little faster than when it is
nearly empty. 1t originated before the
Christian era, and has been used by nearly
all nations. 1t was 50 common among our
ancestors, hundred years ago, that the il
lustration of the Primer was drawn from
one of the most familiar objects in their
daily life.
As runs the glass
Our life doth pass.
In dry, equable Eastern climates the
Clepsydra long maintained its supremacy.
and it is used in India even to this day. 1t
was exceedingly inaccurate, but some inn
proyemeuts were constantly added. Some
times water flowed in tears from the eyes
Of autOmata, and sometimes a floating sta
tue, rising and falling with the liquid,
pointed to the passing hours engraved upon
an upright scale. Next a little wheel was
introduced, which the water fell upon drop
by drop, turning it, and thus communicate
ing motion to hands upon dial. IN time
machinary was added to tell not only the
hours of the day, but the age of the moon,
and the motions of other heavenly bodies
and finally, the Clepsydra and it grew into
an ingenious and complicated water-clock.
A thousand years ago a Persian Caliph,
the Iaroun al Rascild of the Arabian
Nights, sent one to the Emperor Charlie