Osage Valley banner. (Tuscumbia, Miller County, Mo.) 1879-1881, 1880-08-19
"GREENWICH TIME"

"GREENWICH TIME"
"HoME-KEEPISG youth " rarely guess
when they go abroad to "swim in a
gondola aud perform other feats of
similar kind, that one of their most
troublesome tasks will be found in the
daily ondeavor to keep time with the
sun. Yet nothing is more certain than
that days aud hours have a knack Of
getting into hopeless muddle during q
rapid railway ride due east On steam
boat journey either TO east or west there
Is less confusion, for the height of the
sun is taken on every clear day. The
time problem put in a familiar way by
the old ballad writer has been set in y
more startling light by a modern French
novelist, The unknown author of "kiug
John and the Abbot Of Canterbury
makes the shepherd who porsonates the
latter tell the capricious tyrant in an
swcr to the second OF his three ques-
tions, 81 How soone may | ride the whole
world aboutp'
"You must rise with the sun, and ride with
the same,
Uutn the next morning he riseth agaIne;
Aud then your Grace need NOT make any
doubt,
But IN twcnty-four hours you'il ride it about"
How far the writer of this Derry
down ballad who evidently rcwrote
an earlier work, was acquainted with
the Copernican system is not ascer-
tanned, but for the purpose of his story
he adopts the convenient IL accurate
theory that the sun moves and not the
earth, which rested, like many more
blunders, on the evidence of the senses.
The modern French novelist is scien-
tiliCally accurate in the scheme OF his
story. In detail NJ, Jules Verne fire.
quently errs, as when he speaks of the
chronological Society rs having been
founded "for the destruction of noxious
insects" hut the fact on which his
story is founded is mathematioally cor
rect Phineas Fogg when he made his
bet TO 90 round the world in eighty
days had no idea that the relation be-
tween sun and earth would help him to
win what he at one moment thought o
lost wager Carefully keeping count of
time he imaginos that he must have lost;
that he arrived in London on Sunday
instead of Saturday; that his great bet is
forfeited, and that he Is ruined. Send
ing for clergyman to marry him, he
discovers that his bet is not lost, that it
is Saturday instead Of Sunday. How
this comes about is very easy of expla-
nation. Fogg. instead of "riding with
the sum- that is'from east 10 west, rode
for eighty days against it, and thus,
despite his carefully-kept itinerary,
gained day without knowing it. BY
going To the eastward he gained four
minutes for every degree OF longitude
he crossed, and as NJ. Jules Verne
naively explains, for the benefit of such
OF his countrymeu as knew not geo
gTaphy, there are three hundred and
sixty of these degrees on the terrestrial
circumference, and these three hundred
and sixty degrees multiplied by four
minutes yield precisely twenty-four
hours the day unconsciously gained.
In other words, while Phineas Fogg,
travelling eastward, saw the sun at the
meridian eighty times, his friends who
remained in London only saw il pass
seventy-nine times. This is why, on
the day which was Saturday and not
Sunday, lis Fogg thought, these friends
were waiting for him at the Reform
Club. In short, the twenty-four hours
which would have been spent In riding
round tho world with the sun, were
gained by riding round il in the oppo-
site direction in eighty days.
Few who have read NJ. Verne's de-
lightful book have forgotten either
Passepartout, Phineas Foggs French
valet, the possessor of the great silver
family watch, or his rage when the de-
tectiye Fix tells him at Suez that the
highly-prized heirloom is more than
two hours slow Fix explains that
Suez time is faster than London time,
and that Passepartout must set his
watch by the ruling meridian of each
country. IL alter my watch, screams
the valet; "never." Every well,
then, it will no longer agree with the
sun, replies Fix. "Then so much the
worse for the sun. IL will be he who
has gone wrong" The term "ruling
meridian" is used adyisedly, for, as
the rapidity of communication in
creases, the fashion of keeping one
railway time in each country is found
absolutely necessary. The difference
between the time of large towns in a
small eountry like England is not so
startling as that between London and