The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1906-09-28
THE SUNDIAL.
II Should Be Marked For the Latii
tUde In Which 1t Stands


In an cid shop il lower New York a
man keeps up his trade of dial making.
The dials, square, Octagonal or circu-
lar, are hand chased. They do not re-
ceive Il high polish and any acciden-
tai effect of weather stain or other
tone of time is carefully preserved
if not skillfully added. These dials,
fitted with the gnOmOn. or stylus, are
then artfuIly slipped into the show
windows of uptown curiosity shops
among Il selected debris of Sheffield
plate, prism candlesticks, inlaid tea
raddieS and old blue plates.
y visitor to one of these shops asked:
How old is that brass dial over there?
It's all hand work. isn't itF'
Its all hand work" said the proprie-
tor, whom we will call Truthful James.
II can testify to that, for l know the
man whose hands made it. It's about
month old, if you want to know
You're like lots of other people-you
want an old Scotch or English dial
Don't you know it would be useless, If
you found it, for practical purposes?
Excuse me, but haven't you ever stud
led geography and heard of latitude?
A dial ought to be marked out scien-
tifically for the exact latitude in which
it is to be set up. SO unless you strike
the same parallel in the states that the
dial left in England it will tell lies
from morning till night. You'd be sur
priscd how many people pick up dial
that strikes their fancy which perhaps
stood in the garden of an old Virginia
estate. intending to hurry it off to the
big grounds of some place in Minneso-
Ia: or they'll snatch at some quaint
dial from New England, with the idea
of rigging it up in Texas.
More people would make the same
blundcr. except that many haven't
caught on to dials. Too bad. Nothing
is prcttier than Il simple dial at the
crosSways of garden paths, or by a
fountain or OH Il terrace or at the en-
trance of Il pergola or near rustic
seat or arbor. You don't have to hire
& head gardener and two assistants to
keep u sundial. Marble platforms and
pedestals are very grand, but unless
you're running a big Italian garden
with clipped hedges and yews and
statues something simple is what you
want. The dial will keep just as good
time, once it's engraved right, If it's
mounted on a tree stump, with Ivy
planted round it, or on bowlder, or on
the coping of an old disused well, or on
column of cobbles mortared together,
or on top of the old hitching post that
the family doesn't use in these auto
mobile days, but doesn't want to root
up and throw away.
You'd be surprised at the ingenuity
of some people," said Truthful James,
who himself seemed of ingenious bent.
Il mean people who haven't much
money to spend and are fond of their
own old stuff for associations sake.
They're the ones who get effects with
a piece of junk, lump Of sentiment
and a pocket of small change that can't
be bought with a blank check. I've
known people who used an old mill
stone to set the dial ON, or who laid a
slab over an old stone garden urn, or
who saved the capitals from pillars on
a house being torn down, or who even
rugged up a standard from the bricks
Of a chimney on an old homestead that
had meant a lot to them. One family
made a sort of cairn out of a geology
collection some ancestor had formed.
Another took flag pole for the gnomon
and laid out dial with pebbles in the
grass around the pole.
mo, it doesn't require any skill to set
up the dial. Get the noon mark for the
gnomon on several days, nick 1t on the
slab and then set the dial in a bed of
cement. There you renew York
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