Keep Time By The Sundial

1912

In Beautifying Its Forest Park This Kansas Town Has Added a Utility

Ottawa, Kan. — The big city has no corner on civic beauty. Nor are pretty parks and ingenious decorative schemes confined to estates of landed gentry. A country town can, and often does, furnish excellent examples of artistic treatment of bits of woodland.

Ottawa has no copyrighted system of boulevards other than its well paved streets, but the folks who make their homes here pride themselves upon their parks — there are two of them — City Park and Forest Park.

In Forest Park there are samples of the ordinary park embellishments, such as a fountain, cemented fish pond, lettered flower beds and sanitary drinking fountains. But the newest addition is a floral sundial. It is the town's latest civic pride.

J. H. Eason, park keeper for Ottawa, planned and constructed the natural timepiece this summer, it being an excellent summer for the use of sundials. He fashioned it according to he minutest directions of chronometer and sundial experts. As a result the dial is accurate to the minute when the sun's changes are figured — and Mr. Eason has provided a card with printed directions for each day of the year. The number of minutes the sun is "slow" or "fast," in comparison with the standard meridian, is placed in plain View Of park visitors. Anyone may read the card and set his watch the exact time.

The dial is fourteen feet in diameter and the indicator, a pointed post, is eight feet above the ground. Numerals of cement number the hours upon which the shadow of the indicator falls in turn from sunup to sundown. Lines of foliage mark the half-hours and the quarter-hours. Pigmy hedge forms a decorative design in front of the figures.

Old Ways of Keeping Time

1910

Devices That Were Adopted by the Egyptians, Romans and Early English People

As far back as history will take us we find that there was always some crude means of reckoning time. The clock is, of course, a comparatively modern invention, the first mechanical ones that would keep the time even approximately having been made in 1250 A.D.

The early Egyptians divided the day and night each into 12 hours, a custom adopted by the Jews or Greeks probably from the Babylonians.

The day is said to have been first divided into hours in 293 B.C., when a sun dial was erected in the temple of Quirinus at Rome. As early as 158 B.C. the time was called in the streets of Rome by regular public criers.

In the early history of England we are told that the people found a means of measuring time by the use of wax candles. It was reckoned that three inches of candle would last an even hour.

Among most of the nations of the north day began at sunrise, while among the Athenians and Jews it began at sunset. With the ancient Romans it began, as it does with us, at midnight.

Out of the Ordinary: Sundials and Washington Elms

1903

Herbert Spencer has for years turned out an average of 330 words of revised manuscript per day.

The city of New York has a considerable amount of property which it rents to private tenants, but it is also a tenant under 403 leases, which cost annually for rent $817,000.

A writer in Charities places the number of crippled children who applied for relief at the New York hospitals during the visit of Dr. Lorenz at 8,000, nearly all of whom were sent away because of the inadequacy of the hospitals for their care.

P. S. Devine of St. Louis owns a sundial made by Thomas Jefferson. The authenticity of the relic is attested by documents duly sworn to. In order to tell the correct time the dial must be set by the north star.

Buffalo physicians, in an operation the other day, took out of the patient's stomach nearly 500 tacks, knife blades and nails. That stomach must have been used to hard wear.

An insurance company in New York has just paid $100,000 for a five-foot strip of land, in order to keep the windows of its building from being closed up by another structure. The phrase "free as air" is not of universal application.

Lawrence McAlpin of Philadelphia has just celebrated his 100th birthday. He was born in Ireland and laid the first rail on the Madison & Indianapolis railroad. He has had 17 children. He lost track of four of them — two sons and two daughters — several years ago, but thinks they are now living in Canada.

A curious recognition of the right of women to hold public office has, with little gallantry, been made in Pike county, Pennsylvania. Porter township has so few voters that Mrs. Sarah Miller was placed on the Democratic ticket for school director, there being no other available candidate, one Democrat being the nominee for three local offices.

Congressman Heatwole of Minnesota is a continual cause of envy among colleagues whose digestion is not of pristine vigor. The Minnesota man attacks and assimilates all sorts of incongruous feeds. The other afternoon his luncheon in the house restaurant consisted of a milk punch, a chicken sandwich, an oyster stew, a piece of custard pie and two cups of coffee.

In compliance with appeals from many patriotic citizens of Hartford, Conn., Philip Hansling. Jr., superintendent of streets, consented to forego his determination to cut down "the Washington elm," opposite the Wadsworth athenaeum on Main street, that city. He trimmed the overhanging limbs, which might fall during a gale and do injury to persons or property, and gave the chance to the old tree to add a few years to its history. There is a tablet on the trunk of the tree placed there by the Daughters of the American Revolution in memory of the time when Washington visited Hartford and stopped beneath the tree.