98 TIME-RECKONING. 
The division of the day into two halves, each containing 12 hours, 
and each numbered from 1 to 12, is a fertile source of error and 
inconvenience. 
Travellers who have had occasion to consult railway guides and 
steamboat time-tables, will be familiar with the inconvenience result- 
ing from this cause ; none know better by experience how much the 
divisions ante meridian and post meridian have baffled their inquiries, 
and how often these arbitrary divisions have led to mistakes. Were 
it necessary, innumerable instances could be given. The evil how- 
ever is one so familiar that it has come to be looked upon as 
unavoidable, and is, as a matter of course, silently endured. 
The halving of the day has doubtless long been in use, but beyond 
its claim to antiquity, is a custom that confers not a single benefit, 
and is marked by nothing to recommend it. 
Another more serious difficulty, forced on the attention by the 
science of the century, is mainly due to the agency of electricity, 
employed as a means of telegraphy ; and to steam applied to locomo- 
tives. These extraordinary sister agencies having revolutionized the 
relations of distance and time, having bridged space, and drawn into 
closer affinity portions of the earth’s surface previously separated by 
long and, in some cases, inaccessible distances. 
Let us take the case of a traveller in North America. He lands 
at Halifax in Nova Scotia, and starts by a railway to Chicago 
through the eastern portions of Canada. His route is over the 
Intercolonial, the Grand Trunk, and other lines. He stops at St. 
John, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton and Detroit. 
At the beginning of the journey he sets his watch by Halifax time. 
As he reaches each place in succession, he finds a considerable varia- 
tion in the clocks by which the trains are run, and he discovers that 
at no two places is the same time used. Between Halifax and 
Chicago he finds the railways observing no less than seven different 
standards of time. If the traveller remains at any one of the cities 
referred to, he must alter his watch to avoid inconvenience, and 
perhaps not a few disappointments and annoyances to himself and 
others. If, however, he should not alter his watch, he would 
discover on reaching Chicago that it was an hour and thirty-five 
minutes faster than the clocks and watches in that city. 
If his journey be made by one of the routes through the United 
States, the variation in time and its inconveniences will not be less. 
