704 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
DEC | 
of fine fowls to let it be seen what American 
poultry may do in this direction i! 
The Fat Horse Show was a pronounced suc¬ 
cess, at least the ladies thought so. They ap¬ 
peared to be intensely interested at the mam¬ 
moth projKjrtions of the Normans, the Pert-her¬ 
ons, the Clydesdales, and the Shire horses. 
One lady became so enthusiastic as to declare 
her belief in an ability to ride that “great fat 
horse,” and innocently added, “he would bo 
so easy to sit upon.” Some of the horsas 
would certainly compare favorably with the 
celebrated Gillette steer, McMullin, in point 
of flesh. Perhaps they had been specially fat¬ 
tened for the occasion. At any rate, the only 
loan things in the show were the imported 
Negretti sheep and the pop-corn men. 
The extreme cold of the first three, days of 
the show prevented the anticipated attend¬ 
ance. By Friday, however, the “ blizzard had 
blown out ” and the attendance was large. 
On Saturday it was immense, being swelled 
by the CO,(>00 school children of the city who 
were furnished witli free tickets. If their 
criticisms were not scientific, they were char¬ 
acteristic. The steers were evidently not used 
to the ways of city boys, and the amount of 
flesh they—the steers—will lose, owing to the 
pranks of the juvenile visitors, cannot yet tie 
computed: still by the admission of the chil¬ 
dren to the show they obtain one of the best 
object lessons they could possibly have. 
L’itaunj. 
THE NEW TIME STANDARDS. 
Steam and electricity have scored another 
victory. This time it is over the sun as a 
standard of time. Localities long accustomed 
to get their time from the sun have since the 
18th ult. begun to take what suits the conven¬ 
ience of the railways, the telegraphs and com¬ 
merce. On that day, some people moved their 
clocks and watches forward or backward 80 
minutes and upward. It is enough to make 
the sun-dials strike for their rights and the 
million or more of uooti marks in the land, 
call for perpetual darkness. But there is no 
help for it. The conspiracy against sun time 
is already a success. 
WHY. 
There is and will be some confusion about 
the why and the how of this new standard. 
Most people know that clocks 15 degrees of lon¬ 
gitude apart, the earth around, should differ 
from each other one hour of time, and that 
the clock cast should invariably lie an hour 
ahead of its neighbor 15 degrees west. It is 
true, too, that places less than 15 degrees apart 
have had their own time, taken from the 
sun, so that in this country there wore many 
standards. For instance Philadelphia time is 
about five minutes behind New York City 
time. Many railway systems connect those 
two cities. Three or four hundred trains daily 
pans into and out of the Pennsylvania depot, 
Jersey City. The variation of a minute might 
entail serious consequences to life and prop¬ 
erty. The thousauds of time tables of those 
and other railways have usually been urrunged 
with reference to the local times of their great 
termini. This haR been perplexing and tedi¬ 
ous. The clocks of widely separated towns, 
on East and West lines of travel, have varied 
from minutes to hours. Travelers found the 
best watches carried by them, a source of 
confusion as they moved far away from their 
standard. 
OLD * STANDARDS, 
The natural standards of time, the revolu¬ 
tions of the earth on its axis, its course in its 
orbit, the.sun, moon and stars, while theoret¬ 
ically, the only accurate standards are practi¬ 
cally of little use except to scientists. For or¬ 
dinary people have not the skill or appliances 
to make any but the rudest observations even 
when the sky is clear. They accept and use 
the next best thing to measure time’s flight and 
well know that they seldom have mean solar 
time. Observatories at Harvard, Yale 
Washington, Pittsburgh etc, have kept scien¬ 
tifically accurate time, and the time telegraph, 
connected with the Western Union Telegraph 
Company, has sold and delivered it. to its 
patrous. It is thus by the electric wires that, 
our principal jewellers have regulated their 
time-pieces which in turn became everybody’s 
standards. Benedict’s store, it road way and 
Conrtlaud streets, New York, seems to tie a 
sort of Mecca for erring or doubtful watches 
of down town people who stop there to set 
them right and study the large railway map 
of the new standards. 
But clock time is true only for the meridian 
for which it is computed. And as the time 
stnndurd away from the meridian is a matter 
purely conventional, men of science and busi¬ 
ness have for years sought to make it a mat¬ 
ter of greater convenience to a greater num¬ 
ber. Some have even urged an international 
time standard recommended by the late 
Geodetic Conference at Rome. Agitation has 
at lasteveutuated in action. And we see the 
change wrought by the people without, gov¬ 
ernmental legislation or aid, and so quietly 
and smoothly ns not to jar or impede the busi¬ 
ness of the country in the least. This must be 
wonderful to people who scarcely dare breathe 
except by the authority of an autocrat. 
MERIDIANS AND DISTRICTS. 
This change substitutes five standard merid¬ 
ians for this country and Canada for the 
hundred or more previously in use. These 
are the meridians 15 degrees apart aud num¬ 
bered 00, 75, 00, 105 and 130 west from Green¬ 
wich. They make five divisions, each 15 de¬ 
grees wide, and designated Intercolonial, 
Eastern, Central. Mountain and Pacific. Near 
the middle of each, rims one of these meridians 
The map shows that the time is taken from 
the nearest meridian. That is, clocks seven- 
and-one-half degrees east and west of any of 
those meridians will take their time from 
their central meridian. Of course, those at 
the remotest points from the standard will be 
80 minutes wrong -those at the east bciug 
slow, those at the west, fust. Places about 
midway between the meridians will have 
greatest discrepancy between the new and the 
true time. Of very near neighbors along t he 
liue, for instance, at and near Detroit, some 
will get their time from the meridian east, 
some west, of them, aud consequently have 
times an hour apart. Such people will pro¬ 
bably keep correcttime for local purposes, or 
knowing the error of standard time, will soon 
form the habit of adjusting the difference in 
their minds without friction or failure in 
keeping appointments. 
For New York city, meridian 75 degrees 
which runs nearly through Philadelphia. Pa., 
is the center. The 75-dcgroe time will be 
standard from the eastern part of Maine to 
un irregular line, cutting the west shore of 
Lake Huron, Pittsburgh, Pa., the western 
boundaries of West Virginia and of South 
Carolina, aud ending noar Charleston, 8. C. 
From this line west to about Lake Manitoba, 
Canada; Bismarck, Dakota; Indianola, Ne¬ 
braska; Uniou, Kansas; Toyah, Sanderson 
and Laredo, Texas, t.he 00-degree meridian is 
standard. The mountain division extends 
west as far as Medicine Hat, Canada, along 
the Bitter Root Mountains to lluilcy, Idaho; 
Salt Lake and Frisco, Utah; Needle River and 
Gila, Arizona. This divisiou takes in almost 
all of Mexico, and its central meridian is 105 
degrees, located noar Denver, Colorado. The 
Pacific Divisiou takes its time from meridian 
120 degrees and includas Washington Terri¬ 
tory, Oregon, California, Nevada and parts 
of Idaho. 
HOW. 
The minute bauds of all new standard time¬ 
keepers will agree; the hour hands will differ 
by one, two, three, four or five hours. This is 
a thing so simple and easily accounted for as 
to need no change by travelers or temporary 
sojourners away from home. Along the lines 
separating the Divisions, will occur doubtless 
some annoying and some amusing results of 
the now time. But let the people along these 
lines remember the story told among sea-far¬ 
ing folks of a house on one of the Fiji Islands, 
in the South Pacific Ocean, so divided by the 
180th degree of longitude that when it is 
Saturday in the parlor it is Sunday in the 
kitchen, a difference in the clocks not mei ely 
of an hour, but of a day. 
w HO. 
Force of circumstances as well as force of 
man’s will, has brought, about this change. 
Many men have wrought at ihc problem. The 
question who daserves the credit for this 
change is in dispute among many who have 
studied, talked and written on the subject. 
Mr. W. F. Alleu, editor of the Travelers’ Offi¬ 
cial Railway Guide and Secretary of the Rail¬ 
way Time Conventions of the country, seems 
hy his position to have had special facilities 
und motives for effecting the change and to 
have taken up the work unfinished by others 
und carried it through to a successful issue. 
When the time-ball on the tower of the West¬ 
ern Union building foil to note the new 
noon, Sunday, November 18, perhaps a 
thousand pairs of eyes watching it from the 
street saw it fall, as it were, directly on the 
head of what seemed a mite of u man at. the 
base of the pole. That man was Mr. Allen, 
who was there to show and realize his interest 
iti a work that, had cost him so much labor und 
that, appears to ail a work of such great 
importance. 
■ « ■» » 
Deadwood seems to have had a grim 
origin. A man ordered a first-class funeral 
for his dead wife, but a piece of the coffin wus 
chipped off as it was lowered into the grave. 
A friend picked it up and handed it to the 
husband as a relic. A first-class bill was 
finally rendered ami refused. Suit was 
brought, at which defendant, exclaimed: 
“I’ve got the dead-wood on you. It’s not 
rosewood, but pine.” Hence the name of the 
celebrated city in the Black Hills. 
£01' Women, 
CONDUCTED BY MISS RAY CLARK. 
A WORD HERE AND THERE. 
“Too sranll a space for words sublime, 
But learn to ‘rend between the lines.'"' 
Thus wrote a very dear friend in my uuto- 
grapb album; 1 think of it no often and find 
I can apply it in a great many places: in the 
lingering hand-clasp, the clinging kiss, the 
frieudlv glance, the patting of baby’s hand on 
the cheek, silently speaking to the heart, the 
ecstatic joy, that baby begins to know, love 
and appreciate. Aud, too, where the singers 
keep up an animated whispering all through 
service (because they sit behind the organ and 
the pastor cannot see them), in the staying 
away from church (until you have a suit, a lit¬ 
tle nicer than your neighbor’s), the wrangling 
among families and members of the same 
church-just here I went out to help the 
“hen-man” catch some chickens. Did I not 
read between the lines all the while I was 
catching them and he .stringing them all to¬ 
gether with their heads down, poor things, 
after I had hatched—well, excuse me, not, that 
exactly— hut watched and fed them so long? 
I believe I feel now about as guilty as though 
I hod been stealing poultry; but all Summer 
they could find no place to scratch but in my 
Verbena bod. 
Iu Rutland, not loug since, 1 was sitting iu 
the railway station waiting for my train, I 
entered into conversation with a lady who 
remarked about the first thing: “Oh! I'm 
sick and tired of everything. Traveling all 
the time, nothing to do, living in my trunk, 
I’m so sick of it all.” She was dressed ele¬ 
gantly, and in the latest stylo; I iu a plain 
cashmere not new; waving plu rues on her hat, 
sparkliug gems on her lingers, which con¬ 
trasted pointedly with my black straw bat 
aud the dear marriage circlet. Sin* had 
nothing to do, I was full of care; her fair, lan¬ 
guid, strong face was well preserved; niiuc, 
though younger, I knew expressed all the 
weariness I felt,. Hero was the difference, I 
was a happy woman, and she the reverse. She 
would go back to her hotel presently, to her 
stylish husband, having no care on her mind, 
I would go meet the dear home fanes shilling 
with welcome. She had no children to carry 
a crying doll to; while 1 found my baby 
Ethel high in papa’s arms waiting for me. I 
thanked Heaven for my blessings and my lot, 
although many cares were waiting for my 
shoulders. Blessed home-cares they are; and 
ulthough ut times the heart faints a little 
with weariness over the many perplexing 
riddles of life, still they are blessings, und 
keep my feet from stumbling very much. 
Poor lady! rich, fair, idle and miserable! 
Would that your heart was full of music, and 
your brain alivo with thought; would there 
were little hands to caress your face, and call 
you mamma. Then, indeed, would you know 
t.he good of living, and the list.lessness caused 
by un idle life, would be gone. 
Yes; 1 read “between the lines” all the way 
home. As 1 looked on the flying landscape, 
watched the meetings at some by-stations, 
read it in the dear old lady’s face with whom 
I divided my little bag of plums, (l had some¬ 
thing besides for papa and baby). 
There! it is dinner-time now, 
and it moans dinner, too! For 
you must, know I belong to tlmt 
happy class who take boarders. 
There are Tom, Phil, Larry, 
John, “Misser” Martin, as baby 
says, besides our own family. 
There is baby now, rapping on 
the teakettle with a knife, and 
holding it to her ear; she is 
much put out because it will not 
sing like the tuning fork, while 
Philia asks her if she is sounding 
her “B.” eva a mbs. 
be in the way when it is opened for use. I 
sit in a straight - backed rocking-chair of 
like age, whose solid frame would now out¬ 
wear a half-dozen of the more graceful 
rockers in a modern furniture warehouse. 
There is a black circle in the under-side 
of one of the slats in the back, which wus 
burned long ago by a candle that was placed 
in an iron candlestick hung on the slat below, 
while the industrious matron by its feeble light 
mended the worn garments or fashioned new 
ones. Its original color was a durable red, 
but it has since been given a more fashionable 
tint; its characteristics remain the same, 
and its appellation is “ mother's chair.” An¬ 
other relic of days gone hy is a genuine tor¬ 
toise shell comb, with a high back, and when 
worn the comb would roach hulf-way around 
one’s head. One of our diversions when we 
were small children was to look through the 
mottled back of the comb and see the differ¬ 
ent shades and colors that, it gave everything. 
I think 1 see now ono of those old ladies, with 
their front hair arranged iu one flat curl high 
on each side of the forehead; they kept these 
iu shape by side combs, the effect being to 
give their faces a square, sensible expression. 
Worn with it, and of the same date, und still 
in good preservation, is a vandyke of some 
fine kind of muslin, striped in fancy colors 
—a kind of pointed cape, we would call it— 
and which, in its time, must have been very 
becoming. Such old relies keep our memories 
ami affection for the past ever green. 
b. c. D. 
COMFORTS OR LUXURIES? 
MILLY BIRD. 
“ Dollars for comforts, but not a cent for 
luxuries, is a good home motto for every 
farmer.” 
Why say farmer, Mr. P., if this is a good 
motto for them, why not for merchants, edi¬ 
tors, lawyers, etc:.,—or does the cultivation of 
land make a difference in the tastes and de¬ 
sires of men ( 
We can learn something every day, for be¬ 
fore I saw the Fair Number in which was an 
artielo commenced wth the above quotation, 
I really supposed a farmer had just as much 
right to enjoy luxuries—if he could get them 
honestly—as any other man, and knew what 
they were too. His wife might even have a 
“fashionable parasol, n if olio chose to indulge 
in one. 
Well, I am glad they may have a great big 
sunny kitchen, for I believe that some city 
folks down in their dark, damp basement, 
would no doubt think that was a luxury; but 
it isn’t, it’s only a comfort. Aud then there’s 
fresh eggs und butter and fruit, some people 
call these articles luxuries too—we may use 
suinr of them if we call them comforts, “ not a 
cent for luxuries.” No raisins—what will we 
do about the Thanksgiving mince pies, and 
the Christmas plum pudding ? but may be 
they are not luxuries. Please teil us. Mi. P., 
for I uiu all mixed up, between comforts and 
luxuries. One thing I do understand, I’ll 
never use that “ fashionable parasol" again ! 
I’ll buy a shade tree to keep the sun off when 
I go to church. 
Good qualities arc the substantial riches of 
mind; but it is good breeding that sets them 
off to advantage. 
OLD RELICS. 
Without being a relic: hunt¬ 
er, I have a decided love for old 
things. As I write, I sit by an 
old fasliioued square stand that 
was a part of my mother’s wed¬ 
ding outfit seventy years ago. 
It has a drawer with a brass knot) 
that, has stood the wear of two 
generations of children. On the 
stand lies my mother’s Bible, 
bearing the date of 1817. The 
cover which is dark leather, looks 
well, aud the binding is firm; and 
except the yellow tinge time gives 
to all old books, it is utmost as 
good as new—quite a good com¬ 
mentary on the work done ao long 
ago. It is of convenient size to 
hold without being fatiguing, 
and lias no ornamental clasp to 
THE PROOK KSS1VE !• A hMI K AT THE STATION. Fig. 680. 
