ch small parts. Life, as I
before remarked, was not very rushing. Nobody expected to meet anybody
else at a particular instant in those far-away, lazy, easy-going times,
or to go anywhere on the minute. If you arrived at where you were going
before the darkness fell that was all even the most ambitious asked. The
splitting up of time with our present-day nicety is of comparatively
modern working out."

"That seems funny, doesn't it?" Christopher suggested.

"Yes, until you see how naturally it grew out of an advancing
civilization. After this slow-moving, sleepy interval of idleness and
ignorance, when there were no books, no schools, no learning of any
kind, there came a great waking up, or Renaissance, which stirred the
populace in every direction. Printing was invented, books written, and
people, hearing of other lands, began to travel. In consequence life
became busier and time more valuable. Moreover, with the spread of
Christianity, monasteries and convents were everywhere erected, and
attached to these religious orders were specified intervals for work,
prayer and various masses and services. Such periods were marked off by
the ringing of bells. Thus it happened quite consistently that the first
clocks introduced were in religious buildings and on the spires of
churches and were without faces or hands, merely indicating by the
stroke of one or more bells the termination of the hour."

"But I should not call that a clock at all," Christopher objected.

"Oh, it was a clock. Such a contrivance could not perform its function
without works. The bell or bells rung as a result of turning wheels.
Moreover, the very word 'clock' is derived from a root which in almost
every language means 'bell.' The French was _cloche_, the Saxon
_clugga_. Thus it came about that later on the works of more modern
clocks frequently had two distinct mechanisms: the bell portion that
chimed or struck the hour, and the section that included the moving of
the hands. Years afterward we find this distinction still maintained,
and discover old clockmakers speaking of a clock that did not strike
merely as a _timekeeper_."

"How curious!" murmured Christopher. "And who was it that evolved this
machine that would strike the hours?"

"That, I suppose, we shall never positively know; but in all probability
it was a monk, who, having considerable leisure at his command and
perhaps being held responsible for the ringing of the monastery bell
once