to the
clock handed down by his grandfather, and maintained that no
new-fangled arrangement kept as good time. It was true that the
striking apparatus had long ago failed to agree with the hands; and the
hands themselves, owing to the accumulated inaccuracies of years, no
longer denoted the real time; nevertheless, whenever it struck seven he
could always be sure that the hands were pointing to a quarter-past
twelve, and it was then just twenty-two minutes to three. This was
something he could depend upon with a certainty which quite compensated
for the annoyance of incessant calculations and mental corrections."

"Pray leave joking aside and consider the wonderful nightly clockwork
here, which makes automatic time-keepers unnecessary. This accommodating
inner moon, within the brief space of five hours, goes through the
phases of a thin crescent, first quarter, and just as it approaches
fulness it submits to a total eclipse, followed by a waning quarter,
then the reverse crescent of an old moon, and finally it sets where the
Sun must soon rise. It is a wonderful heavenly clock, which is never
obscured by clouds, and turns its face toward every one alike."

"Yes, but one must remember that this hurrying moon gains two hours a
day on the Sun, and therefore goes through her performance that much
earlier each night. Besides, she is capable of rising twice in the same
night occasionally."

"Those are mere details that one learns to allow for. Moreover,
consider the convenience of being able to tell the day of the week by
the smaller moon. If it is just risen, we know we are on the eve of the
first day of the week; if it is high or eclipsed, it must be the second
day; and if it is sinking in the west, it is the third day----"

"But for the last half of the week it is not seen at all, and one is
free to guess which day it is," I interrupted. "Then no two days of the
week begin at the same hour. The first day begins with sunrise, the
second two hours before sunrise, the third four hours before, and the
fourth at midnight, and so on--two hours earlier each day till the week
ends, when they throw in a whole night for good measure and begin the
next week at sunrise again!"

"Yes, that arrangement is made necessary because their Moon-day will not
agree with their Sun-day in any other manner. But it is rather
remarkable that the two moons agree with each other so well, the larger
one making twelve revolutions while the smaller