"Sho'!"
"So noon would come sooner, too. And if you walked west, it would be longer before the sun rose and noon would be later, that is, figured by your watch."
"Ah declah Ah never thought o' that!"
"So, you see, every place has a different time."
"But," the darky protested, "it's the same time when Ah goes to Vicksburg."
"Certainly," the lad answered, "and if you went away to Texas it would seem the same, but it really wouldn't be. The clocks change four times in the United States, don't they, Ross?"
"Yes, four times," the older lad agreed. "East of a line running through Buffalo, Wheeling, Asheville and Atlanta, time is called 'Eastern Time.' Everything west of that line is really an hour later, so the clock has to be put back an hour. If a train comes from the east into the station at Wheeling, at ten o'clock in the morning, and only stays in the depot five minutes, the timetable shows that it left at five minutes past nine."
"What-all happens to that yar hour?" asked Dan'l.
"It's just lost," Ross declared. "That standard of time, which is called 'Central Time,' reaches clear across to the middle of the Dakotas, and the eastern boundaries of Colorado, and New Mexico. There you lose another hour, 'Mountain Time' extending as far as the ridge of the Rockies. From there to the Pacific coast, it's called 'Pacific Time' and is another hour later.
"You see, Dan'l," he continued, "when it's noon in Washington and New York, it's eleven o'clock in Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans; ten o'clock in Butte, Cheyenne and Denver; and nine o'clock in Spokane, San Francisco and Los Angeles."