On some tall building in a distant city, a time-ball hangs suspended at the top of its pole, and people pause to look up at it. They hold their watches in their hands. Upon the tick of noon, an impulse will come from the observatory, and the ball will drop. Then those who have been looking will set the hands of their watches and pass on. At the same instant, the news of noon will be flashed by telegraph across the land, and by wireless to ships at sea. The whole Western Union system will suspend business for a little, while the lines are connected and the observatory at Washington ticks off the seconds. Everywhere there are electric clocks, automatically controlled by some master clock, which, in its turn is governed by the observatory time. So we all, as a matter of course and without thinking, set our watches by the star. Civilization every day catches step with the heavenly bodies.
Back of all that we see of life, therefore, stands the great fact of measuring time, and those who are engaged in giving to man the instruments for this purpose have a special responsibility. Perhaps the ancient peoples were not so far wrong when they permitted time-telling to be a privilege of the priests. It is far more than a matter of moneymaking; it is a fixing for humanity of the standards of daily life; it is a duty which lies at the foundation of modern efficiency; it is even a sacred trust.
Therefore, the man who makes or sells unreliable timepieces is false to his trust. Through his action people are thrown out of adjustment with the world about them, and they, in turn may seriously interfere with the plans of many others. It is hard to believe that there are some people who still look upon a watch as "jewelry," or that there are some dealers who are more interested in the watch-case than in the movement it contains.
The watchman of olden times was a public officer. He was chosen for his reliability, and people felt confidence when he called the hours. The watch-dealer of to-day is in a somewhat similar position; he has a serious duty to his community. He is not chosen by the public, and yet, even more than the watchman, he is a public servant since the watches that he puts into people's pockets are their principal means of adjustment to the busy affairs of life. In a sense, he supplies them with the basis of their efficiency. His duty is that of supplying the largest practicable degree of accuracy to the largest possible number of people. The Slave of the Watch will not obey the owner of an inaccurate timepiece.
Time itself is elemental; it had no beginning, it can have no ending. It is like a great ocean which flows round all of the earth, and neither begins nor ends in any one place. But time for any man is exactly according to his use of it. It is as though a man were to go to the shore of the boundless ocean, with a tin cup in his hand. If he could get no more than a cupful of water, it would not be because of any limit in the amount available, but merely in his means for carrying it away. Should he have a pail, a barrel, or any larger receptacle, then the water would belong to him in a correspondingly larger amount.
Thus, time each day presents itself equally to everyone upon the earth, but some receive it in cups, some in pails, and some in barrels. Some make of their day a thing of no results, while others fill it with real achievement. Those who achieve are they who have learned to value time, and to make it serve them as the mighty genie that it is.
These are the wonders which Kipling had in mind when he wrote:
If you can fill each unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the earth and everything that's on it,