"Nor I," echoed the Scotchman, returning the lad's smile. "I suppose when it was made nobody ever expected to see it equaled. And yet such strides are we making in science that here we are with a clock that is in many ways even more miraculous."
"You mean the one on the Metropolitan Life Insurance building?"
"The same," was the quick answer. "Surely you must grant that to be ahead of the one in London. It is interesting also to note how these two mammoth timepieces differ. The dial of our New York clock, instead of being of glass, is, as you know, of concrete faced with blue and white mosaic tiling. The figures indicating the hours are four feet high and the minute marks ten inches in diameter. The minute hands are twelve feet from center to tip and together weigh a thousand pounds; while the hour hands measure eight feet four inches from center to tip and weigh seven hundred pounds apiece."
"Mercy on us! I didn't realize it was such a whale of a thing!"
"A prophet is not without honour save in his own country," laughed the old clockmaker. "Here you sit almost under the shadow of one of the largest timepieces in the universe and fail to appreciate the wonder that towers above your head. Well, well! Perhaps you will treat your native land with more respect after this. Certainly you will regard this Metropolitan Life clock with greater awe and bless your stars that one of its hands hasn't blown down on top of you. Think of those gigantic pointing fingers being built on iron frames sheathed with copper and made to revolve on roller bearings!"
"I give you my word I shall think of it the next time I look up at them," responded Christopher. "How on earth can they make such a tremendous machine go?"
"It is controlled automatically from the director's room, where a master clock also controls a hundred others scattered throughout the building. This same mechanism controls in addition various electrical devices, such as signal bells, etc. It is all very wonderful. And the half is not told yet, for the tricks it performs at night are almost more amazing than are those it performs by day."
"I seldom see it in the evening," Christopher explained. "We are always starting out into the suburbs just when New York is beginning to wake up."
"New York can hardly be called asleep at any time," McPhearson chuckled, "so I must take your lamentation with a grain of salt. But it is rather of a pity you shouldn't have had the chance to see that clock after dark. Not that it isn't beautiful in the daylight. Its chimes certainly ring just as sweetly one time as another. Nevertheless I enjoy them best after the city gets a little bit quiet (which it seldom does until well toward morning). Those chimes, remember, are a replica of the set at Cambridge, England, and play a theme composed by Handel, the old composer."
"Why on earth didn't some one tell me all this before?"