"I think we shall have time to see just one thing more, and then we must go back to the hotel. We have examined all kinds of glass objects—so many, in fact, that it would seem as if there was no other purpose for which glass could be used. And yet I can show you something of which, I will wager, you have not thought."
"What is it?" questioned the two young people breathlessly.
Full of curiosity, Uncle Bob led them through several corridors until he came to a large room that they had not visited. He conducted them to its farther end and paused before a large sand glass.
"Before the days of clocks and watches," he began, "such glasses as these were much in use for telling the time. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they had them in almost all the churches, that the officiating clergyman might be able to measure the length of his sermon."
Jean laughed.
"I wish they had them now," she declared mischievously.
"Sometimes I do," smiled Uncle Bob. "It is said the glasses were originally invented in Egypt. Wherever they came from, they certainly were a great convenience to those who had no other means of telling the time. Charlemagne, I have read, had a sand glass so large that it needed to be turned only once in twelve hours. Fancy how large it must have been. At the South Kensington Museum is a set of four large sand glasses evidently made to go together. Of course you have seen, even in our day, hour, quarter-hour, and minute glasses."
"I used to practice by an hour glass," Jean replied quickly. "At least it was a quarter-of-an-hour glass, and I had to turn it four times."
"It would be strange not to have clocks and watches, wouldn't it?" reflected Giusippe as they walked back to the hotel.
"I guess it would!" Hannah returned emphatically. "The meals would never be on time."