If that gun (mind you, a cannon) was not fired, solemnly and formally fired, every time the sun rose and every time he set, the military breast would be racked with rude alarms, and the military mind would be tossed to and fro with dread forebodings.
To fire off a musket wouldn’t do; wouldn’t begin to do.
It would be unconstitutional, if not actually anarchistic and revolutionary.
To start the day without firing a cannon—why the military establishment could no more perform its traditionary functions without a cannon salute to the coming and going of the sun than one of the old parties could exist without stuffed ballot boxes.
Therefore, the custom is fixed—rooted, as it were, in the soil of our civilization. It is one of the greatest advantages we have over our untutored ancestors.
However much they may have yearned to shoot the sun up and shoot it down, they couldn’t do it. They had nothing to shoot with. They were so completely engulfed in the currents of stupidity and barbarism that they just had to trust to their eyes to know when the sun was up, or was down.
You might ask how the soldiers do on cloudy days. You might ask, with unseasonable levity, if the army doesn’t have to go by the clock when the sun is not to be seen. And you might, out of your desire to be smart and show yourself off, ask whether the army couldn’t go by the clock as well on fair days as on foul ones.
But such questions as these will do you no good, and they would cause you to lose friends. They are irrelevant impertinences.
For, you see, when anything has been done a long time, the presumption is that there is sense in doing it that way.
Therefore, all nice and respectable people put salt in the fire when the screech owl twitters, and make a cross mark and spit in it, whenever they turn back in their tracks. We all do this because the custom has age and good sense on its side.