hardship. Many leases are dependent on lives;
and both lessor and lessee are concerned in
knowing whether a particular life has terminated
or not. Many a married woman, who has
neither heard nor seen anything of her husband
for a long series of years (vide Tennyson's
gentle Annie, the wife of poor Enoch Arden),
would be induced to marry again, if quite certain
that he (the first husband) was dead. Therefore,
special statutes have been passed, in
relation to a limited number of circumstances,
enacting that if a man were seen alive more than
seven years ago, and has not since been seen or
heard of, he may be treated as dead. (Philip and
Annie both knew that Enoch had been away
more than seven years.)

The nick of time occasionally affects the
distribution or amount of property in relation to
particular seasons. Some years ago the
newspapers remarked on the fact that a lord of broad
acres, whose rent-roll reached something like
forty thousand a year, died "about midnight"
between the tenth and eleventh of October; and
the possible consequences of this were thus
set forth. "His rents are payable at 'old
time,' that is, Old Lady Day and Old Michaelmas
Day. Old Michaelmas Day fell this year on
Sunday, the eleventh instant. The day begins
at midnight. Now, the rent is due upon the first
moment of the day it becomes due; so that at
one second beyond twelve o'clock of the tenth
instant, rent payable at Old Michaelmas Day is
in law due. If the lord died before twelve, the
rents belong to the parties taking the estates;
but if after twelve, then they belong to and
form part of his personal estate. The difference
of one minute might thus involve a question
on the title to about twenty thousand pounds."
We do not know that a legal difficulty did arise;
the facts only indicate the mode in which one
might have arisen. Sometimes that ancient
British institution, the house clock, has been at
war with another British institution, the parish
church clock. A baby was born, or an old person
died, just before the house clock struck twelve
on a particular night, but after the church
clock struck. On which day did the birth or
death take place—yesterday or to-day? And
how would this fact be ascertained, to settle
the inheritance of an estate? We know an
instance (not involving, however, the inheritance
to property) of a lady whose relations
never have definitely known on which day
she was born; the pocket watch of the
accoucheur who attended her mother pointed to
a little before twelve at midnight, whereas the
church clock had just struck twelve. Of course
a particular day had to be named in the register;
and as the doctor maintained that his watch
was right, there were the materials for a very
pretty quarrel if the parties concerned had
been so disposed. It might be that the nick of
time was midnight exactly, as measured by
solar or sun-dial time: that is, the sun may
have been precisely in the nadir at that moment;
but this difficulty would not arise in practice, as
the law knows only mean time, not sun-dial
time. If Greenwich time were made legal
everywhere, and if electric clocks everywhere
established communication with the master
clock at the Observatory, there might be another
test supplied; but under the conditions stated,
it would be a nice matter of Tweedledum and
Tweedledee to determine whether the house
clock, the church clock, or a pocket watch,
should be relied upon. All the pocket watches
in the town might be brought into the witnessbox,
but without avail; for if some accorded
with the house clock, others would surely be
found to agree better with the church clock.

This question of clocks, as compared with
time measured by the sun, presents some very
curious aspects in relation to longitude. What's
o'clock in London will not tell you what's
o'clock at Falmouth, unless you know the
difference of longitude between the two places.
The sun takes about twenty minutes to go
from the zenith of the one to the zenith of the
other. Local time, the time at any particular
town, is measured from the moment of noon at
that town; and noon itself is when the sun
comes to the meridian of that place. Hence
Falmouth noon is twenty minutes after London
noon, Falmouth midnight twenty minutes after
London midnight; and so on. When it is ten
minutes after midnight, on the morning of Sunday,
the first of January, in London, it is ten minutes
before midnight on Saturday, the thirty-first of
December, at Falmouth. It is a Sabbath at the
one place, a working-day at the other. That
particular moment of absolute time is in the year
eighteen hundred and sixty-five at the one, and
eighteen hundred and sixty-four at the other.
Therefore, we see, it might become a ticklish
point in what year a man died, solely on account
of this question of longitude, irrespective of
any wrong-going or wrong-doing of clocks,
or of any other doubtful points whatever.
Sooner or later this question will have to be
attended to. In all our chief towns, nearly all
our towns indeed, the railway-station clocks
mark Greenwich time, or, as it is called, " Railway
time;" the church clocks generally mark
local time; and some commercial clocks, to serve
all parties, mark both kinds of time on the same
dial-face, by the aid of an additional index hand.
Railway time is gradually beating local time;
and the law will by-and-by have to settle which
shall be used as the standard in determining
the moment of important events. Some of the
steamers plying between England and Ireland
use Greenwich time in notifying the departures
from the English port, and Dublin time in
notifying those from the Irish port: a method
singularly embarrassing to a traveller who is in
the habit of relying on his own watch.

Does a sailor get more prog, more grog,
more pay, within a given space of absolute time
when coming from America to England, or
when going from England to America? The
difference is far too slight to attract either
his attention or that of his employers; yet it
really is the case that he obtains more good
things in the former of these cases than in the
latter. His days are shorter on the homeward
than on the outward voyage; and if he receive