"Mrs. Borgia is wrong," I said. "The clocks are to be put ahead one
hour. At 2 o'clock on Easter morning they are to be turned on to 3
o'clock. Mrs. Borgia certainly won't have anything in the oven at that
time of night. You see, we are to pretend that 2 o'clock is really 3
o'clock, and when we get up at 7 o'clock it will really be 6 o'clock. We
are deliberately fooling ourselves in order to get an hour more of
daylight."
"I have an idea," she said, "that you won't get up at 7 that morning."
"It is quite possible," I said, "because I intend to stay up until 2
a.m. that morning in order to be exactly correct in changing our
timepieces. No one shall accuse me of being a time slacker."
Titania was wrinkling her brow. "But how about that lost hour?" she
said. "What happens to it? I don't see how we can just throw an hour
away like that. Time goes on just the same. How can we afford to shorten
our lives so ruthlessly? It's murder, that's what it is! I told you it
was a Bolshevik plot. Just think; there are a hundred million Americans.
Moving on the clock that way brings each of us one hour nearer our
graves. That is to say, we are throwing away 100,000,000 hours."
She seized a pencil and a sheet of paper and went through some
calculations.
"There are 8,760 hours in a year," she said. "Reckoning seventy years a
lifetime, there are 613,200 hours in each person's life. Now, will you
please divide that into a hundred million for me? I'm not good at long
division."
With docility I did so, and reported the result.
"About 163," I said.
"There you are!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "Throwing away all that
perfectly good time amounts simply to murdering 163 harmless old men of
seventy, or 326 able-bodied men of thirty-five, or 1,630 innocent little
children of seven. If that isn't atrocity, what is? I think Mr. Hoover
or Admiral Grayson, or somebody, ought to be prosecuted."
I was aghast at this awful result. Then an idea struck me, and I took
the pencil and began to figure on my own account.
"Look here, Titania," I said. "Not so fast. Moving the clock ahead
doesn't really bring those people any nearer their graves. What it does
do is bring the ratification of the Peace Treaty sooner, which is a fine
thing. By deleting a hundred million hours we shorten Senator Borah's
speeches against the League by 11,410 years. That's very encouraging."
"According to that way of reckoning," she said with sarcasm, "Mr.
Borah's term must have expired about 11,000 years ago."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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