Suppose Chicago decided that "early to bed and early to rise" was desirable; then it could establish its legal noon as 17.30, which would be about 20 minutes early for its meridian. You could do business with Chicago for a lifetime and not find this out, unless you looked up the meridian of Chicago and found that it was 17.50 o'clock. None of the railroads or steamship lines of the city would need to know this, except as a matter of scientific curiosity, for the time tables would all be printed in universal time. For hiring labor, receiving and delivering goods, etc., they would only need to know Chicago _business hours_. To state the matter in different words,--Chicago would only need to decide what portion of the universal 24 hours would suit it best for its day and which for its night, and if it decided, as supposed above, to place its working day forward a little to give some daylight after labor, nothing would be disturbed and only the scientific would ever know. Certainly, "save daylight," but do not make a fool of the clock! Having shown the great liberty which localities could take without touching the working of the system, the same remarks apply to ultra-scientific localities. A city might establish its noon to the instant; so it is possible--even if a little improbable--that the brilliant and scientific aldermen of New York might appoint a commission with proper campfollowers and instrument bearers to determine the longitude of the city to the Nth of a second and tell us where we "are at." The glory of this achievement--and especially its total cost--would be all our own and incorruptible time would be untouched! We thus see that great local freedom and great accuracy are alike possible. With our present system, accuracy in local time is impracticable and has never even been attempted, and is confusion confused since we added the railroad hour jumps. Why did we nurse this confusion till it has become almost intolerable? Because man has always been a slave to _mental associations, and habits_. Primitive man divided the local day into parts and gave them names and this mental attitude sticks to us after it has served its day. The advantages of universal time could hardly be enumerated, yet we can have them all by dropping our childish association of 7 o'clock with breakfast time! Another example,--you visit a friend for a few days and on retiring the first night you ask "what is your breakfast hour"--"8 o'clock." You have to ask this question and recollect the answer. Now tell me what difference it would make if the answer had been 13 o'clock? None whatever, unless, perhaps, that is, you do not like thirteen! You ask, how about ships? Ships now carry universal time and only change the clock on deck to please the simple minded passengers. How about the date line? No change whatever, so long as we use _dates_ which means numbering local days. It is useless multiplying examples; all difficulties disappear, as if by magic, the