By the new system, railroad towns would have a great advantage in that they could obtain their time with greater precision from the railroad clocks, which are regulated by signals from astronomical observatories. Inland towns having no observatories or telegraphs would of course, as they do now, obtain their time as best they could from adjoining cities.
In some places there would still have to be two standards, as in railroad centers; but there never need be more than two, and as these two will always be exactly one hour apart, the adjustment of working hours, business hours, school hours, etc., is a problem involving nothing more than the addition or subtraction of an hour.
The Geodetic Congress which met in Rome a few weeks since, and in which the United States was officially represented by General Cutts, of the Coast Survey, passed, unanimously, resolutions urging the adoption of this system for the whole world, with the meridian of Greenwich, as it always has been and is now for all nautical calculations, the universal standard. A compliance with this recommendation would reduce, with our present time-pieces, the time of the world to twelve standards (our watches and clocks merely repeating themselves after crossing the 180th meridian), and enable a man to “circumnavigate the globe,” and always have correct time without once changing the minute-hand of his watch.
This distinguished orator is again visiting our shores, and very many will avail themselves of the opportunity to listen to his almost peerless eloquence. His mission this time is to raise money, by means of lectures and appeals to the benevolent, for the work in which he is engaged in Paris. A glance just now at this man’s remarkable career will be timely.
Father Hyacinthe’s real name is Charles Loyson. He was born in Orleans, France, March 10, 1827, and is therefore now nearly fifty-seven years of age. He showed in boyhood some precocity, writing verses which were regarded remarkable for his years. For some years he was a student at the academy of Pau, which institution he left at the age of eighteen to become a student of theology in the school of St. Sulpice. After receiving priest’s orders, he taught philosophy for a time at Avignon and theology at Nantes; then for ten years he was in charge of the parish of St. Sulpice. He was past thirty when he entered the convent of the Carmelites at Lyons as a novice. Two years after he became a member of the order, and began preaching in the lyceum at Lyons. He soon acquired great popularity here; and on visiting Bordeaux, Perigneux, and Paris, and giving courses of sermons in these several places, he made a wide and deep impression. It was about 1867 that the liberality of some of Father Hyacinthe’s sentiments attracted notice. His orthodoxy became suspected, but his popularity continued to grow. We see him, in 1869, examined by the pope as to his doctrines, whom he seems to have convinced of his substantial soundness. A little later, however, a great sensation was produced by some of his liberal utterances. The general of the order of Carmelites at Rome warned him that he must change his tone or cease from preaching. His reply to this order was so outspoken against certain practices of the church as to draw from Rome a threat of the major excommunication. He had been preaching in the church of Notre Dame, Paris, and was now prohibited from doing so longer.