Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1875 — Where Two Sundays Come Together. [ARTICLE]

Where Two Sundays Come Together.

“ Well, I never did- —” “ I know you never did. my 7 dear, but you may, one of these days, when our ship comes in and we start on that round of ours. We can’t very well start until that metaphorical vessel does arrive; can’t go out until she comes in. Y’ou see, the sinews of war are also the muscles of peace, and it needs a financial biceps to enable one to strike out effectively on such a round.” “ What on earth are you talking of,” s:tid Mts. Penn, " with such a jumble of finance and pugilism and maritime affairs ? It strikes me "that your metaphors are slightly mixed.” “ Well, you said you never ” “ Y'es. I’was going to say that I never heard of where two Sundays came together.” “Exactly. And that is what I was talking of." I was about to explain it to you.” “Do you mean to say that there is such a place?” “ I do.” “And time?” “And time.” Then I should like to know what becomes of the Seventh Day of the strict Sabbatarians?” “That is a theological question, my dear. We’ll not medale with it.” “ But how do they make two Sundays come together ?” “Just in that way precisely. They make ’em come together. For instance, on board a naval vessel, say, when the officer in charge of that duty finds by an ‘ observation’ that the sun is precisely over the line-of the ship’s meridian (». «., the point or degree of longitude east or west of M ashington or Greenwich where she then is), he knows that it is noon of that day (to a landsman; to him it is the beginning of the next day), and he reports accordingly to the proper officer:

* Eight bells, sir,’ and receives reply: 'Make it so, sir,’ usually with the agreeable addition, * and pipe to dinner.’ So it*""is that the I slip’s officer, upon occasion, makes two Sundays come together, or, for the matter of that, knocks Sunday out of the week altogether, according to circumstances.” “Knocksit out altogether? Only one Sunday in two weeks?” Precisely. He can jump from Saturday to Monday if he will.” # “Worse and worse! (Well, explain, please. Let me understand the ‘ circumstances’ under which these nautical gentlemen so coolly double Sunday or drop it.” “ Here goes, then; We were talking of that little prbposed round of ours.” “ O yes! What round?” “ Why, round the world. Haven’t we been speculating and castle-building on taking one of those through-tickets for the yet-to-be-fashionable tour, with lay-over coupons for Chicago and San’Francisoo and Yokohama and Hong-Kong and Calcutta and Bombay and Suez and Brindisi and Paris and London? Well, it depends on which way we take that ticket) eastward or westward, whether we lose a day —Sunday it may be as well as any other—or make one on our trip. It is usually on the Pacific Ocean that this gain or loss is made, because, Washington or Greenwich being the ‘given, or governing meridian’ from which American or English vessels calculate their longitude, it is only on that ocean that they find the one hundred and eightieth degree, or half-round-the-world point, at which they effect the change.” ... “ Yes, I see that by the globe. Here is the one hundred and eightieth degree west or east of Greenwich, right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Go on with your yarn.” "■ Thanks to common schools and the electric telegraph most landsmen now understand that a difference in longitude makes a difference in the time of day; that a message going westward arrives at its destination before its apparent hour of starting; or, as Pat would say, ‘ it’d rache . St. Louis before ye sint it from New York.’ Orreries have taught our youngsters that, as the earth turns toward the sun, at the point which is full-face to that luminary it is high noon, while at one-quarter of the earth’s circumference toward the west it is just sunrise. This difference of time is, at the equator, just four minutes for each degree of longitude—equal to six hours (360 minutes) for the ninety degrees, or quarter circumference, above noted. Thus at St. Louis, fifteen degrees west of New 7 York, it is sixty minutes earlier than with us, or eleven o’clock when it is twelve here, and a ship circumnavigating the globe going westwardly thus gains on apparent time (laps over on to the next .day) four minutes for each of the 3GO degrees of westing, or twenty-four hours for the entire circuit of the earth. In other words, going west, aud keeping her record of days from the day of the w 7 eek on which she starts, on. arriving back at her port on what to her is Monday she finds that it is Tuesday on shore, and she must jump from Monday to Wednesday to set herself right. Making the circuit eastwardly, the case is reversed, and arriving from the w 7 est it is Tuesday on her log, while to-morrow is Tuesday to the board-ing-officer. The ship then doubles Tuesday and squares her record. “ But most seamen correct this seeming error on passing the half-way point; i. e., on reaching the 180th degree west or east of their governing meridian a day is dropped or repeated, and the ship • arrives without being in next week or last week, when she should be in this. Landsmen’s ignorance of these facts has caused some amusing scenes on steamers on the Pacific. Some twenty years ago the New Orleans, the first passenger steamer that ever crossed the Pacific Ocean, was on her way from San Francisco to Sydney with a load of gold-hunters, including some Pike County men, whose nautical education was limited. The purser had posted his usual daily bulletin of latitude, longitude and distance run since the previous noon —always an interesting episode in the histoiy of a day on a long voyage—dated, we’ll say, Monday, the 10th. The next day it stood Wednesday, the 12th, the 180th degree having ’been passed meanwhile, and the intervening day duly dropped. The apparent blunder caught the eye of the eager readers at once. “ ‘ Halloo, purser, what’s this? You’ve made a mistake; you’ve dated this Wednesday.’ “ ‘ Y’es, sir; that’s all right.’ “‘AU right? Why, yesterday was Monday; here’s your own bulletin up yet.’ ‘“Y’es, sir. That’s right, too.’ “‘Right, too? Where in thunder’s Tuesday?’ ‘“Knocked out?’ “ ‘ Oh, come, now,’ said Pike, on the lookout for sailors’ tricks on green hands, ‘ that won’t do. None of that with us. Who ever heard of knocking a day out of the week'?’ “ Bets were finally made, to be«settled at Sydney; and when the pilot boarded them the" papers Showed the purser to be right, and that it was the 16th, say, in Australia, while Pike was a day behind in his almanac. On the return’ trip from Sydney to Panama, on reaching the 180th degree, bulletins were posted ‘ Sunday, the sth,’ and the next day the same. Here was another fuss; the John Bulls on board were especially disgusted. . “‘All ’umbug! "Two, Sundays! The Captain’s a very clever man, no doubt, but that won’t do, you know. No Yankee tricks on us!’ tion that that was the time when his notes fell due, and he was ready to meet them. So, you see, honest Jack has a real time in his mind, and means wiial he says when he promises to pay his debts if presented ‘ where two Sundays come together.’ ” “ Well.” said Mrs. P., ‘‘ the middle of the Pacific Ocean is a good place to go into liquidation.” — Harper's Weekly. —A native gentleman writes to the Friend of India from Behar: “laske# an opulent zeminder the other day * Why don’t you educate your son, instead of loading him with ornaments as a temptatiorirtosome ruffian to murder him?’ With a stave face he told me that his nephew had learned to read and write, and was looked upon as a learned young man in the village; lilt he died of small-pox, and, the same coincidence having occurred in his uncle’s family, it is now settled once for all that ‘ learning in our family is inauspicious, and brings adversity and death.’ It is the fact that nothing will induce any member of this family to learn. ‘Do we hot see hundreds of educated men,’ added he ‘ absolutely starving, while ignorant men are enjoying ease and comfort? Besides, learning unfits d man of our clan to follow his walk of life, and in ninty-nine cases out of a hundred learning makes a man good for nothing.’ ” —“ Why is it,” asks an exchange, “that cripples are such bad-natured people?” We don’t know, but they certainly are not to for being a little crutchetty.