The Cealess Stone

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The Clock—the Clock, in the old Clock Tower, the clock which was meant when anyone said, without other word of qualification, "So let us meet by the Clock"—this was the one. Annually the gold leaf of its numerals was renewed and refreshed, and the numerals were Roman, not as any deliberate archaicism, but because no other numerals were known thereabouts when it was made; the "Arabic" numbers, in their slow progression out of India through Persia into Turkey, had nowhere reached that part of Europe when the Clock was made; and furthermore, as a sign to us how our fathers' fathers lived without a need for graduations of haste, the great dial had but one hand to turn the hours.

The pulsebeat of the heart of Imperial Bella, capital of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania is no longer as perceptible round about the Old Town Hall as it once was: to be sure, on Saints Cosmo's and Damian's Day, the City Council still in full regalia comes for the formal ceremony of electing the Chief Burgomaster, but the rest of the year not much happens. Toiurists come to see the tower as part of the regular tour offered by Messrs. T. Cook, beggars and peddlers follow the tour as birds follow a boat, and country-folk—to whom the new Municipal Building, with its mansard roof, marble lobby, and typewriting machines, mean nearer to nothing than nothing at all—country-folk make the Clock Tower the center of their perambulations, as they have done for centuries. It is too old a joke to raise even a smile any more that some of them expect to see the Emperor emerge when the automata come out to strike the hours.

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