Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/663

Rh haste. Venturing to return, one of the courtiers asked the negro, in Spanish, what time it was. There was no reply; but, when the question was repeated in French, an answer was given. This frightened the courtier, who rejoined his companions, and all of them voted that the clock was the work of the evil-one.

Upon the belfry of the Kauthaus, in Coblentz, there is the head of a giant—bearded, and helmeted with brass. The giant's head is known as "the man in the custom-house"; and whenever a countryman meets a citizen of Coblentz away from that place, instead of saying, "How are all our friends in Coblentz?" he asks, "How is the man in the custom-house?" At every stroke of the bell which sounds the hours upon the clock, the mouth of the giant opens and shuts with great force, as if it were trying to say, in the words of Longfellow, "Time was—Time is—Time is past."

The "old clock of Prague" stands near the old Hussite church—the machinery forming a part of the original tower, and the egg-shaped dial being shown on the street. It was the work of Hanusch, who died in 1499. So jealous of the other cities were the citizens of Prague, and so afraid were they that the other cities might bribe Hanusch to build as good a clock somewhere else, that they declared he was insane, and put out his eyes. The dial, which is between six and eight feet across, has a number of hands which mark not only minutes and hours, but also days, months, years, and centuries. What else it will do has been told in this way by a poet:

On the dial-plate of a clock in St. Mark's Cathedral, in Venice, the twenty-four hours of the day are represented by the signs of the zodiac and the phases of the moon. The Madonna is seated on a platform over the dial. Whenever a religious festival occurs, an angel comes out from a door at one side of the platform, blows a trumpet,