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Show Character THE LONDON DAILY NEWS tells about the Big Ben clock in Westminster. How when it was under construction more than half a century ago, the then astronomer Royal (Sir George Airy), who was consulted regardin-Its regardin-Its mechanism, said it was impossible to design a clock, subject to big ranges of temperature and other external causes of error, that would keep time within four or five seconds. But the late Lord Grlmthorpe (then Mr. E. Beckett Dennison) who was a famous horologist, thought otherwise, and he designed, especially for the Westminster clock, his gravity escapement, to which it owes j its marvellous good going. On most days it is I almost dead true, and on barely half a dozen days in any year does it vary as much as three seconds from accurate Greenwich mean time. There happens to be a lesson in that. There are clocks and clocks, there is just one perfect one. There are men and men in every generation, genera-tion, but the perfect ones are very few, and so ' remarkable are they that they are in everybody's thought always. When Napoleon was in the heighth of his glory and the news reached him that George Washington had died, he ordered his court and his army into mourning for a month, because he, the over-turner of thrones, the mas-tei mas-tei intellect of his age, the central figure of his time, recoguized that Washington possessed the one perfect character, so perfect that when he died all men ought to go Into mourning. It was portly so when Abraham Lincoln died, although the passions of the war, the bitterness and sorrow sor-row of the war, obscured his character in the minds of a great many so that they could not at the time realize it. But "London Punch" that had been sely ridiculing and caricaturing him with and pencil for four years, saw the i I light that shone back from his character as his soul took its flight upward, and wrote: You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, You, who, with mocking pencil wont to trace Broad, for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face. His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to shine, of art to please. You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, Judging each step as though .the way were .plain; Reckless, so it could point Its paragraph, Of Chief's perplexity or people's pain. Beside this corpse, that bears for winding sheet The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew; Between the mourners at his head and feet, Say, scurrll jester, is there room for you? Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil and confuse my pen To make me own this hind of princes peer. This rail-splitter, as true born king of men. My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, 1 Noting how to occasion's height he rose, How his quaint wit made home truth seem more true, How, ironlike, his temper grew by blows. How humble, yet how hopeful he could be; How in good fortune and in 111 the same; Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. He went about his work such work as few Ever had laid on head and heart and hand As one who knows, where there's a task to do, Man's honest will must heaven's good grace command. So he grew up, a destined work to do, And lived to do it; four long suffering years' 111 fate, 111 feeling, 111 report lived through, . And then he heard the hisses change to cheers. The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, And took both with the same unwavering mood; Till, as he came on light from darkling days And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, A felon hand, between the goal and him, Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, Those gaunt, long laboring limbs were laid to rest. The words of mercy were upon his lips, Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse To thoughts of peace on earth, good will to men. The old world and the new, from sea to sea, Utter one voice of -sympathy and shame! Sore heart, so stopped when It at last beat high, J Sad life, cut short just as Its triumph came. |