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In an ancient village there once stood a gold clock, which, ever since the invention of clocks, had been the measure of time for the people of that village.  They were proud of its beauty, its workmanship, its musical stroke, and the unfailing regularity with which it heralded the passing hours.  This clock had been endeared to all the inhabitants of the village by the hallowed associations with which it was identified.  Generation after generation it had called the children from far and wide to attend the village school; its fresh morning peal had set the honest villagers to labor; its noonday notes had called them to refreshment; its welcome evening chime had summoned them to rest.

From time immemorial, on all festive occasions, it had rung out its merry tones to assemble the young people on the green; and on the Sabbath it had advertised to all the countryside the hour of worship in the village church.  So perfect was its mechanism that it never needed repair.  So proud were the people of this wonderful clock that it became the standard for all the country round about, and the time which it kept came to be known as the gold standard of time, which was universally admitted to be correct and unchanging.

In the course of time there wandered that way a queer character, a clock-maker, who being fully instructed in the inner workings of time-tellers, and not having inherited the traditions of that village, did not regard this clock with the veneration accorded to it by the natives.  To their astonishment he denied that there was really any such thing as a gold standard of time; and in order to prove that the material, gold, did not monopolize all the qualities characteristic of clocks, he placed alongside the gold clock, another clock, of silver, and set both clocks at 12 noon.  For a long time the clocks ran along in almost perfect accord, their only disagreement being that of an occasional second or two, and even that disagreement only at rare intervals, such as might naturally occur with the best of clocks.  But the Council of the village, in their admiration for the gold clock, passed an ordinance requiring that all the weights (the motive power) of the silver clock, except one, be removed from it, and attached to those of the gold clock.  Instantly the clocks began to fall apart, and one day, as the sun was passing the meridian, the hands of the gold clock were observed to indicate the hour of 1, while those of the silver clock indicated 12.15.  At this everybody in the village ridiculed the silver clock, derided the silver standard, and hurled epithets at the individual who had had the temerity to doubt the infallibility of the gold standard.

Finally, the divergence between the clocks went so far that it was noon by the gold standard when it was only 6 A.M. by the silver standard, so that those who were guided by the gold standard, notwithstanding that it was yet the gray of the morning, insisted on eating their mid-day meal, because the gold standard indicated that it must be noon.  And when the sun was high in the heavens, and its light was shining warm and refulgent on the dusty streets of the village, those who observed the gold standard had already eaten supper and were preparing for bed.