Seven Dials

“ But we must now take our leave, with a hearty wish to the whole fraternity of Seven Dials’ bards, that they may never go without a dinner for want of the means of earning it, or that, in other words, though they seem somewhat contradictory, “Sufficient unto the day may be the evil thereof.”
Again, the writer of an article on “Street Ballads,” in the “National Review,” for October, 1861, makes the following remarks:—
“This Ballad—‘Little Lord John out of Service’—is one of the few which bear a signature—it is signed ‘John Morgan’ in the copy which we possess. ”

“ Here and there the thoughts of great minds, aptly expressed to suit the dial’s power, stand out as red-letter days in a church’s calendar and proclaim by their individuality an exceptional character. But such verses are very rare, and where they exist they will generally be found on dials that have been erected by the order of the writer of the verse to mark some special occasion. ”

“ Let her or him moralize a moment, and consider life from the standpoint of the dial, now grave, now gay; now lively, now severe. Though Time hurries mankind it has apparently not hurried the dials in choosing their inscriptions. It is rather a case of festina lente than hora fugit. Some are as terse as an epigram of Martial or a proverb from Job; others sweet as a hymn of Watts or a stanza from The Temple. Thus, light and shadow are felicitously blended in the tale a dial tells on a house at Wadsley, near Sheffield, the moralist preaching from a niche in the wall ”

“ Now anybody who passed through the Dials on a hot summer’s evening, and saw the different women of the house gossiping on the steps, would be apt to think that all was harmony among them, and that a more primitive set of people than the native Diallers could not be imagined. ”

“ It was Charles Dickens who, in June, 1859, wrote to his daughter and signified his pleasure at receiving from the contractor for the works, the gift of a balustrade out of the old Rochester bridge; he stated that without delay he had had a dial constructed to suit the pedestal, and thus had added to his garden a fresh item of interest.
All forms of dials have received consideration—perpendicular, horizontal, pocket and ring dials; even moon dials have not been neglected. ”

“ So many ancient dials are to-day continually changing hands and being placed in new surroundings, that although cognisant of the fact that it would be far more interesting to illustrate my work with sketches showing the dial in its original position, yet in the majority of cases I have proved this to be impossible. ”

“ Properly [ 159] the dial should never be less in diameter than one-tenth of the number of feet which it is distant from the ground, and in all cases where it is possible I should recommend it to be much larger than this. The dials of St Paul's and Westminster are larger than they would be under the above rule, and they are certainly not too large. As to the colour of the dials, figures, and hands, there is not much choice; dark ground and gilt figures, or white ground with black figures, or a skeleton frame with gilt figures are the chief in use. ”

“ They must have had enormous faith in each other, those lovers of old-time, or they must have suffered as we can hardly bear to think of—we, who write to each other twice a day, telegraph three times, telephone six, and transmit a phonographic record of our sighs to each other night and morn. The telephone has made a toy of distance and made of absence, in many cases, a sufficient presence. It is almost worth while to be apart on occasion just for the sake of bringing each other so magically near. ”

“ In the 18th century clocks and watches began to supersede sun-dials, and these have gradually fallen into disuse except as an additional ornament to a garden, or in remote country districts where the old dial on the church tower still serves as an occasional check on the modern clock by its side. The art of constructing dials may now be looked upon as little more than a mathematical recreation. ”

“ I was, at first, unable to answer her. When I did speak, my voice was shaken.
"What number, please?" she repeated, in a bored tone. There is nothing in all the world so bored as the voice of a small town telephone-operator. ”

“ I know friends of mine, men once fearless and high-spirited, who now stand in front of their own telephone for a quarter of an hour at a time, and never so much as answer it back. They tell me that at first they used to swear and shout at it as I did; but now their spirit seems crushed. That is what happens: you either break the telephone, or the telephone breaks you. You want to see a man two streets off. You might put on your hat, and be round at his office in five minutes. You are on the point of starting when the telephone catches your eye. ”

“ There are still some dear old ladies who, on receipt of a telegram, make a rapid mental survey of the entire roster of their near and distant relatives and wonder whose death or illness the message may announce before they open the fateful envelope, only to find that up-to-date Cousin Mary, who has learned that the telegraph is as readily used as the mail and many times more rapid and efficient, wants to know whether they can come out for the week-end. ”

“ For, to take the analogy of wireless telegraphy, we are all of us probably "receivers" to some extent, and catch now and then a message or part of a message that the eternal waves of emotion are ceaselessly shouting aloud to those who have ears to hear, and materialising themselves for those who have eyes to see. Not being, as a rule, perfectly tuned, we grasp but pieces and fragments of such messages, a few coherent words it may be, or a few words which seem to have no sense. ”

“ I said with enthusiasm, “by means of the telephone we could talk to anybody, call up anybody, and talk at any distance.”
“And anybody could call you up at any time and talk?” said the Man in Asbestos, with something like horror. “How awful! What a dreadful age yours was, to be sure. No, the telephone and all the rest of it, all the transportation and intercommunication was cut out and forbidden. There was no sense in it. You see,” he added, “what you don’t realise is that people after your day became gradually more and more reasonable. ”

“ You say, “Well, may I speak to her?” The voice says, “Who?” You shout, “Miss Doe.” The voice says, “She ban out.” You shriek, “Oh, go to hell!” and assuming a graceful, easy position in the booth, you proceed to tear the telephone from the wall. Later on in the day, when you have two or three hours of spare time, you can telephone Miss Doe again and arrange for the evening’s visit.
Not realizing his mistake, the Groom stands waiting for the Bridal Procession, apparently in high spirits and the best of health. Such an attitude toward a wedding is in the worst possible taste. ”

“ We looked in vain for the dial. The priest walked to the parapet where a stone bench stood and pointed to a large circle cut deep in the leads at the foot of the bench.
“Ecco, Signori, your curious dial, and the Signs of the Zodiac also. The needle of the dial is not the truly original one. That was broken long ago. But the one we have replaced it with is precisely similar to the antique.”
St. Hilary and I sank on our knees to observe it the more closely and to whisper to each other without the good father overhearing us. The dealer traced a line tremblingly with his forefinger. ”

“ Apart from these calls from the rating services, I keep receiving calls on my home phone from people who set out to dial a certain undertaker—I beg his pardon, funeral director. We have the same exchange, in fact his number differs from mine only in that the first of his last four digits is a zero while my corresponding one is a nine.
Of course by now you've put your finger on it. These people are dialing the under—funeral director because, in the current colloquialism, someone's number's up. They misdial because they're unconsciously saying nein to the zero of death. ”

“ Ring Dials.—I was interested with the reference to Pocket Sun-dials in "Notes and Queries," pp. 52. 107. because it re-furnished an opportunity of placing in print a scrap of information on the subject, which I neglected to embrace when I first read Mr. Knight's note on the passage in Shakspeare. About seventy years ago these small, cheap, brass "Ring-dials" for the pocket were manufactured by the gross by a firm in Sheffield (Messrs. Proctor) , then in Milk street. I well remember the workman—an old man in my boyhood—who had been employed in making them, as he said, "in basketsful;" ”

“ Here is a little telepathic spoof that anyone can accomplish who has a telephone in their house, or if not they can make use of the telegraph service.
Say you have a friend, or friends, dining with you. You lead the conversation round gradually to the subject of telepathy, mentioning incidentally that you yourself possess certain gifts in that direction.
Probably your statement will be received with polite incredulity; whereupon, pretending to get huffed, you take a pack of cards, spread them out on the table face uppermost, and invite any one of your guests to select any card he pleases. ”

“ We have a little daily chat; thanks to which we feel less lonely—within reach of a voice, so to speak. During their watch the officers consult the memoranda of the wireless messages, and read hastily the news from their neighbors, just as one listens, without paying attention, to the friend one meets in the street who gives one the bulletin of his family’s good health. ”

“ But now, here was the secret radio talking again. “This may be the hour,” she whispered excitedly as, having turned the dial, she listened once again.
Slipping from her berth, she drew on a heavy velvet dressing gown, turned the radio up a little, then sat there listening, turning a dial now and then, listening some more and all the time growing more excited.
After twenty minutes of listening her face took on a look of sheer horror.
“I can’t do it,” she thought. “I may be court-martialed. But I must! I must!” ”

“ Without answering, I handed the telephone to the applicant, and sat down. Then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world—a conversation with only one end to it. You hear questions asked; you don't hear the answer. You hear invitations given; you hear no thanks in return. You have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay. You can't make head or tail of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says. ”

“ Then the telephone rang.
Her heart beat wildly and she looked toward it as if it had been a human voice speaking and she had no power to answer. What should she do now? Should she answer? Or should she wait for the man to come? Could the man hear the telephone bell or was she perhaps expected to answer? And yet if Mr. Cyril Gordon—well, somebody ought to answer. The ’phone rang insistently once more, and still a third time. What if he should be calling her! Perhaps he was in distress. This thought sent her flying to the ’phone. She took down the receiver and called:
“Hello!” ”

“ Have you ever thought, brethren, that if a telephone could be invented sufficiently large to convey the words uttered in one day in one of our great cities, or even in this place, what a babel of strange discordant sounds would come to our ears? What a mixture of wisdom and folly, love and hate, selfishness and self-denial, would be heard! Few of us would be the happier for hearing all the talk of their town or parish for one day. Now, God does hear every word spoken throughout the world. ”

“ That the ways of telephones and the persons who operate them are sometimes trying, no one can deny,—least of all, the writer of this chapter, who lives in a house with one of these maddening essentials to human comfort. But the loss of temper that manifests itself in the outward speech is not a requisite of the proper appreciation and use of the telephone. It is nothing less than a habit, and a pernicious one,—this way we have of talking into the transmitter. Let us remember that courtesy pays better than curses, and politeness better than profanity. ”

“ And letter-carriers and telegraph messengers have already commenced their rounds, bringing news, scattering information through the doors, whirling up in the hearts of men emotions and feelings like leaves in an autumn wind. ”

“ At half past six, she explained on the telephone. It is interesting how the telephone improves her voice. But then when she spoke to me she was in the midst of her effulgent toilet. How can a lover hope to rival the gentle Saturnalia through which a pretty woman passes before she arrives at the rendezvous? ”

“ On the other hand, through having a telephone of my own I now escape one of the commonest and most tiresome of life's irritations—which is to wait outside one of these call-offices while the person inside is carrying on a conversation that is not only unnecessary and frivolous, but unending. ”

“ Their words sounded faint and low amidst the yelling of the crowd behind the house, who still maintained their stations there, from preference, and kept up their terrific outcry. Amid the yells there came occasional anxious inquiries as to the success of their efforts. At times messengers would venture from the rear to the front to reconnoitre. These messengers, however, were only few in number, and their reconnoitring was of the most superficial description possible.
The latest experiment of the guide was the cause of more frequent and more urgent inquiries. ”

“ Ordinarily, when the bearer of a letter of introduction is a woman, a call is made within three days. This call is followed by the offer of some hospitality, usually a luncheon or tea. A gentleman calls upon a lady or upon another gentleman as soon as he receives a letter of introduction. But a lady, instead of making a call, sends an invitation to the gentleman who is introduced to her by means of a letter. ”