CAJOLING THE CALENDAR

Another of the perennial attempts to adjust the workings of the celestial universe to the convenience of civilized man is now before Congress in the shape of a bill to introduce a new calendar for the United States, the change to be made in 1928. This movement has the backing of the Liberty Calendar Association of America, with a list of dignitaries as long as its name. So far as we know, no one has ever objected to the length of the day, and curiously enough no reformers have ever proposed a substitute for the seven-day week; but schemes to reduce the three hundred and sixty-five and one quarter days, which this giddy globe still takes for his annual romp around the sun, to some common denominator of weeks and months have flourished since man first matched the water-clock against the sun-dial. The present system calls for thirteen months of twenty-eight days each, a New Year's Day without date, the week to begin on Monday, and would cause the day of the month always to fall on the same day of the week. Every four years, a Leap Year Day will be thrust bodily into the calendar at the end of June.

It is evident that the originators of this plan have no fear of the unlucky "13"; or possibly they are bent on ruining the whole world at one fell swoop. Imagine, also, trying to figure the interest at four and three-fourths percent of $19.19 for three months and three days when a month is a thirteenth of a year and twenty-eight days is not divisible by three! And think of the awful rate of the small boy whose birthday falls always on Sunday! No! No! If we decide to steal a march on Dame Nature let us be fair and above board; let the reformers figure out how many days they want in a week, a month, and a year, and then let our scientists devise a method (as Jules Verne tells us was done by the "Gun Club") for blowing this old sphere off its course so that its motions may give a length of day and of year according to the desires of the children of men. By all means, let us have a scientific solution.