Clocks | Page 5

had brought, and I said, airily, "Oh,
yes, it's quite right; bring it up!"
They said they were very sorry, but that was just the difficulty. They
could not get it up.
I went down with them, and wedged securely across the second landing
of the staircase, I found a box which I should have judged to be the
original case in which Cleopatra's Needle came over.
They said that was my clock.
I brought down a chopper and a crowbar, and we sent out and

collected in two extra hired ruffians and the five of us worked away for
half an hour and got the clock out; after which the traffic up and down
the staircase was resumed, much to the satisfaction of the other
tenants.
We then got the clock upstairs and put it together, and I fixed it in the
corner of the dining-room.
At first it exhibited a strong desire to topple over and fall on people,
but by the liberal use of nails and screws and bits of firewood, I made
life in the same room with it possible, and then, being exhausted, I had
my wounds dressed, and went to bed.
In the middle of the night my wife woke me up in a great state of alarm,
to say that the clock had just struck thirteen, and who did I think was
going to die?
I said I did not know, but hoped it might be the next-door dog.
My wife said she had a presentiment it meant baby. There was no
comforting her; she cried herself to sleep again.
During the course of the morning, I succeeded in persuading her that
she must have made a mistake, and she consented to smile once more.
In the afternoon the clock struck thirteen again.
This renewed all her fears. She was convinced now that both baby and
I were doomed, and that she would be left a childless widow. I tried to
treat the matter as a joke, and this only made her more wretched. She
said that she could see I really felt as she did, and was only pretending
to be light-hearted for her sake, and she said she would try and bear it
bravely.
The person she chiefly blamed was Buggles.
In the night the clock gave us another warning, and my wife accepted it
for her Aunt Maria, and seemed resigned. She wished, however, that I
had never had the clock, and wondered when, if ever, I should get

cured of my absurd craze for filling the house with tomfoolery.
The next day the clock struck thirteen four times and this cheered her
up. She said that if we were all going to die, it did not so much matter.
Most likely there was a fever or a plague coming, and we should all be
taken together.
She was quite light-hearted over it!
After that the clock went on and killed every friend and relation we had,
and then it started on the neighbors.
It struck thirteen all day long for months, until we were sick of
slaughter, and there could not have been a human being left alive for
miles around.
Then it turned over a new leaf, and gave up murdering folks, and took
to striking mere harmless thirty-nines and forty-ones. Its favorite
number now is thirty-two, but once a day it strikes forty-nine. It never
strikes more than forty-nine. I don't know why--I have never been able
to understand why--but it doesn't.
It does not strike at regular intervals, but when it feels it wants to and
would be better for it. Sometimes it strikes three or four times within
the same hour, and at other times it will go for half-a-day without
striking at all.
He is an odd old fellow!
I have thought now and then of having him "seen to," and made to keep
regular hours and be respectable; but, somehow, I seem to have grown
to love him as he is with his daring mockery of Time.
He certainly has not much respect for it. He seems to go out of his way
almost to openly insult it. He calls half-past two thirty-eight o'clock,
and in twenty minutes from then he says it is one!
Is it that he really has grown to feel contempt for his master, and

wishes to show it? They say no man is a hero to his valet; may it be that
even stony-face Time himself is but a short-lived, puny mortal--a little
greater than some others, that is all--to the dim eyes of this old servant
of his? Has he, ticking, ticking, all these years, come at last to see into
the littleness of that Time that looms so great to our awed human eyes?
Is he saying, as he