The Clockmaker | Page 7

it is a beautiful article, a real first chop, no mistake, genuine superfine--but I guess I'll take it back; and beside, Squire Hawk might think kinder hard, that I did not give him the offer."
"Dear me," said Mrs. Flint, "I should like to see it, where is it?"
"It is in a chest of mine over the way, at Tom Tape's store, I guess he can ship it on to Eastport."
"That's a good man," said Mrs. Flint, "jist let's look at it."
Mr. Slick, willing to oblige, yielded to these entreaties, and soon produced the clock--a gawdy, highly varnished, trumpery looking affair. He placed it on the chimney-piece, where its beauties were pointed out and duly appreciated by Mrs. Flint, whose admiration was about ending in a proposal when Mr. Flint returned from giving his directions about the care of the horses. The Deacon praised the clock, he too thought it a handsome one; but the Deacon was a prudent man, he had a watch, he was sorry, but he had no occasion for a clock.
"I guess you're in the wrong furrow this time, Deacon, it ain't for sale," said Mr. Slick; "and if it was, I reckon neighbour Steel's wife would have it, for she gives me no peace about it." Mrs. Flint said that Mr. Steel had enough to do, poor man, to pay his interest, without buying clocks for his wife.
"It's no consarn of mine," said Mr. Slick, "as long as he pays me, what he has to do; but I guess I don't want to sell it, and beside it comes too high; that clock can't be made at Rhode Island under forty dollars. Why it ain't possible," said the Clockmaker, in apparent surprise, looking at his watch, "why as I'm alive it is four o'clock, and if I havn't been two hours here--how on airth shall I reach River Philip tonight? I'll tell you what, Mrs. Flint, I'll leave the clock in your care till I return on my way to the States--I'll set it a-goin' and put it to the right time."
As soon as this operation was performed, he delivered the key to the deacon with a sort of serio-comic injunction to wind up the clock every Saturday night, which Mrs. Flint said she would take care should be done, and promised to remind her husband of it, in case he should chance to forget it.
"That," said the Clockmaker as soon as we were mounted, "that I call 'HUMAN NATUR'!' Now that clock is sold for forty dollars--it cost me just six dollars and fifty cents. Mrs. Flint will never let Mrs. Steel have the refusal--nor will the deacon learn until I call for the clock, that having once indulged in the use of a superfluity, how difficult it is to give it up. We can do without any article of luxury we have never had, but when once obtained, it is not in 'HUMAN NATUR'' to surrender it voluntarily. Of fifteen thousand sold by myself and partners in this Province, twelve thousand were left in this manner, and only ten clocks were ever returned; when we called for them they invariably bought them. We trust to 'SOFT SAWDER' to get them into the house, and to 'HUMAN NATUR'' that they never come out of it."

No. III
The Silent Girls.
"Do you see them 'ere swallows," said the Clockmaker, "how low they fly? Well I presume we shall have rain right away; and them noisy critters, them gulls how close they keep to the water, down there in the Shubenacadie; well that's a sure sign. If we study natur', we don't want no thermometer. But I guess we shall be in time to get under cover in a shingle-maker's shed about three miles ahead on us. We had just reached the deserted hovel when the rain fell in torrents.
"I reckon," said the Clockmaker, as he sat himself down on a bundle of shingles, "I reckon they are bad off for inns in this country. When a feller is too lazy to work here, he paints his name over his door, and calls it a tavern, and as like as not he makes the whole neighbourhood as lazy as himself--it is about as easy to find a good inn in Halifax, as it is to find wool on a goat's back. An inn, to be a good consarn, must be built a purpose, you can no more make a good tavern out of a common dwelling house, I expect, than a good coat out of an old pair of trousers. They are etarnal lazy, you may depend--now there might be a grand spec made there, in building a good inn and a good church."
"What a sacrilegious and unnatural union," said I, with most unaffected surprise.
"Not at all," said Mr.