MARK TWAIN'S WATCH.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 106, 10 March 1871, Page 1 (Supplement)

MARK TWAIN'S WATCH.

AX INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE

(From the December ' Galaxy.')

My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, or without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible m its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one night, I let it run down. . I grieved about it as if it were a recognised messenger and forerunner of the calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart, j Next day I stepped into the chief j jeweller's to set it by the exact time,! and the head of the establishment took j it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. Then he said : " She is four minutes slow—regulator wants pushing up." I tried to stop him—tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no : all that this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator " must" be pushed up a little; so, while I danced around him in anguish, and beseeehed him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the week it quickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces in the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. It was away in November enjoying the snow, while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not abide. I took it to the watchmaker's to be regulated He me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing, lie looked a look ot vicious happiness, and eagerly prized the watch open, then put a small dice-box into his eye, and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating —come in a week. After being cleaned, and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains ; I failed all appointments ; 1 got to missing my dinner; my watch strung out three days' grace to four, and let me go to protest ; I gradually drifted back on yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in the week before last, and the world was out of sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking feeling for the mummy in the museum, and a desire to swap news with him. I went to a watchmaker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was " swelled." He said he could reduce it in three days. After this the watch "averaged" well, but nothing I more. For half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a! barking, and wheezing, and whooping, and sneezing, and snorting, that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance ; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So, at last, at the end of twenty-four hours it | would trot up to the judger, all right and just on time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man can say it did more or less than its duty. But a correct average is only a mild virtuo in a watch, and I took this