MARK TWAIN'S WATCH.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 159, 23 February 1871, Page 6

MARK TWAIN'S WATCH.

AN 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 iv 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 forernnner of the calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded ray bodings and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jeweller's to set it by the exact time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to seL ib for mo. Then he said : " She is four minutes slow — regulator wants pushing up." J tried to stop him — tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no : all 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 beseech ed 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 lear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. It was away into 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 watchmakers to be regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing. He looked a look of 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. 1 began to be left by trains ; I failed all appointments ; I got to missing my dinner ; my watch strung out three days grace to four, and le.t me go to protest ; I gradually drifted back on yesterday, then d" : Wore, 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 th 3 A\orld 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 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 virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another watchmaker. He said the kingbolt was broken. I said I was glad it was nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the kingbolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the kingbolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run awhile again and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. He picked it all to pieces and turned the ruin over and over under his glass ; and then snid there appeared to be something tho matter with the hairtrigger. He fixed it aud gave it a fresh start. It did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing repaired. This person said the crystal had got bent, and that the main spring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works needed half-soling. He made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionally, save that now and theu, after working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let go all of a sudden, and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their iudividualitv

was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, aud then stop with a bang. I went wit'i a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he took it to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on, I presently recognised in thi3 watchmaker an old acquaintance — a steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good engineer either. He examined all the parts carefully, and then delivered his verdict iv the same confidential manner. Ho said : " She makes too much steam — you want to hang the monkey wrench on the safety-valve !"

I brained Jam on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense,

My Uncle William (now deceased, alas !) used to say that a horse was a good horse until he had run away once, dncl that a good watch Avas a good watch until the repairers had got a chance at it. And he used to wonder what had become of all the unsuccesful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and blacksmiths, but no one could ever tell him.

Mark Twain