The Alarm Clock.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1985, 28 March 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Alarm Clock.

It waa the witching hour of 4.30 a.m. A witching hour of sleep. The thrifty alarm clock on the mantel lifted up its ohcery voice and bade the sluggard rouse from his laay couch. The sluggard, who was making about fifteen knots of lolid sleep with both bow ports wide open, merely shut oS his busy snore long enough to say : " Cheese that untimely racket ! " And straightway went to sleep again. But the thrifty alarm clock Bhrunk never from its duty. It cried aloud : "HowloDg wilt thou Bleep, oh, sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep ? " " Bead the tenth verse of the same ohapter, Proverbs six," growled the sluggard, plunging hid head yet deeper among the pillows. " The way of the slothful man ia as a hedge of thorns," shouted the alarm clook. "I'll make your way like the track of a cyclone if you continue this matin much longer," enailsd the weary sluggard. " Ho that is slothful is a brother to him that ii a great waster," rattled the alarm clock. " You're a waster of preoious time when you talk to me in the night," replied the sluggard. " Call in during office hours." "As vinegar to the teeth and as smoke to the eves, so is the sluggard to them that send him," caroled the alarm clock, with a perfect hurrah. " I'll send you up the chimney in another minute, if I don't hear some silence in this room," said the sluggard, pulling the sheet over his head, and getting ready to smother. " Up 1 " shouted the alarm clock with prodigious clamor. " Up, and be stirring 1 Up ! Bless you, this won't do ! Have an aim in life!" And then the sluggard, enduring no longer, stood up on his elbow and aimed a boot at the alarm clock with such fatal precision that the air was full of brass wheels, steel springs, striking hammers, fractured bells, broken glass and a bruised and battered dial. One brief moment the sluggard gazed at the remnants of what, but a few moments baton, was a good $4 alarm clook, and then settling himself down for a snooze that could be broken only by the 8 o'clock breakfast bell, he said : "He that blesseth his friend with a load voice, riung early in the morning, it shall be counted a cane to him. See Prsverbs, twenty-scren, fourteen."