say in a tone of indescribable conviction:

"I suppose I was the happiest man in the world."

Any chance incident or remark might turn his thought and speech,
unconscious of the transition, from his favorite technicalities back to
the past. Some comment of mine upon a specimen of that dismal songster,
the cuckoo clock, which stood on his mantel, had started him into one of
his learned expositions.

"The first cuckoo clock, as you are doubtless aware, sir"--he was always
scrupulous to assume knowledge on the part of his hearer, no matter how
abstruse or technical the subject; it was a phase of his inherent
courtesy--"was intended to represent not the cuckoo, but the blackbird.
It had a double pipe for the hours, 'Pit-weep! Pit-weep!' and
a single--"

His voice trailed into silence as the mechanical bird of his own
collection popped forth and piped its wooden lay. Willy Woolly pattered
over, sat down before it, and, gazing through and beyond the meaningless
face with eyes of adoration whose purport there was no mistaking,
whined lovingly.

"When the cuckoo sounded," continued the collector without the slightest
change of intonation, "she used to imitate it to puzzle Willy Woolly. A
merry heart! ... All was so still after it stopped beating. The clocks
forgot to strike."

The poodle, turning his absorbed regard from the Presence that moves
beyond time and its perishing voices, trotted to his master and nuzzled