rectitude, called Crist_ene_), Fithian kept a snug little shop full of
all manners and forms of clocks, dials, sand-glasses, hour-burning
candles, water-clocks, and night tapers. He had amended and improved
the new Graham clock, called the 'dead scapement,' or 'dead-beat
escapement' (the origin of our modern word _dead-beat_, signifying a
man who does not meet his engagements, whereas the original
'dead-beat' was the most faithful engagements-keeper of its time.
Perhaps a dead-beat nowadays is a time-server; for this would be a
correct derivation). From this shop the young Minuit, in a plain but
reliable wagon, with a nag never fast and never slow, and indifferent
to temperatures, travelled the country for a radius of forty
miles--not embarrassed even by the Delaware, which he crossed once a
month, and attended fully to the temporal and partly to the spiritual
needs of all the Jerseymen betwixt Elsinborough and Swedesboro.

"Over the door of Minuit's whitewashed cabin on the knoll of Christina
was the sign of a jovial, fat person, bearing some resemblance to
himself, in the centre of whose stomach stood a clock inscribed, 'My
time is everybody's.' Past this little shop went the entire long
caravan and cavalcade by land between the North and South,
stage-coaches, mail-riders, highwaymen, chariots, herdsters, and
tramps; for Christina bridge was on the great tide-water road and at
the head of navigation on the Swedish river of the same name, so that
here vessels from the Delaware transferred their cargo to wagons, and
a portage of only ten miles to the Head of Elk gave goods and
passengers reshipment down the Chesapeake. This village declined only
when the canal just below it was opened in 1829 and a little railway
in 1833. It was nearly a century and a half old when Minuit set his
sign there, before General Washington went past it to be inaugurated.
From Fithian's window the pleasant land was seen spread out below him