beyond the Christina; and the Swedish, Dutch, and English farms smiled
from their loamy levels on sails which moved with scarcely perceptible
motion through the narrow dykes planted with greenest willows. Before
his door the teamsters, ill-tempered with lashing and swearing at
their teams in the ruts of Iron Hill, schoolboys from Nottingham,
millers' men from Upper White Clay, and bargemen and stage passengers,
recovered temper to see the sign of the great paunch with a timepiece
set so naturally in it indicating the hour of dinner. Within they
found the clock-maker, with face beaming as if reflected from a
watch-case, working handily amongst a hundred ticking pieces, of which
he looked to be one. There were large sundials for the outer walls of
barns and farm-houses, very popular in the Pennsylvania hills;
sand-glasses for the Peninsula, where it cost nothing to fill them;
and hour-burning candles, much affected by the Chesapeake gentry,
which gave at once light and time. There were ancient striking clocks,
such as the monks may have used to disturb them for early prayers,
which, with a horrible rattle of wheels and clash of heavy weights,
hammered the alarm. There were the tremendous watches of river
captains who had aspired to go to sea, and old crutch escapement
watches which Huygens himself had perhaps handled in Holland. The
window was filled with trains of wheels and pinions, snails and racks,
crystals, and faces and watches, cackling at each other. There were
striking clocks which rung chimes or rocked like little vessels on
apparent billows, or started off with notes like grasshoppers. A
hundred of the most musical tree-frogs shut up in a piano might give a
feeble notion of the tunes and thrummings assembled in this shop. It
was the same day or night, and the power of Fithian Minuit over
time-keepers was nearly miraculous. He appeared to be able to smile an
old watch into action. Transferred to his hand, some spent and rusty
sentinel, long silent and useless, seemed to feel the warmth of the