never yet known to have anything the matter with it. Until lately,
the bare supposition of such a thing was considered heretical. From
the remotest period of antiquity to which the archives have
reference, the hours have been regularly struck by the big bell. And,
indeed the case was just the same with all the other clocks and
watches in the borough. Never was such a place for keeping the true
time. When the large clapper thought proper to say "Twelve o'clock!"
all its obedient followers opened their throats simultaneously, and
responded like a very echo. In short, the good burghers were fond of
their sauer-kraut, but then they were proud of their clocks.

All people who hold sinecure offices are held in more or less
respect, and as the belfry -- man of Vondervotteimittiss has the most
perfect of sinecures, he is the most perfectly respected of any man
in the world. He is the chief dignitary of the borough, and the very
pigs look up to him with a sentiment of reverence. His coat-tail is
very far longer -- his pipe, his shoe -- buckles, his eyes, and his
stomach, very far bigger -- than those of any other old gentleman in
the village; and as to his chin, it is not only double, but triple.

I have thus painted the happy estate of Vondervotteimittiss: alas,
that so fair a picture should ever experience a reverse!

There has been long a saying among the wisest inhabitants, that "no
good can come from over the hills"; and it really seemed that the
words had in them something of the spirit of prophecy. It wanted five
minutes of noon, on the day before yesterday, when there appeared a
very odd-looking object on the summit of the ridge of the eastward.
Such an occurrence, of course, attracted universal attention, and
every little old gentleman who sat in a leather-bottomed arm-chair