It is almost as if the millennium were arrived, when we
shall throw our clocks and watches over the housetops, and
remember time and seasons no more. Not to keep hours for a
lifetime is, I was going to say, to live for ever. You
have no idea, unless you have tried it, how endlessly long
is a summer's day that you measure out only by hunger, and
bring to an end only when you are drowsy.

*

I know a village where there are hardly any clocks, where
no one knows more of the days of the week than by a sort of
instinct for the fete on Sundays, and where only one person
can tell you the day of the month, and she is generally
wrong; and if people were aware how slow Time journeyed in
that village, and what armfuls of spare hours he gives,
over and above the bargain, to its wise inhabitants, I
believe there would be a stampede out of London, Liverpool,
Paris, and a variety of large towns, where the clocks lose
their heads, and shake the hours out each one faster than
the other, as though they were all in a wager. And all
these foolish pilgrims would each bring his own misery
along with him, in a watch-pocket!

*

The bed was made, the room was fit,
By punctual eve the stars were lit;
The air was still, the water ran;