SKETCHES NEW AND OLD




MY WATCH--[Written about 1870.]

AN INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE

My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining,
and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come
to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to
consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one
night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized
messenger and forerunner of calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set
the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart.
Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time,
and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to
set it for me. Then he said, "She is four minutes slow-regulator wants
pushing up." I tried to stop him--tried to make him understand that the
watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was
that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up
a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him
to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My
watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the
week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred
and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the
timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen