never strikes more than forty-nine. I don't know why--I have never
been able to understand why--but it doesn't.

It does not strike at regular intervals, but when it feels it wants to
and would be better for it. Sometimes it strikes three or four times
within the same hour, and at other times it will go for half-a-day
without striking at all.

He is an odd old fellow!

I have thought now and then of having him "seen to," and made to keep
regular hours and be respectable; but, somehow, I seem to have grown
to love him as he is with his daring mockery of Time.

He certainly has not much respect for it. He seems to go out of his
way almost to openly insult it. He calls half-past two thirty-eight
o'clock, and in twenty minutes from then he says it is one!

Is it that he really has grown to feel contempt for his master, and
wishes to show it? They say no man is a hero to his valet; may it be
that even stony-face Time himself is but a short-lived, puny mortal--a
little greater than some others, that is all--to the dim eyes of this
old servant of his? Has he, ticking, ticking, all these years, come
at last to see into the littleness of that Time that looms so great to
our awed human eyes?

Is he saying, as he grimly laughs, and strikes his thirty-fives and
forties: "Bah! I know you, Time, godlike and dread though you seem.
What are you but a phantom--a dream--like the rest of us here? Ay,
less, for you will pass away and be no more. Fear him not, immortal