"For instance," he would say, "when it strikes fifteen, and the hands
point to twenty minutes past eleven, I know it is a quarter to eight."

His acquaintanceship with that clock must certainly have given him an
advantage over the cursory observer!

But the great charm about my clock is its reliable uncertainty. It
works on no method whatever; it is a pure emotionalist. One day it
will be quite frolicsome, and gain three hours in the course of the
morning, and think nothing of it; and the next day it will wish it
were dead, and be hardly able to drag itself along, and lose two hours
out of every four, and stop altogether in the afternoon, too miserable
to do anything; and then, getting cheerful once more toward evening,
will start off again of its own accord.

I do not care to talk much about this clock; because when I tell the
simple truth concerning it, people think I am exaggerating.

It is very discouraging to find, when you are straining every nerve to
tell the truth, that people do not believe you, and fancy that you are
exaggerating. It makes you feel inclined to go and exaggerate on
purpose, just to show them the difference. I know I often feel
tempted to do so myself--it is my early training that saves me.

We should always be very careful never to give way to exaggeration; it
is a habit that grows upon one.

And it is such a vulgar habit, too. In the old times, when poets and
dry-goods salesmen were the only people who exaggerated, there was
something clever and _distingue_ about a reputation for "a tendency to