As a mere
time-piece, it leaves much to be desired; but, considered as a
self-acting conundrum, it is full of interest and variety.
I heard of a man once who had a clock that he used to say was of no
good to any one except himself, because he was the only man who
understood it. He said it was an excellent clock, and one that you
could thoroughly depend upon; but you wanted to know it--to have
studied its system. An outsider might be easily misled by it.
"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.
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