I have scattered through this volume a mass of matter
which has never been in print before (such as “Learned
Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls,” the “Jumping
Frog restored to the English tongue after martyrdom
in the French,” the “Membranous Croup”
sketch, and many others which I need not specify):
not doing this in order to make an advertisement of
it, but because these things seemed instructive.
Hartford, 1875.
Mark
Twain.
My watch—[Written about 1870.]
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 days ahead of the almanac. It was away
into November enjoying the snow, while the October
leaves were still turning. It hurried up house
rent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous
way that I could not abide it. I took it to
the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if
I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had
never needed any repairing. He looked a look
of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open,
and then put a small dice-box into his eye and peered
into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning
and oiling, besides regulating—come in a
week. After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated,
my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked
like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains,
I failed all appointments, I got to missing my dinner;
my watch strung out three days’ grace to four
