She would reel off the next twenty-four hours in
six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang.
I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and
looked on while he took her to pieces. Then
I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for this
thing was getting serious. The watch had cost
two hundred dollars originally, and I seemed to have
paid out two or three thousand for repairs.
While I waited and looked on I presently recognized
in this watchmaker an old acquaintance—a
steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good engineer,
either. He examined all the parts carefully,
just as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered
his verdict with the same confidence of manner.
He said:
“She makes too much steam-you want to hang the
monkey-wrench on the safety-valve!”
I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my
own expense.
My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say
that a good horse was, a good horse until it had run
away once, and that a good watch was a good watch
until the repairers got a chance at it. And he
used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful
tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and engineers,
and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.
Political Economy is
the basis of all good government. The wisest
men of all ages have
brought to bear upon this subject the—
[Here I was interrupted and informed that a stranger
wished to see me down at the door. I went and
confronted him, and asked to know his business, struggling
all the time to keep a tight rein on my seething political-economy
ideas, and not let them break away from me or get
tangled in their harness. And privately I wished
the stranger was in the bottom of the canal with a
cargo of wheat on top of him. I was all in a
fever, but he was cool. He said he was sorry
to disturb me, but as he was passing he noticed that
I needed some lightning-rods. I said, “Yes,
yes—go on—what about it?”
He said there was nothing about it, in particular—nothing
except that he would like to put them up for me.
I am new to housekeeping; have been used to hotels
and boarding-houses all my life. Like anybody
else of similar experience, I try to appear (to strangers)
to be an old housekeeper; consequently I said in an
offhand way that I had been intending for some time
to have six or eight lightning-rods put up, but—The
stranger started, and looked inquiringly at me, but
I was serene. I thought that if I chanced to
make any mistakes, he would not catch me by my countenance.
He said he would rather have my custom than any man’s
in town. I said, “All right,” and
started off to wrestle with my great subject again,
when he called me back and said it would be necessary
to know exactly how many “points” I wanted
put up, what parts of the house I wanted them on, and
what quality of rod I preferred. It was close
