Clocks
There are two kinds of clocks. There is the clock that is alwayswrong, and that knows it is wrong, and glories in it; and there is theclock that is always right--except when you rely upon it, and then itis more wrong than you would think a clock could be in a civilizedcountry.I remember a clock of this latter type, that we had in the house whenI was a boy, routing us all up at three o'clock one winter's morning.We had finished breakfast at ten minutes to four, and I got to schoola little after five, and sat down on the step outside and cried,because I thought the world had come to an end; everything was sodeath-like!The man who can live in the same house with one of these clocks, andnot endanger his chance of heaven about once a month by standing upand telling it what he thinks of it, is either a dangerous rival tothat old established firm, Job, or else he does not know enough badlanguage to make it worth his while to start saying anything at all.The great dream of its life is to lure you on into trying to catch atrain by it. For weeks and weeks it will keep the most perfect time.If there were any difference in time between that clock and the sun,you would be convinced it was the sun, not the clock, that wantedseeing to. You feel that if that clock happened to get a quarter of asecond fast, or the eighth of an instant slow, it would break itsheart and die.It is in this spirit of child-like faith in its integrity that, onemorning, you gather your family around you in the passage, kiss yourchildren, and afterward wipe your jammy mouth, poke your finger in thebaby's eye, promise not to forget to order the coals, wave at lastfond adieu with the umbrella, and depart for the railway-station.I never have been quite able to decide, myself, which is the moreirritating to run two miles at the top of your speed, and then tofind, when you reach the station, that you are three-quarters of anhour too early; or to stroll along leisurely the whole way, and dawdleabout outside the booking-office, talking to some local idiot, andthen to swagger carelessly on to the platform, just in time to see thetrain go out!As for the other class of clocks--the common or always-wrongclocks--they are harmless enough. You wind them up at the properintervals, and once or twice a week you put them right and "regulate"them, as you call it (and you might just as well try to "regulate" aLondon tom-cat). But you do all this, not from any selfish motives,but from a sense of duty to the clock itself. You want to feel that,whatever may happen, you have done the right thing by it, and that noblame can attach to you.So far as looking to it for any return is concerned, that you neverdream of doing, and consequently you are not disappointed. You askwhat the time is, and the girl replies:"Well, the clock in the dining-room says a quarter past two."But you are not deceived by this. You know that, as a matter of fact,it must be somewhere between nine and ten in the evening; and,remembering that you noticed, as a curious circumstance, that theclock was only forty minutes past four, hours ago, you mildly admireits energies and resources, and wonder how it does it.I myself possess a clock that for complicated unconventionality andlight-hearted independence, could, I should think, give points toanything yet discovered in the chronometrical line. As a meretime-piece, it leaves much to be desired; but, considered as aself-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 nogood to any one except himself, because he was the only man whounderstood it. He said it was an excellent clock, and one that youcould thoroughly depend upon; but you wanted to know it--to havestudied its system. An outsider might be easily misled by it."For instance," he would say, "when it strikes fifteen, and the handspoint to twenty minutes past eleven, I know it is a quarter to eight."His acquaintanceship with that clock must certainly have given him anadvantage over the cursory observer!But the great charm about my clock is its reliable uncertainty. Itworks on no method whatever; it is a pure emotionalist. One day itwill be quite frolicsome, and gain three hours in the course of themorning, and think nothing of it; and the next day it will wish itwere dead, and be hardly able to drag itself along, and lose two hoursout of every four, and stop altogether in the afternoon, too miserableto 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 thesimple truth concerning it, people think I am exaggerating.It is very discouraging to find, when you are straining every nerve totell the truth, that people do not believe you, and fancy that you areexaggerating. It makes you feel inclined to go and exaggerate onpurpose, just to show them the difference. I know I often feeltempted to do so myself--it is my early training that saves me.We should always be very careful never to give way to exaggeration; itis a habit that grows upon one.And it is such a vulgar habit, too. In the old times, when poets anddry-goods salesmen were the only people who exaggerated, there wassomething clever and distingue about a reputation for "a tendency toover, rather than to under-estimate the mere bald facts." Buteverybody exaggerates nowadays. The art of exaggeration is no longerregarded as an "extra" in the modern bill of education; it is anessential requirement, held to be most needful for the battle of life.The whole world exaggerates. It exaggerates everything, from theyearly number of bicycles sold to the yearly number of heathensconverted--into the hope of salvation and more whiskey. Exaggerationis the basis of our trade, the fallow-field of our art and literature,the groundwork of our social life, the foundation of our politicalexistence. As schoolboys, we exaggerate our fights and our marks andour fathers' debts. As men, we exaggerate our wares, we exaggerateour feelings, we exaggerate our incomes--except to the tax-collector,and to him we exaggerate our "outgoings"; we exaggerate our virtues;we even exaggerate our vices, and, being in reality the mildest ofmen, pretend we are dare-devil scamps.We have sunk so low now that we try to act our exaggerations, and tolive up to our lies. We call it "keeping up appearances;" and no morebitter phrase could, perhaps, have been invented to describe ourchildish folly.If we possess a hundred pounds a year, do we not call it two? Ourlarder may be low and our grates be chill, but we are happy if the"world" (six acquaintances and a prying neighbor) gives us credit forone hundred and fifty. And, when we have five hundred, we talk of athousand, and the all-important and beloved "world" (sixteen friendsnow, and two of them carriage-folks!) agree that we really must bespending seven hundred, or at all events, running into debt up to thatfigure; but the butcher and baker, who have gone into the matter withthe housemaid, know better.After awhile, having learned the trick, we launch out boldly and spendlike Indian Princes--or rather seem to spend; for we know, by thistime, how to purchase the seeming with the seeming, how to buy theappearance of wealth with the appearance of cash. And the dear oldworld--Beelzebub bless it! for it is his own child, sure enough; thereis no mistaking the likeness, it has all his funny littleways--gathers round, applauding and laughing at the lie, and sharingin the cheat, and gloating over the thought of the blow that it knowsmust sooner or later fall on us from the Thor-like hammer of Truth.And all goes merry as a witches' frolic--until the gray morning dawns.Truth and fact are old-fashioned and out-of-date, my friends, fit onlyfor the dull and vulgar to live by. Appearance, not reality, is whatthe clever dog grasps at in these clever days. We spurn thedull-brown solid earth; we build our lives and homes in thefair-seeming rainbow-land of shadow and chimera.To ourselves, sleeping and waking there, behind the rainbow, thereis no beauty in the house; only a chill damp mist in every room, and,over all, a haunting fear of the hour when the gilded clouds will meltaway, and let us fall--somewhat heavily, no doubt--upon the hard worldunderneath.But, there! of what matter is our misery, our terror? To thestranger, our home appears fair and bright. The workers in the fieldsbelow look up and envy us our abode of glory and delight! If theythink it pleasant, surely we should be content. Have we not beentaught to live for others and not for ourselves, and are we not actingup bravely to the teaching--in this most curious method?Ah! yes, we are self-sacrificing enough, and loyal enough in ourdevotion to this new-crowned king, the child of Prince Imposture andPrincess Pretense. Never before was despot so blindly worshiped!Never had earthly sovereign yet such world-wide sway!Man, if he would live, must worship. He looks around, and what tohim, within the vision of his life, is the greatest and the best, thathe falls down and does reverence to. To him whose eyes have opened onthe nineteenth century, what nobler image can the universe producethan the figure of Falsehood in stolen robes? It is cunning andbrazen and hollow-hearted, and it realizes his souls ideal, and hefalls and kisses its feet, and clings to its skinny knees, swearingfealty to it for evermore!Ah! he is a mighty monarch, bladder-bodied King Humbug! Come, let usbuild up temples of hewn shadows wherein we may adore him, safe fromthe light. Let us raise him aloft upon our Brummagem shields. Longlive our coward, falsehearted chief!--fit leader for such soldiers aswe! Long live the Lord-of-Lies, anointed! Long live poor KingAppearances, to whom all mankind bows the knee!But we must hold him aloft very carefully, oh, my brother warriors!He needs much "keeping up." He has no bones and sinews of his own,the poor old flimsy fellow! If we take our hands from him, he willfall a heap of worn-out rags, and the angry wind will whirl him away,and leave us forlorn. Oh, let us spend our lives keeping him up, andserving him, and making him great--that is, evermore puffed out withair and nothingness--until he burst, and we along with him!Burst one day he must, as it is in the nature of bubbles to burst,especially when they grow big. Meanwhile, he still reigns over us,and the world grows more and more a world of pretense and exaggerationand lies; and he who pretends and exaggerates and lies the mostsuccessfully, is the greatest of us all.The world is a gingerbread fair, and we all stand outside our boothsand point to the gorgeous-colored pictures, and beat the big drum andbrag. Brag! brag! Life is one great game of brag!"Buy my soap, oh ye people, and ye will never look old, and the hairwill grow again on your bald places, and ye will never be poor orunhappy again,; and mine is the only true soap. Oh, beware ofspurious imitations!""Buy my lotion, all ye that suffer from pains in the head, or thestomach, or the feet, or that have broken arms, or broken hearts, orobjectionable mothers-in-law; and drink one bottle a day, and all yourtroubles will be ended.""Come to my church, all ye that want to go to Heaven, and buy my pennyweekly guide, and pay my pew-rates; and, pray ye, have nothing to dowith my misguided brother over the road. This is the only safeway!""Oh, vote for me, my noble and intelligent electors, and send ourparty into power, and the world shall be a new place, and there shallbe no sin or sorrow any more! And each free and independent votershall have a bran new Utopia made on purpose for him, according to hisown ideas, with a good-sized, extra-unpleasant purgatory attached, towhich he can send everybody he does not like. Oh! do not miss thischance!"Oh! listen to my philosophy, it is the best and deepest. Oh! hear mysongs, they are the sweetest. Oh! buy my pictures, they alone aretrue art. Oh! read my books, they are the finest.Oh! I am the greatest cheesemonger, I am the greatest soldier, Iam the greatest statesman, I am the greatest poet, I am thegreatest showman, I am the greatest mountebank, I am the greatesteditor, and I am the greatest patriot. We are the greatestnation. We are the only good people. Ours is the only truereligion. Bah! how we all yell!How we all brag and bounce, and beat the drum and shout; and nobodybelieves a word we utter; and the people ask one another, saying:"How can we tell who is the greatest and the cleverest among all theseshrieking braggarts?"And they answer:"There is none great or clever. The great and clever men are nothere; there is no place for them in this pandemonium of charlatans andquacks. The men you see here are crowing cocks. We suppose thegreatest and the best of them are they who crow the loudest and thelongest; that is the only test of their merits."Therefore, what is left for us to do, but to crow? And the best andgreatest of us all, is he who crows the loudest and the longest onthis little dunghill that we call our world!Well, I was going to tell you about our clock.It was my wife's idea, getting it, in the first instance. We had beento dinner at the Buggles', and Buggles had just bought aclock--"picked it up in Essex," was the way he described thetransaction. Buggles is always going about "picking up" things. Hewill stand before an old carved bedstead, weighing about three tons,and say:"Yes--pretty little thing! I picked it up in Holland;" as though hehad found it by the roadside, and slipped it into his umbrella whennobody was looking!Buggles was rather full of this clock. It was of the goodold-fashioned "grandfather" type. It stood eight feet high, in acarved-oak case, and had a deep, sonorous, solemn tick, that made apleasant accompaniment to the after-dinner chat, and seemed to fillthe room with an air of homely dignity.We discussed the clock, and Buggles said how he loved the sound of itsslow, grave tick; and how, when all the house was still, and he and itwere sitting up alone together, it seemed like some wise old friendtalking to him, and telling him about the old days and the old ways ofthought, and the old life and the old people.The clock impressed my wife very much. She was very thoughtful allthe way home, and, as we went upstairs to our flat, she said, "Whycould not we have a clock like that?" She said it would seem likehaving some one in the house to take care of us all--she should fancyit was looking after baby!I have a man in Northamptonshire from whom I buy old furniture now andthen, and to him I applied. He answered by return to say that he hadgot exactly the very thing I wanted. (He always has. I am very luckyin this respect.) It was the quaintest and most old-fashioned clockhe had come across for a long while, and he enclosed photograph andfull particulars; should he send it up?From the photograph and the particulars, it seemed, as he said, thevery thing, and I told him, "Yes; send it up at once."Three days afterward, there came a knock at the door--there had beenother knocks at the door before this, of course; but I am dealingmerely with the history of the clock. The girl said a couple of menwere outside, and wanted to see me, and I went to them.I found they were Pickford's carriers, and glancing at the way-bill, Isaw that it was my clock that they had brought, and I said, airily,"Oh, yes, it's quite right; bring it up!"They said they were very sorry, but that was just the difficulty.They could not get it up.I went down with them, and wedged securely across the second landingof the staircase, I found a box which I should have judged to be theoriginal case in which Cleopatra's Needle came over.They said that was my clock.I brought down a chopper and a crowbar, and we sent out and collectedin two extra hired ruffians and the five of us worked away for half anhour and got the clock out; after which the traffic up and down thestaircase was resumed, much to the satisfaction of the other tenants.We then got the clock upstairs and put it together, and I fixed it inthe corner of the dining-room.At first it exhibited a strong desire to topple over and fall onpeople, but by the liberal use of nails and screws and bits offirewood, I made life in the same room with it possible, and then,being exhausted, I had my wounds dressed, and went to bed.xIn the middle of the night my wife woke me up in a great state ofalarm, to say that the clock had just struck thirteen, and who did Ithink was going to die?I said I did not know, but hoped it might be the next-door dog.My wife said she had a presentiment it meant baby. There was nocomforting her; she cried herself to sleep again.During the course of the morning, I succeeded in persuading her thatshe must have made a mistake, and she consented to smile once more.In the afternoon the clock struck thirteen again.This renewed all her fears. She was convinced now that both baby andI were doomed, and that she would be left a childless widow. I triedto treat the matter as a joke, and this only made her more wretched.She said that she could see I really felt as she did, and was onlypretending to be light-hearted for her sake, and she said she wouldtry and bear it bravely.The person she chiefly blamed was Buggles.In the night the clock gave us another warning, and my wife acceptedit for her Aunt Maria, and seemed resigned. She wished, however, thatI had never had the clock, and wondered when, if ever, I should getcured of my absurd craze for filling the house with tomfoolery.The next day the clock struck thirteen four times and this cheered herup. She said that if we were all going to die, it did not so muchmatter. Most likely there was a fever or a plague coming, and weshould all be taken together.She was quite light-hearted over it!After that the clock went on and killed every friend and relation wehad, and then it started on the neighbors.It struck thirteen all day long for months, until we were sick ofslaughter, and there could not have been a human being left alive formiles around.Then it turned over a new leaf, and gave up murdering folks, and tookto striking mere harmless thirty-nines and forty-ones. Its favoritenumber now is thirty-two, but once a day it strikes forty-nine. Itnever strikes more than forty-nine. I don't know why--I have neverbeen able to understand why--but it doesn't.It does not strike at regular intervals, but when it feels it wants toand would be better for it. Sometimes it strikes three or four timeswithin the same hour, and at other times it will go for half-a-daywithout striking at all.He is an odd old fellow!I have thought now and then of having him "seen to," and made to keepregular hours and be respectable; but, somehow, I seem to have grownto 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 hisway almost to openly insult it. He calls half-past two thirty-eighto'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, andwishes to show it? They say no man is a hero to his valet; may it bethat even stony-face Time himself is but a short-lived, puny mortal--alittle greater than some others, that is all--to the dim eyes of thisold servant of his? Has he, ticking, ticking, all these years, comeat last to see into the littleness of that Time that looms so great toour awed human eyes?Is he saying, as he grimly laughs, and strikes his thirty-fives andforties: "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, immortalmen. Time is but the shadow of the world upon the background ofEternity!"
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