













    MY WATCH

       by MARK TWAIN (Written about 1870)

    (*-> An Instructive Little Tale <-*)


        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 and let me go to protest; I gradually drifted

     back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week,

     and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all

     solitary and alone I was lingering along in week before

     last, and the world was out of sight.  I seemed to detect in

     myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling for the mummy in

     the museum, and desire to swap news with him.


        I went to a watch maker again.  He took the watch all

     to  pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was

     "swelled." He said he could reduce it in three days.  After

     this the watch AVERAGED well, but nothing more.  For half a

     day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a

     barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting,

     that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance; and

     as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land

     that stood any chance against it.


        But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down

     and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind

     caught up again.  So at last, at the end of twenty-four hours,

     it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and just in

     time.  It would show a fair and square average, and no man

     could say it had done more or less than its duty.  But a

     correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took

     this instrument to another watchmaker.


        He said the kingbolt was broken.  I said I was glad it

     was nothing more serious.  To tell the plain truth, I had no

     idea what the kingbolt was, but I did not choose to appear

     ignorant to a stranger.  He repaired the kingbolt, but what

     the watch gained in one way it lost in another.  It would run

     awhile and then stop awhile, and then run awhile again, and

     so on, using its own discretion about the intervals.  And

     every time it went off it kicked back like a musket.


        I padded my breast for a few days, but finally took the

     watch to another watchmaker.  He picked it all to pieces,

     and turned the ruin over and over under his glass; and then

     he said there appeared to be something the matter with the

     hair-trigger.  He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start.  It

     did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the

     hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from

     that time forth they would travel together.


        The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail

     of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to

     have the thing repaired.  This person said that the crystal

     had got bent, and that the mainspring was not straight.  He

     also remarked that part of the works needed half-soling.  He

     made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed

     unexceptionably, save that now and then, after working along

     quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let

     go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the

     hands would straightway begin to spin round and round so fast

     that their individuality was lost completely, and they simply

     seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch.

     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.

     ========================  #  #  #  ================================
                                {FIN}

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