Mark Twain's sketches, new and old now first published in complete form |
MY WATCH.
AN INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE. |
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 | Mark Twain's sketches, new and old |  |
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MY WATCH.
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
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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
Octoberleaves 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
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for the mummy in the museum, and a desire to swap news with him. I
went to a watchmaker 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
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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.
| Mark Twain's sketches, new and old | |