My Watch - by Mark Twain

[Nanuq]

My Watch by Mark Twain

ca. 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 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 king-bolt was broken. I said I was glad it was

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

king-bolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger.

He repaired the king-bolt, 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.

-THE END-

[Shundi]

Well said...

[deltatahoe]

randomly happened across this and felt it was worth bumping. great read; thanks nanuq

deltatahoe

[Nanuq]

For the watch tinkerers among us... another shameless bump.

[Jkay]

I remember your original post. Still excellent.

[maxman]

Thank you Nanuq....nice read.

Mike