not a moment to
lose. Quick! Quick! Quick! as each tooth released itself from the
escapement. And as I looked and listened there could not be any mistake
about it. I heard Quick! Quick! Quick! as plainly, at least, as I ever
heard a word from the phonograph. I stood watching the dial one day,--it
was near one o'clock,--and a strange attraction held me fastened to the
spot. Presently something appeared to trip or stumble inside of the
infernal mechanism. I waited for the sound I knew was to follow. How
nervous I got! It seemed to me that it would never strike. At last the
minute-hand reached the highest point of the dial. Then there was a
little stir among the works, as there is in a congregation as it rises to
receive the benediction. It was no form of blessing which rung out those
deep, almost sepulchral tones. But the word they uttered could not be
mistaken. I can hear its prolonged, solemn vibrations as if I were
standing before the clock at this moment.

Gone! Yes, I said to myself, gone,--its record made up to be opened in
eternity.

I stood still, staring vaguely at the dial as in a trance. And as the
next hour creeps stealthily up, it starts all at once, and cries aloud,
Gone!--Gone! The sun sinks lower, the hour-hand creeps downward with it,
until I hear the thrice-repeated monosyllable, Gone!--Gone!--Gone! Soon
through the darkening hours, until at the dead of night the long roll is
called, and with the last Gone! the latest of the long procession that
filled the day follows its ghostly companions into the stillness and
darkness of the past.

I silenced the striking part of the works. Still, the escapement kept
repeating, Quick! Quick! Quick! Still the long minute-hand, like the
dart in the grasp of Death, as we see it in Roubiliac's monument to Mrs.
Nightingale, among the tombs of Westminster Abbey, stretched itself out,
ready to transfix each hour as it passed, and make it my last. I sat by
the clock to watch the leap from one day of the week to the next. Then
would come, in natural order, the long stride from one month to the
following one.

I could endure it no longer. "Take that clock away!" I said. They took
it away. They took me away, too,--they thought I needed country air.
The sounds and motions still pursued me in imagination. I was very
nervous when I came here. The walks are pleasant, but the walls seem to
me unnecessarily high. The boarders are numerous; a little
miscellaneous, I think. But we