e could not have been a human being left alive for
miles around.

Then it turned over a new leaf, and gave up murdering folks, and took to
striking mere harmless thirty-nines and forty-ones. Its favorite number
now is thirty-two, but once a day it strikes forty-nine. It never
strikes more than forty-nine. I don't know why--I have never been able
to understand why--but it doesn't.

It does not strike at regular intervals, but when it feels it wants to
and would be better for it. Sometimes it strikes three or four times
within the same hour, and at other times it will go for half-a-day
without striking at all.

He is an odd old fellow!

I have thought now and then of having him "seen to," and made to keep
regular hours and be respectable; but, somehow, I seem to have grown to
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 his way
almost to openly insult it. He calls half-past two thirty-eight o'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, and
wishes to show it? They say no man is a hero to his valet; may it be
that even stony-face Time himself is but a short-lived, puny mortal--a
little greater than some others, that is all--to the dim eyes of this
old servant of his? Has he, ticking, ticking, all these years, come at
last to see into the littleness of that Time that looms so great to our
awed human eyes?

Is he saying, as he grimly laughs, and strikes his thirty-fives and
forties: "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, immortal men. Time is
but the shadow of the world upon the background of Eternity!"

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Clocks, by Jerome K. Jerome

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLOCKS ***

***** This file should be named 855.txt or 855.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/8/5/855/

Produced by Ron Burkey, and Amy Thomte

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permis