That Clock.
The Stillwater department has a clock. Its frame is a compound affair, containing, as it does, a thermometer and barometer, as well as a time-piece, which surmounts the whole. Altogether it has a sea-going face. Gazing upon it, visions of Capt. Cuttle, the Wooden Midshipman, Jack Bunsby, Paul Jones, Midshipman Easy, and a hundred other nautical heroes flit through the imagination. Then it has, withal, a staid sort of an air. Its every tick seems to say: "You may depend upon me forever. The sun and moon may vary, but I never will." Its appearance, its declarations and its associations had gained for it the reportorial bosom confidence, which had been further heightened by the test of experience. It had never been known to fail at 4:15 p.m. of each day. It was always on time.
But the devil got into that clock on Friday, and by its agency played a scurvy trick on the Faberian Knight. In fancied security, he closed his package for Saturday's Tribune as the hands of that fickle – yet trusted – monitor pointed to 4:01. It was earlier by some 14 minutes than that daily operation is generally performed, so he did it leisurely, and with equal unconcern stepped quietly over to the depot and found the train skimming the curve by the State Prison on its outward passage to Minneapolis. That reporter did not roar. He was too sad for that. But he solemnly reflected upon the many times he had been made the victim of misplaced confidence during his chequered career. He went to bed, thinking of the absence, next day in The Tribune, of the Stillwater news. He dreamed of newspaper scoops. He caught a night mare, in which a barometrical thermometrical horologue played such hellish tricks that the cold perspiration exuded from every pore, and finally plunged him into a sea of inky newspaporial oblivion. Then calmness succeeded. Gentle angels whispered peace and fanned that throbbing brow with snow-white wings. He awoke refreshed, and pushed the minute-hand of that clock forward 20 minutes.
Stillwater, 1874: Looking southeast from the corner of Third and Myrtle. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org.)
