A clock is quite a delicate and ticklish article of manufacture, you see, and it ain't everybody that can make a clock, or can make it go when it don't want to; and if a man takes a hammer or a horsewhip, or any other unnatural weapon to it, as if it was a house or a horse, why I guess, it's not reasonable to expect it to keep in order, and it's no use in having a clock no how, if you don't treat it well.

As for its striking thirty-one, that indeed is something remarkable, for I never heard one of mine strike more than twelve, and that's zactly the number they're regulated to strike.

But, after all, lawyer, I don't see that Squire Jenkins has been much a loser by the trade, seeing that he paid me in bills of the Hogee-nogee bank, and that stopped payment about the time, and before I could get the bills changed.

It's true, I didn't let on that I knowed anything about it, and got rid of the paper a little while before the thing went through the country." "Now, look ye, you gingerbread-bodied Yankee--I'd like to know what you mean about taking whip and hammer to the clock.

If you mean to say that I ever did such a thing, I'll lick you now, by the eternal scratch!" "Order, order, Mr.Jenkins--order! The chair must be respected.