But why need I describe this experience to boys?
They know what "regulating" means as well as I do! Well in due time I profited by the instructions received, and one day my tutor, after the usual examination, grumpily told me, "You're right at last; you can go." And I did go, and I've been going ever since.
The troubles of my infancy however were not all over.

I discovered at a very early age that the one thing a watch is never allowed to do is to go to sleep.

They'd as soon think of leaving an infant to starve as of letting a watch go to sleep.
But to my story.

Ever since I had left school--or, in other words, gone through my due course of regulation--I had remained shut up under a glass-case, lying comfortably upon a bed of purple velvet, and decorated with a little white label bearing the mysterious inscription, "Only Three Guineas." From this stately repose I was only once a day disturbed in order to be kept from sleeping, and had all the rest of my time to look about me and observe what went on in the world in which I found myself.
It was not a big world indeed, but I could see I was not the only inhabitant.

All around me were watches like myself, some of a golden complexion, and some--of which I was one--of a silvery.