Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1886-10-13

a CUCKOO CLOCK.
1t Causes Considerable Trouble in the
Majors Household and Is Roughly
id E 4
The major has always made q spe-
cialty of timepieces He says there is
nothing more cheerful than. to wake up
at night and hear the dainty machinery !.
of a pet clock working away in the dark,
and that if if wasn't for his clock he be-
lieves he'd sometimes be desperate
enough to wish he were married. His
clock was originally of the alarm species,
and for several years used to 60 off with
a whizz, rattle, and bang every morn
ing at z sharp, and get the major up for
business, but all of a sudden it got me-
chanical dyspepsia. or had congestion
of the handspring or something, and
contracted the habit of going off at odd
hours, sometimes in the middle of the
night, and sometimes not until noo
next day, and SO the major either lost
his sleep or missed engagements, and
had no end of trouble. He took it to
buo J0WOAVA y uAO IAC CAPOAe AAoCA tOu q
pill box III his eye and held an autopsy,
and said he thought he might be able
to remedy the trouble temporarily for
about 81, but if the major wanted steady
comfort he had better spend So and get
a new clock. The major, however, con-
cluded to keep it and not wind up the
alarm side in future, but use his pet
merely as a timekeeper. and resorted to
the a~rtitice of leaving his shutters open
so that the sunlight would pour in and,
awaken him two hours before break
fast.
Saturday afternoon a mysterious pack
age came for the major. and after din
ner he opened it and showed us a clock
built like a Swiss cottage, made to hang
high up on the wall and run by two big
weights and a lot of brass chain. The
major said it was a cuckoo clock, and
said the man who sold it guaranteed
that every half hour a cuckoo would ap-
pear at the cottage window, sing sweet
1y, and vanish, and he thought it'would
be just the thing to hang in the hall.
So he got the stepladder and drove a
nail lear the ceiling, got the cottage in
position, set the hands, and started the
pendulum. The pendulum wigwagged
several times solemnly and stopped.
The major started it again, but to no
purpose, and finally, after two hours
tlnkering, gave it up, and we all went
to bed to be up bright and early for
Luray. About 11:30 Dick, who had
been at the club, came in, and in CROP
ing along the hall accidentally moved
the weights, and in some mysterious
way started the machinery. In twenty
minutes, just in the middle of pro-
found silence, we were aroused by this:
"Br-r-r-r-r-r-click! .. Whoopoo-o-o-o!
-br-r-r-r-click!"
Dick thought the baby next door had
collie again, and Bunny was afraid it
was burglars. The major came into
my room with a revolver and wanted to
know if I had heard any n yell muir
der, and we could both hear mufHed
conversation proceeding from the serv-
ants room in the basement Then we
leaned over the banisters and lis tened,
and concluded it was a false alarm and
went to bed again, but just as con
sciousness poised to take her flight the
thing broke loose again, thus:
"Ber-r-zit! Whoop-oo! buzz ooploo!
cling! uku! XIII hoo! It'll whewplew!
clang! tootoo! Xxx kim! Kookloo! sizzz!
bloobloo!-whist!' and then the thing
shut up with a vicious snap which SEEM
ed to be intended to convey the impress
sion that there was more coming by
and by. There was commotion in the
household. Bunny screamed and Dick
came out with q Trantor, the major
turned a handspring out of bed and
went down stairs nine at q time, and
distant sounds of slamming shutters
gave hints of u general uprising amoeg
the n%eighbors. OF course this tirne the
major had his suspicious, and after
finding all the doors and windows Sc
curely fastened, and as%certaining that
there was no maniacal cat concealed in
the cellar, concluded that something
was wrong with the chronological cot
tage, and after sitting up for half an
hour caught the clock in the act. II
was too high on the wall to reach, and
the stepladder was out in the back yard,
30 Dick reached up and whackcd the
pendulum with his cane and succeeded
in unshipping it, with the satisfactory
result that the machinery ran six times
as fast as before, and the cuckoo got
devilish and whooped every five min
utes, aud it was 2 o'clock before the
weight ran down to where the major
could grab it, and put us out of misery.
Bunny called down and begged the
major not to be too harsh with thu, clock,
but the major had his dander UP, and
jerked out about three yards of chain
and six wheels, and said that when a
piece of mechanism got to be as Immoral
as that clock it wasn't entitled to mercy.
Then the night Waterman, who gen
orally sleeps on u front steps in fine
weather, rang the bell and wanted to
know if the house was afire, ard the
doctor came in from next door to- see if
any one had been taken suddenly i'll, so
it was nearly daylight before we tgot to
sleep.-M Y. Times.