The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1900-12-22


81 Berlin, in February, 1895, the
writer had an experience with a
- cuckoo clock that he will never for
get. He had sprained his ankle In get
ting off the train and so was unfit for
sightseeing. He was untitled for So
ciety by an inadequate vocabulary and
for reading by delayed baggage and a
depleted p~ocket-book. There was moth
Ing to do but study the clock, and that,
as the sequel will prove, sufficed.
l saw, on his first appearance, that
the cuckoo was no ordinary bird.
Promptly at II he stepped out and
cooked or cooked whichever Is the
proper world once, then at 1890 o'clock
he emerged and delivered his entire
repertoire, assisted by the whole force
of the company.
The novelty of the proceeding was
interesting, and just as one begins
counting the figures in his wall paper,
never dreaming that before he gets
through it Is going to set him to grub
bling cube roots, rolling logarithms and
blazing his way through all the tan
gled wilderness of the higher mathe-
MATES, so l began to speculate about
that bird,
The hands, I found, were always
right and the cuckoo was always a half
hour behind the hands-behind hand,
so to speak. Or. of course, it might be
that he was eleven and a half hours
ahead of them, but he was either half
an hour slow or eleven and a half hours
fast. In that conviction l was happy
until about the middle of the afternoon.
Then a cold chill crept over me. How
did | know? If he were ahead eleven
and a half hours, why not twenty-three
and a half? o, if behind a half hour,
why not twelve and a half? Or twen-
ty-four and a half?
You see, there was absolutely moth
ing to start from. When the row with
the works began he might have kept
his cackle going steadily for a week and
left them clear out of sight; or, just as
likely, he had closed his mandibles like
out a peep. And now, for all | knew,
he might be giving me his idea of what
time 1t had been some day last spring,
or what time it was going to be next
Fourth of July. Nobody could tell how
far ahead or behind he was, and, as to
telling whether he was ahead or be-
hind, the man who Matched him could
MT have done that. All l could be sure
of was that If he was slow it was in
the ratio of o~ne-half, or II plus one
half, or "a plus one-half; If fast, IL
plus one-half, % plus one-half, or 80
plus one-half. And so l went to sleep.
The first thing l saw that bird do
next morning was to step out at $50
and crow for Z o'clock. OF course, that
spoiled those ratios; now they would
have to 60 to 10 plus one-half, % plus
one-half, or "a plus one-half; or else 1
plus one-half, 10 p,us one-half, % plus
one-half, that is, If he kept this rate,
and he did, all day, never a variation
from sun to sun. About 4 o'clock an
Idea occurred to me-: He changed an
hour every day. That would give a
ratio twelve days long, and to work
out the details in ones head was some
thing terrific. But I had the clew, and
that was half the battle.
/ found next morning that 1 was
wrong. All my hypothesis about that
bird were wrong. He was still running
on yesterdays schedule, and as if he
had never had any other.
MY reflections were not confined
.a,oV 10 n tin fJA 1Y,nlyaAsr Ar
bit. thought Of him also as an indi-
vidual, sometimes with an impotent ex-
ASPIRATION. Why didn't he end this
feud with the works and stop the whole
combination from making a fool of it.
self forty-eight times a day? He could
easily enough if he had a mind to, and,
anyway, the works were right and he
wrong.
But at other times | thought Of him
with that unmiXed sorrow we all feel
in contemplating genius misapplied.
Here was this bird in the prime of life,
evidently, to judge by the freshness of
his paint and the splendid mechanical
action of his wings, running a regular
Jehu s~teeplechase through the whole
calendar, prostituting the talents with
which the clockmaker had endowed
him in impiously attempting to induce
a chronological chaos In which time
would be no more.
1t sounds a heartless thing to say,
but l was glad he had no mate. A
clock cuckoo would be at best a ques-
tienable life companion, considering
the hours he keeps. Indeed that may
be the eason why they are so general
1y single. But this one-yes, 1t was
far better that there were no eggs
Matching back there among the wheels.
But these were the reflections only
of my leisure, so to speak. The seri-
Gus business of life had become the
~discOverery of that birds combination.
! was nervous that night. Every time
the clock went off l counted the crows
and then struck a match and looked at
my watch. When l ~woke-just as l ex-
~pected-he had me again. He had run
down. All the morning there was
peace. | lay figuring on my ratios, and
he Il know the word this time) kept
his box and cooked up new things to
do. He did not have to wait long.
About l, l sank into a ~lethargy Of abb