The famous German writer, Jean Paul Richter, describes what he calls a Human Clock.

A HUMAN CLOCK.

“I believe” says Richter “the flower clock of Linnaeus, in Upsal (Horologium Florae) whose wheels are the sun and earth, and whose index-figures are flowers, of which one always awakens and opens later than another, was what secretly suggested my conception of the human clock.

I formerly occupied two chambers in Scheeraw, in the middle of the market place:  from the front room I overlooked the whole market-place and the royal buildings and from the back one, the botanical garden.  Whoever now dwells in these two rooms possesses an excellent harmony, arranged to his hand, between the flower clock in the garden and the human clock in the marketplace.  At three o’clock in the morning, the yellow meadow goats-beard opens; and brides awake, and the stable-boy begins to rattle and feed the horses beneath the lodger.  At four o’clock the little hawk weed awakes, choristers going to the Cathedral who are clocks with chimes, and the bakers.  At five, kitchen maids, dairy maids, and butter-cups awake.  At six, the sow-thistle and cooks.  At seven o’clock many of the Ladies’ maids are awake in the Palace, the Chicory in my botanical garden, and some tradesmen.  At eight o’clock all the colleges awake and the little mouse-ear.  At nine o’clock, the female nobility already begin to stir; the marigold, and even many young ladies, who have come from the country on a visit, begin to look out of their windows.  Between ten and eleven o’clock the Court Ladies and the whole staff of Lords of the Bed-chamber, the green colewort and the Alpine dandelion, and the reader of the Princess rouse themselves out of their morning sleep; and the whole Palace, considering that the morning sun gleams so brightly to-day from the lofty sky through the coloured silk curtains, curtails a little of its slumber.

At twelve o’clock, the Prince:  at one, his wife and the carnation have their eyes open in their flower vase.  What awakes late in the afternoon at four o’clock is only the red-hawkweed, and the night watchman as cuckoo-clock, and these two only tell the time as evening-clocks and moon-clocks.

From the eyes of the unfortunate man, who like the jalap plant (Mirabilia jalapa), first opens them at five o’clock, we will turn our own in pity aside.  It is a rich man who only exchanges the fever fancies of being pinched with hot pincers for waking pains.

I could never know when it was two o’clock, because at that time, together with a thousand other stout gentlemen and the yellow mouse-ear, I always fell asleep; but at three o’clock in the afternoon, and at three in the morning, I awoke as regularly as though I was a repeater.  Thus we mortals may be a flower-clock for higher beings, when our flower-leaves close upon our last bed; or sand clocks, when the sand of our life is so run down that it is renewed in the other world; or picture-clocks because, when our death-bell here below strikes and rings, our image steps forth, from its case into the next world.