It wuz quite a journey there, in fact, as I’ve said before, you have to walk a long distance to git anywhere, but jest before we got there we see sunthin’ that made us forgit for the moment our achin’ limbs.  On the side of a slopin’ hill at the bottom of the long flight of stairs, that lead up to the north entrance of Agricultural Hall is the most wonderful clock that wuz ever seen on this globe, and I don’t believe they’ve got anything to beat it in Mars or Saturn.

I can’t give you much idee of it by writin’, nobody can, but I can probably describe it so you can see it goes ahead of your own clock on the kitchen wall or mantelry piece.  To begin with how long do you spoze the minute hand is?  The minute hand on our clock is about three inches long, and the minute hand to this is fifty feet long, and its face is about three hundred feet ’round and all made of the most beautiful posies.

Why, the figures that mark the hours are fifteen feet long, most three times as long as my pardner, if he lay flat as a pan-cake to be measured by a pole, jest think of that and these figgers are all made of bright colored foliage plants.  The ornaments ’round the face of the clock is a border of twenty-five different plants, each one fifteen feet wide.  Some different from the ornamental wreath ’round our clock face, that hain’t more’n half an inch wide, if it is that.  Our clock has a picture underneath of old Time with his scythe a mowin’ down the hours and minutes as his nater his.  And I told Josiah how beautiful and symbolical it wuz to think old Time had laid down his scythe for a spell, and wuz measurin’ off the hours here in this Fairy Land with beautiful posies.

And Josiah said, “The hours ort to be marked here with canes and crutches,” he said his legs ached like the toothache.

The distances are awful and I couldn’t deny it, and you do git tuckered out, but then, as I told Josiah, jest think what you’re tuckered for.

And he said, “When you’re as dead as a door-nail he didn’t know what good some steeples and flags wuz goin’ to do you, or floral clocks.”  I mistrusted he’d walked too fur lately, and had strained the cords of his legs, and his patience too much, though the last-named wuz easy hurt and always wuz.

But Josiah took out his watch and looked at it and said he’d promised to meet a man on important bizness, and he’d meet us at a certain spot in Agricultural Hall in jest one hour.

I asked him what bizness it wuz, and he hesitated a little and said as he hurried away that it wuz “Bizness connected with the meetin’ house,” and I asked him “What meetin’ house?” and he didn’t answer me, he wuz walkin’ off so fast—­mebby he didn’t hear me.

Well, Blandina and I stayed lookin’ at this wonderful clock for some time, and she said that the man that invented this clock wuz a powerful genius and how she did wish she could meet him.  She said such a man needed a kind and lovin’ companion to take every care offen him and pet him and make of him.