“One day this Finnish-Dutch baby—­aged perhaps two years—­was picked up by one of the assistant surveyors and carried into the tent of Charles Mason.  The great surveyor was at that instant bending down over a small metallic object which he was examining through the medium of a lens.  He recognized the child, and seemed glad of the opportunity to dismiss more serious occupation from his mind, so he instantly leaped up and poked the fat urchin with his thumb, tempting the bite of its teeth with his forefinger, and was otherwise reducing his tired faculties to the needs of a child’s amusement, when suddenly the voice of its mother at the tent’s opening drew him away.

“’Fresh fish, mighty surveyor!  Fall shad, and the most beautiful yellow perch.  Buy something for the sake of Minuit’s baby!’

“The celebrated surveyor, who seemed in an admirable humor, stepped just outside the tent to look at the fish, and in that little interval his assistant, seized with inquisitiveness, stole up to his table, and picked up the tiny object lying there under the magnifying glass.

“‘This is the little ticking seducer which absorbs my master’s time,’ he said.  ’Why, it isn’t big enough for an infant to count the minutes of its life upon it!’

“At this the fat, good-humored baby, anticipating something to eat, reached out its hands.  The surveyor’s assistant, in a moment of mischief, put the object in the child’s grasp.  The child clutched it, bit at it, and swallowed it whole in an instant.

“Before the assistant surveyor could think of any other harm done than the possible choking of the child, the child’s mother and the great surveyor entered the tent.  The arms of the first reached for her offspring, and of the second for the subject of his experiment.

“‘My chronometer!’

“‘The child of the fish-woman ate it!’

“The fish-woman screamed, and reversed the urchin after the manner of mothers, and swung him to and fro like a pendulum.  He came up a trifle red in the face, but laughing as usual, and the ludicrous inappositeness of the great loss, the unconscious cause of it, the baby’s wonderful digestion, the assistant’s distress, and the surveyor’s calm but pallid self-control, made Jeremiah Dixon, dropping in at the minute, roar with laughter.

“‘Dixon,’ said Mason, ’the work of half my life, my everlasting timepiece, just completed and set going, has found a temperature where it requires no compensation balance.’

“‘I am glad of it,’ said his associate, ’for now we can proceed with Mason and Dixon’s line, and nothing else!’

“A look, more of pity than of reproach, passed over Mason’s scarcely ruffled face—­the pity of one man solely conscious of a great object lost, for another, indifferent or ignorant both of the object and the loss.  He took the smiling urchin in his hands, and raising it upon his shoulder, placed his ear to its side.  Thence came with faint regularity the sound of a simple, gentle ticking.  They all heard it by turns, and, while they paused in puzzled wonder and humor, the undaunted infant looked down as innocent as a chubby, cheery face painted on some household clock.  The innocent expression of the child touched the mathematician’s heart.  He filled a glass with good Madeira wine, and drank the devourer’s health in these benignant words: