“The night of the nuptials came softly down, as nowhere else except upon the skies of the Delaware and Chesapeake, and Minuit was happy.  The thrumming clocks in the shop below mingled their tones and tickings in one consonant chorus, scarcely heard above the long drone and low monotonies of the insects in the creeks and woods, which assisted silence.  The husband slept, how well beloved he could not know.

“In the dreams of the night he was awakened.  In the pale moonshine he saw his wife, clad in her garments of whiteness, standing by his bed all trembling.

“‘Tell me,’ she said, ’what it is that I hear?  I have listened till I am afraid.  As I lay in this room perfectly silent, with my head, my husband, nearest your heart, I felt the ticking of a watch.  At first it was only curious and strange.  Now it haunts me and terrifies me.  I am a simple girl, new and nervous to this wedded life.  Is this noise natural?  What is it?’

“Minuit trembled also.

“‘Lois, my bride, my heaven!’ he said.  ’Oh! pity me, who have tried to pity all and make all happy, if I cannot myself explain away the cause of your alarm.  I have kept myself lonely these many years, aware that I was not like other men, but that my heart—­no evil monitor to me—­gave a different sound.  There is nothing in its beat, my wife, to make you fear it.  Return and lay your head upon it, and you will hear it say this only, if you listen with faith:  love!’

“Thus the watch-maker turned superstition to assurance, and the admonition of his heart was a source of joy instead of fear to the listener at its side.  It ticked a few bright years with constancy, and was the last benediction of the world to her ere she was ushered into that peace which passeth understanding.

“At the death of his wife Minuit felt a deeper sense of his responsibility to time, and the finite uses of it expanded to a cheerful conception of the infinite.  The country round was generally settled by a religious people, and the many meeting-houses of different sects had his equal confidence and sympathy.  Pursuing his craft with unwearied diligence, and delighting the homestead with his violin as of old, a more pensive and wistful expression replaced his smile, and love withdrawn beckoned him toward it beyond the boundaries of period.  Hard populations, which would not listen to preachers, heard with delight the amiable warnings of this friendly man, and as his own generation grew older, a new race dawned to whom he appeared in the light of a pure-spirited evangelist.  ’Improve the time! watch it! ennoble it!  It is a part of the beautiful and perpetual circle of everlasting duty.  It is to the great future only the little disk of a second-hand, traversed as swiftly, while the great rim of heaven accepts it as a part of the eternal round!’ Such was the burden of his sermon.

“He could ride all along the roads, and hear his missionaries preaching for him wherever a clock struck, or a dial on the gable of a great stone barn propelled its shadows.  His tracts were in every farmer’s vest pocket.  Whatever he made he consecrated with a paragraph of counsel.