Strange to say, father carefully taught us to consider ourselves very poor worms of the dust, conceived in sin, etc., and devoutly believed that quenching every spark of pride and self-confidence was a sacred duty, without realizing that in so doing he might at the same time be quenching everything else.  Praise he considered most venomous, and tried to assure me that when I was fairly out in the wicked world making my own way I would soon learn that although I might have thought him a hard taskmaster at times, strangers were far harder.  On the contrary, I found no lack of kindness and sympathy.  All the baggage I carried was a package made up of the two clocks and a small thermometer made of a piece of old washboard, all three tied together, with no covering or case of any sort, the whole looking like one very complicated machine.

The aching parting from mother and my sisters was, of course, hard to bear.  Father let David drive me down to Pardeeville, a place I had never before seen, though it was only nine miles south of the Hickory Hill home.  When we arrived at the village tavern, it seemed deserted.  Not a single person was in sight.  I set my clock baggage on the rickety platform.  David said good-bye and started for home, leaving me alone in the world.  The grinding noise made by the wagon in turning short brought out the landlord, and the first thing that caught his eye was my strange bundle.  Then he looked at me and said, “Hello, young man, what’s this?”

“Machines,” I said, “for keeping time and getting up in the morning, and so forth.”

“Well!  Well!  That’s a mighty queer get-up.  You must be a Down-East Yankee.  Where did you get the pattern for such a thing?”

“In my head,” I said.

Some one down the street happened to notice the landlord looking intently at something and came up to see what it was.  Three or four people in that little village formed an attractive crowd, and in fifteen or twenty minutes the greater part of the population of Pardeeville stood gazing in a circle around my strange hickory belongings.  I kept outside of the circle to avoid being seen, and had the advantage of hearing the remarks without being embarrassed.  Almost every one as he came up would say, “What’s that?  What’s it for?  Who made it?” The landlord would answer them all alike, “Why, a young man that lives out in the country somewhere made it, and he says it’s a thing for keeping time, getting up in the morning, and something that I didn’t understand.  I don’t know what he meant.”  “Oh, no!” one of the crowd would say, “that can’t be.  It’s for something else—­something mysterious.  Mark my words, you’ll see all about it in the newspapers some of these days.”  A curious little fellow came running up the street, joined the crowd, stood on tiptoe to get sight of the wonder, quickly made up his mind, and shouted in crisp, confident, cock-crowing style, “I know what that contraption’s for.  It’s a machine for taking the bones out of fish.”