Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

Walking Toicrs 255
hours for a lifetime is, I was going to say, to
live for ever. You have no idea, unless you
have tried it, how endlessly long is a summer's
day, that you measure out only by hunger,
and bring to an end only when you are
drowsy. I know a village where there are
hardly any clocks, where no one knows more
of the days of the week than by a sort of
instinct for the fete on Sundays, and where
only one person can tell you the day of the
month, and she is generally wrong ; and if
people were aware how slow Time journeyed
in that village, and what armfuls of spare
hours he gives, over and above the bargain,
to its wise inhabitants, I believe there would
be a stampede out of London, Liverpool,
Paris, and a variety of large towns, where the
clocks lose their heads, and shake the hours
out each one faster than the other, as though
they were all in a wager. And all these
foolish pilgrims would each bring his own
misery along with him, in a watch-pocket !
It is to be noticed, there were no clocks and
watches in the much-vaunted days before the