GRANDMOTHER’S CLOCK.
LEAVING Turin, the whole country is mountainous, the tributaries of the Po frequently relieving the sameness. The engine now shoots into this tunnel, now into that, either of which, from its length, the inexperienced traveller might mistake for “the grand.” When, however, the approach of the latter was near, there was no misjudging the signs. The lights overhead were newly arranged; there was a general quick-step on the top of the car; and, too late to draw back, we were, willing or unwilling, propelled into “chaos.”
Entering these depths a seriousness takes possession of one similar to that which affects a passenger for the first time crossing the Suspension Bridge at Niagara Falls. The air seems stupefying, and were it not “that the lamp holds out to burn,” you would not believe there were any oxygen in the atmosphere.
Subterranean apartments were occasionally seen at the right and left. In one instance several persons, perhaps the mountain kings, though by no means, in royal robes, appeared to be lunching. The glare of their lights was dismal. These rooms, or dens, were invariably near the lamp-posts, as though between these points life could not be endurable.
Pastime is out of the question in this Great Tunnel.
As everything seems to be rushing to destruction, reflections are a natural consequence during this ride of nearly a half hour. It takes but very few minutes to “retrospect” (any word is right in a tunnel) one’s whole life. It is surprising too, how thick and fast the short-comings present themselves, especially those of childhood. Indeed I did not get beyond the first dozen years of my youth, yet they were countless. One of these transgressions out of which in later years I had had much enjoyment on the review, came to me very significantly in the tunnel and I grew very sober over it. Now that I am safely at Modane and know that I will never take the route through the “Alpine Bore” again, I transcribe a confession of the above in the form of the
STORY OF THE CLOCK.
My real name was so short that I was called Nancy, “for long.” I was the fourth child in a very large family. The three elder were a brother and two sisters. The first, very quick at books and figures, finished his education at an early age, and seemed to me about as old and dignified as my father. My sisters, Sarah and Mary, were exemplary in school and out. The former, at eight, read Virgil; painted “Our Mother’s Grave” at eleven—’twas an imaginary grave judging from the happy children standing by; wrote rhymes for all the albums, printed verses on card-board and kept on living. Mary read every book she could find; had a prize at six years of age for digesting “Rollins’ Ancient History;” had great mathematical talent, and though she sighed in her fourteenth year that she had grown old, yet continues to add to her age, being one of the oldest professors in a flourishing college.