"I'll bet you can't tell me what the difference is."
"Yes, I can. It's the difference between the pendulum and the clock-hand. Look at the jerking old idiot! That thing can't talk; that thing can't wink; that thing doesn't know us. Why, you silly, it only does what the pendulum tells it to do. The pendulum knows what it's doing. But that thing doesn't. Here, let's go back into the church and have another talk with the jolly old chap!"
Ten years later when Billy, barely twenty-three, had half finished a book which would have made him famous, I handed him an essay by a distinguished philosopher, and requested him to read it. The title was "On translating Time into Eternity." When Billy returned it, I asked him how he had fared. "Oh," he answered, "I translated time into eternity without much difficulty. But it was plugging ahead all the time."
Shortly after that, Billy rejoined his mater—a victim to the same disease. Poor Billy! You brought luck to others; God knows you had little yourself. He died in a hospital, without kith or kin to close his eyes. The Sister who attended him brought me a small purse which she said Billy had very urgently requested her to give me. On opening the purse I found in it a gold coin, marked with a cross. The nurse also told me that an hour before he died Billy sat up suddenly in his bed and, opening his eyes very wide, said in a singing voice:
"If you please, Sir, would you mind telling me the time?"