Her little babbling is heard continually; and while she boasts her independent movements, like any prisoner or slave she always wears her chain.
I call her a little person, because she accompanies me everywhere; though sometimes she stops while I walk, and goes again when I am inclined to stop.
This delicate, fantastical organization, so difficult to discipline, and as subject to the influences of cold and heat as any nervous lady or chilly invalid, is Mademoiselle—my watch.
You have nearly all, my dear readers, a watch of silver or gold in your vest-pocket, and you can have them of wood or mother-of-pearl, with one great advantage: they cannot be pawned.
Ladies wear watches whose cases shine with their diamonds like the decorations of a great officer of the Legion of Honor. And they can have them inserted in bracelets, in bon-bon boxes, and in buckles for sashes and belts.
But I must tell you, the first accurate instruments, after the sun-dial and hour-glass of the ancients, were huge clocks; and these clocks, so immense, led artists insensibly to construct smaller ones for apartments, in form of pendulums, and which were in the beginning very imperfect.
Then others still more skilful conceived the idea of portable clocks, to which they gave the name of montres, (watches, in English,) from montrer, to show.
But at first these ornaments were very awkward, and of inconvenient size for the pocket to which they were destined.
Finally, however, they were lessened to such a point that they graced the heads of canes, the handles of fans, and even the setting of rings, and were about the size of a five-cent silver piece.
It is to Hook, a physician and English philosopher, born in 1635, died in 1702, that we owe the invention of pocket watches.