My father, looking upon it a good while, and perceiving that the minute hand had got farther than it was at first, was just dropping it out of his hand, had I not caught it. "Why, it is alive," says he; "it moves!"--"Sir," says I, "if you had dropped it, you had done me an inexpressible injury."--"Oh ho," says he, "I find now how you do your wonders; it is something you have shut up here that assists you; it is an evil spirit!" I laughing heartily, he was sorry for what he had said, believing he had shown some ignorance. "No, sir," says I, "it is no spirit, good or evil, but a machine made by some of my countrymen, to measure time with."--"I have heard," says he, "of measuring an abb, or the ground, or a rock; but never yet heard of measuring time."--"Why, sir," says I, "don't you say three days hence I will do so; or such a one is three years old? Is not that a measuring of time by so many days or years?"--"Truly," says he, "in one sense I think it is."--"Now, sir," says I, "how do you measure a day?"--"Why, by rising and lying down," says he.--"But suppose I say I will go now, and come again, and have a particular time in my head when I will return, how shall I do to make you know that time?"--"Why, that will be afterwards, another time," says he; "or I can think how long it will be."--"But," says I, "how can you make me know when you think it will be?"--"You must think too," says he.--"But then," says I, "we may deceive each other, by thinking differently. Now this will set us to rights:" then I described the figures to him, telling him how many parts they divided the day into, and that by looking on it I could tell how many of such parts were passed; and that if he went from me, and said he would come one, or two, or three parts hence, I should know when to expect him. I then showed him the wheels, and explained where the force lay, and why it went no faster or slower, as well as I could; and from my desire of teaching, insensibly perfected myself more and more in it. So that beginning to have a little idea of it, he wished he had one. "And," says he, "will you teach all our people to make such things?"--"Then they would be disregarded, sir," says I.--"It is impossible," says he.--"I'll tell you, sir, how I mean," said I. "I can, hereafter, show you a hundred things as useful as this; now, if everybody was to make these, how would other things be made? Besides, if everybody made them, nobody would want them; and then what would anybody get by them, besides the pleasing their own fancy? But if only twenty men make them in one town, all the rest must come to them; and they who make these, must go to one of twenty others, who make another thing that these men want, and so on; by which means, every man wanting something he does not make, it will be the better for every maker of everything."