portion of its own overflowing life even into inanimate things! And what dead thing is so like a living one as a clock?” CHAPTER XV. We talked with open heart, and tongue Affectionate and true, A pair of friends, though I was young, And Matthew seventy-two. * * * * * And, ere we came to Leonard’s rock, He sang those witty rhymes About the crazy OLD CHURCH CLOCK, And the bewildered chimes. WORDSWORTH. “I gradually established an acquaintance with this old Clock. It had already proved itself a faithful friend—indeed the only one that I had yet found in Manchester; for my mother’s distant relation was too much involved in the all-absorbing pursuit of making money, to have any room in his thoughts for the wishes and feelings of a poor country cousin like myself. The Clock, however, had grown to be so intimate an acquaintance, that I one day took advantage of a leisure hour to pay it a nearer visit; and was very attentively looking up into its face from the foot of the tower, in the space between it and the houses—which space was then exceedingly narrow, (the houses are now happily taken down,) when my shoulders were suddenly assailed by a very smart blow with a stick, from some person from behind! I turned sharply round, as might be expected, and saw a little active old man, dressed in a suit of rusty black, with a hat somewhat of a clerical shape, and a pair of sharp grey eyes twinkling under very long and very shaggy eye-brows, in the very act of raising his cane for the purpose of repeating the salute. I immediately twisted the offensive weapon out of his grasp, and seeing the reverend character of the assailant, exclaimed, ‘_Nemo me impune_’—flourishing, at the same time, the cane over his head, as if about to return the blow. Nothing daunted with my threat, the little man stood his ground bravely; and said, with a look of mingled fun and fury, ‘Who beat that bit of Latin into your foolish head?’ “‘One,’ said I, ‘whose hand was quite as heavy as yours, though he did not lay on half so hard as you do!’ “‘All the worse—all the worse. Had he struck harder then, you would have needed it less now! But why do you stop up the way to church, and stand gazing up to that tower, as if you were planning to rob the belfry?’ “‘I was thinking,’ said I, for I began to be more amused than angry with the old man, ‘I was thinking, when your cane interrupted my meditations, why it was that men placed clocks in the towers of churches!’ “‘That is easily answered, man; to teach you that time is a sacred thing.’ “‘That is indeed an answer,’ I replied; ‘and one worthy of my old friend Mr. Walker of Seathwaite!’