Time's Portraiture: (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches")Hawthorne, Nathaniel
General
Time's Portraiture: (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches")
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Time
For a great many years past, there has been a woodcut on the cover of
the "Farmer's Almanac," pretending to be a portrait of Father Time. It
represents that respectable personage as almost in a state of nudity,
with a single lock of hair on his forehead, wings on his shoulders, and
accoutred with a scythe and an hour-glass. These two latter symbols
appear to betoken that the old fellow works in haying time, by the hour.
But, within my recollection, Time has never carried a scythe and an
hour-glass, nor worn a pair of wings, nor shown himself in the half-naked
condition that the almanac would make us believe. Nowadays, he is
the most fashionably dressed figure about town; and I take it to be his
natural disposition, old as he is, to adopt every fashion of the day and
of the hour. Just at the present period, you may meet him in a furred
surtout, with pantaloons strapped under his narrow-toed boots; on his
head, instead of a single forelock, he wears a smart auburn wig, with
bushy whiskers of the same hue, the whole surmounted by a German-lustre
hat. He has exchanged his hour-glass for a gold patent-lever watch,
which he carries in his vest-pocket; and as for his scythe, he has
either thrown it aside altogether, or converted its handle into a cane
not much stouter than a riding-switch. If you stare him full in the
face, you will perhaps detect a few wrinkles; but, on a hasty glance,
you might suppose him to be in the very heyday of life, as fresh as he
was in the garden of Eden. So much for the present aspect of Time; but
I by no means insure that the description shall suit him a month hence,
or even at this hour tomorrow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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