.

"What! You mean to say you don't know what you are trying to do?"

"Oh, yes," I said, "I know very well what I am doing."

"What, then, is the thing for?"

"It's for a lot of things," I replied, "but getting people up early in
the morning is one of the main things it is intended for; therefore it
might perhaps be called an early-rising machine."

After getting up so extravagantly early, all the last memorable winter
to make a machine for getting up perhaps still earlier seemed so
ridiculous that he very nearly laughed. But after controlling himself
and getting command of a sufficiently solemn face and voice he said
severely, "Do you not think it is very wrong to waste your time on
such nonsense?"

"No," I said meekly, "I don't think I'm doing any wrong."

"Well," he replied, "I assure you I do; and if you were only half as
zealous in the study of religion as you are in contriving and
whittling these useless, nonsensical things, it would be infinitely
better for you. I want you to be like Paul, who said that he desired
to know nothing among men but Christ and Him crucified."

To this I made no reply, gloomily believing my fine machine was to be
burned, but still taking what comfort I could in realizing that anyhow
I had enjoyed inventing and making it.

After a few days, finding that nothing more was to be said, and that
father after all had not had the heart to destroy it, all necessity
for secrecy being ended, I finished it in the half-hours that we had
at noon and set it in the parlor between two chairs, hung moraine
boulders that had come from the direction of Lake Superior on it for
weights, and set it running. We were then hauling grain into the barn.
Father at this period devoted himself entirely to the Bible and did no
farm work whatever. The clock had a good loud tick, and when he heard
it strike, one of my sisters told me that he left his study, went to
the parlor, got down on his knees and carefully examined the
machinery, which was all in plain sight, not being enclosed in a case.
This he did repeatedly, and evidently seemed a little proud of my
ability to invent and whittle such a thing, though careful to give no
encouragement for anything more of the kind in future.

But somehow it seemed impossible to stop. Inventing and whittling
faster than ever, I made another hickory clock, shaped like a scythe
to symbolize the scythe of Father Time. The pendulum is a bunch of
arrows symbolizing the flig