t out, and of course the clock run,
havin' all the wheels back in it that really belonged to it. He went
around town braggin' about puttin' a clock together with one wheel left
out, and it was just as good as if it had all the wheels, and that
showed that the factory didn't know about clocks.

[Illustration: Abe Zemple]

But it happened that in fixin' Mitch's watch, old Zemple had left out a
little pin, just a little pin that you could hardly see, and Old Zemple
found it out and put the pin in, and then the watch run. Old Zemple told
Mr. Miller about leavin' the wheel out of the clock, and Mr. Miller
said, "How do you explain it, Abe? You leave a big wheel out of a clock
and it runs; and you leave a little pin out of a watch and it won't run?
Somethin's wrong. Look into it, Abe. For I've noticed about people that
when they try to get somethin' extra into their lives, and fuss around
like you did with this wheel, tryin' to find a place for it, that they
don't need it, and do all right without it; and on the other hand, other
people lose somethin' so little it don't seem to count, and yet they
can't get along without it. But also sometimes a man thinks he's
improved on creation by leavin' somethin' out of his life, or gettin'
rid of somethin' in society, and it turns out that it didn't belong
there, just like this wheel. We get fooled a good deal; for you know, my
boy put that extra wheel on your bench." And then Old Zemple said,
gettin' mad--"Some boys have lost pins, or never had any. Their fathers
don't raise 'em up right." And Mr. Miller said: "This town is just full
of wheels that have nothin' to do with the clock. They either belong
somewhere else, or they are left-overs of other times--like Henry
Bannerman," referring to the man that spent all day every day walkin' up
and down on the stone floor back of the pillars of the court house.

I want to come back to Mitch's watch. But first I remember it was about
now that a troupe came to town playin' Rip Van Winkle, and Mr. Miller
and my pa took Mitch and me to see it. And as we came back home, pa said
to Mr. Miller: "Henry Bannerman is a kind of Rip Van Winkle--a extra
wheel--he's been asleep ten years, anyway." So Mitch and me began to beg
for the story about Henry Bannerman, which was that he drank until he
had a fever and when he came out of the fever, he was blurred like and
not keen like when he could recite Shakespeare and practice law fine. So
pa said that once