at the head of the front-hall stairs, so I had it hung there, quite openly. It has always seemed to me better just to take a thing of that kind in a straightforward seriousness, without explanation. Privately, I believe most people have a sneaking fondness for cuckoo-clocks. It is a relic of childhood's unsatisfied longings, and the misspent enthusiasms which, after all, makes good capital on which to begin grown-up days. It is what we yearned for and never possessed that lingers with sweetest effulgence in the memory, and who among us never yearned for a cuckoo-clock?
It was interesting to observe the different effects produced by the installation of that clock upon our friends. Some merely smiled indulgently, consenting to be amused only after finding they could do so with security from the charge of childishness. Some were ambiguous and evasive as to their real sentiments, while others disclosed a quick and self-unconscious interest in the whole thing, from the blue and white hybrid bird that made spasmodic jerks at every stroke of the hour, to the mechanism within that produced the phenomena and which I maintained should not be
