A CLOCK that had been handed down from generation to generation and brought from the old country homestead to a new city home, as it was being wound up one day, said, impatiently:

“I have been running for a hundred years. Let me rest now. Are not your fathers, whom I served so long, at rest?”

“It shall be as you say,” replied its master, laying aside the key and shutting up the glass door that enclosed its tarnished metal face.

In a few hours the old clock was silent. Its great leaden weights hung suspended near the floor; its broad old-fashioned hands ceased to move, and its pendulum, no longer flashing from right to left through the little round pane of glass in front of it, hung motionless and still.

The day ended; the long night passed, and the morning appeared. The same stirring sounds as on other mornings were ushered in from the streets; the other clocks, within and without, went on striking as usual. The family rose up for the duties of the day, but as they came down to the morning meal each member stopped on the stairs and looked regretfully at the old clock, saying:

“How we miss it! How strange it seems not to hear it going!”

“I lay awake last night,” said the mother, “listening for it to strike.”

And so the second day passed. But toward evening, as the master came in sight, suddenly the old clock cried out:

“Come, wind me up and set me going again; and when at last I can go no longer, take me to pieces and sell me for old brass. For I would rather not be at all than to exist without taking part in the busy life that is throbbing around me.”

He who abandons his work (thinking to unburden himself) while he still has the strength to perform it, lays down the lighter for the heavier load.