To my dismay, I must have given my new watch to one of my new homeless
friends I made while in Savannah. For when I awoke in my lush hotel room, my
watch was nowhere to be had. I can see one of them now, basking in the
moonlight in his ragged clothing sporting his newly prized shiny watch, sitting
outside his tent underneath the bridge, while he watches the big cargo ships
come rolling up the Savannah River. I hope he enjoys it.
This reminds me of one of Mark Twain’s writings on his Waterbury watch and the
similarity between men and watches. Its a wonderful essay discussing temperaments
and circumstances present in people’s lives, but I will save that discussion for
a later day. Waterbury watches weren’t fancy watches, from what I’ve read, but
rather simple, and inexpensive quality watches. If anyone could have afforded an expensive
watch during those years, I feel sure it would have been Mark Twain (his good
years that is). But for some reason they did not appeal to him, he was known
for his rather cheap watches along with his cheap cigars.
Mark Twain wrote in his essay, The
Turning Point of My Life, “Circumstances do the planning for us all, no
doubt, by help of our temperaments. I see no great difference between a man and
a watch, except that the man is conscious and the watch isn’t, and the man tries to plan things and the watch doesn’t.
The watch doesn’t wind itself and doesn’t regulate itself --- these things are
done exteriorly. Outside influences, outside circumstances, wind the man and regulate him. Left to himself,
he wouldn’t get regulated at all, and the sort of time he would keep would not
be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches, with gold case, compensation
balance, and all those things and some men are only simple and sweet and humble
Waterburys. I am a Waterbury. A Waterbury of that kind, some say.”
