c




 




c
 

[From "Sketches New and Old", Copyright 1903, Samuel Clemens.

This text is placed in the Public Domain (Jun 1993, #16).]
(Written about 1870.)

My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without
breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments
about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last,
one night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner
of calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings
and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time,
and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. Then he
said, "She is four minutes slow ± regulator wants pushing up." I tried to stop him ± tried to make
him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was
that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator MUST be pushed up a little; and so,
while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and
cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day.
Within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the
shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was
a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. It was away into November enjoying the
snow, while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, bills payable, and
such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be
regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing.
He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small
dice box into his eye and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling,
besides regulating ± come in a week. After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch
slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains, I failed all
appointments, I got to missing my dinner; my watch strung out three days' grace to four and let
me go to protest; I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and
by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in
week before last, and the world was out of sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking
fellow-feeling for the mummy in the museum, and desire to swap news with him. I went to a
watch maker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was
"swelled." He said he could reduce it in three days. After this the watch AVERAGED well, but
nothing more. For half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and
wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not hear myself think for the
disturbance; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance
against it. But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the
clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last, at the end of twenty-four hours, it would trot
up to the judges' stand all right and just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no
man could say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is only a mild virtue
in a watch, and I took this instrument to another watchmaker. He said the kingbolt was broken. I
said I was glad it was nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the
kingbolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the kingbolt, but
what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run awhile and then stop awhile,
and then run awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. And every
time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded my breast for a few days, but finally took
the watch to another watchmaker. He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over
under his glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hair- trigger.
He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. It did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the
hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would travel
together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a
watch, and so I went again to have the thing repaired. This person said that the crystal had got
bent, and that the mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works needed
half- soling. He made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionably,
save that now and then, after working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside
would let go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would straightway begin
to spin round and round so fast that their individuality was lost completely, and they simply
seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next twenty-
four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. I went with a heavy heart to one
more watchmaker, and looked on while he took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question
him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars originally,
and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on I
presently recognized in this watchmaker an old acquaintance ± a steamboat engineer of other
days, and not a good engineer, either. He examined all the parts carefully, just as the other
watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner.

He said: "She makes too much steam ± you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the safety-
valve!"

I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense.

My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was a good horse until it
had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch until the repairers got a chance at it.
And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and
shoemakers, and engineers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.

*

The driver steered his moped down the corrugated red mud road outside of the Nigerian town of
Oshogbo, north of Lagos, with me bouncing along on the back seat. In front of a wooden gate he
wobbled to a halt. The surrounding rain forest was dripping with humidity; wraiths of mist
wandered between the big trees. I got off, paid him, and entered.

The Sacred Grove of Oshogbo was one place I had been looking forward to visiting in Nigeria.
As prevalent as indigenous religions still are in West Africa, it is often hard to find public
expressions of them in towns and cities; the Christianity brought by European slavers and
colonialists has taken root and pushed most of these religions out of mainstream life. But in the
Sacred Grove shrines honor all the local deities, including Obatala, the god of creation, Ogun,
the god of iron, and Oshun, the goddess of water, whose aqueous essence is made manifest by
the river running through the trees. The place is unique in the Yoruba religion, and that intrigued
me.

As I passed through the gates I heard a squeaky voice. A diminutive middle-aged man came out
from behind the trees ² the caretaker. He worked a toothbrush-sized stick around in his mouth,
digging into the crevices between algae'd stubs of teeth. He was barefoot; he wore a blue batik
shirt known as a buba, baggy purple trousers, and an embroidered skullcap. I asked him if he
would show me around the shrine. Motioning me to follow, he spat out the results of his stick
work and set off down the trail.

We stopped in front of a many-headed statue. "Ako Alumawewe," he blurted out, sucking on the
stick. A deity? I asked. He nodded and spat, then headed down the trail to another stone effigy,
that of Egbe. After kissing the ground at its base, he held forth at length in mellifluous Yoruba.
Since I spoke no Yoruba and he, it turned out, no English, it became clear that my visit wasn't
going to be as edifying as I had hoped.

"Hello!"

I looked back up the trail. A Nigerian man in penny loafers was making his way gingerly around
the puddles and heading our way. He was young but a belly was already spreading under his
white Izod shirt; he wore tight beige highwater trousers. It was clear that he was living a life of
relative plenty. He introduced himself as Pastor Paul, from a church in Benue State.

"You come to look at the Grove?" he asked, shaking my hand. "Good. It's very touristic."

A young woman emerged from the trail. Her wardrobe, too, could have been bought on sale at
JC Penney's, but unlike Pastor Paul, she was fit, with fresh eyes.

"My interpreter," Pastor Paul said, pointing to her. "Of course I can't understand these people.
We have our own language in Benue State."

The little man talked up a storm in Yoruba, but the interpreter said nothing. Our guide then led us
down to the river. The water ran bright green between the trees; monkeys jumped around the
canopy above. Arising from a mess of roots was Oshun's statue, which occasioned a monologue
from the little man.

"What is he saying?" I asked the translator.

"He says locals bring sacrifices to the gods here. Maize, moi-moi, cola nuts."

Father Paul shook his head, his brow wrinkling, his lips pursing. There were no locals about, I
noticed. Where were they? Dodging oversized ferns, our guide hopped down the trail, and we
followed him.
"Debel! Debel!" he said, pointing with disdain at a pug-nosed bust with an evil smirk standing
amid a tangle of roots. The Devil.

The pastor's face retained its pinched expression. "Of course, this man is ignorant," he said to
me, waving his arm in dismissal. I said nothing.

Up at a promontory above the river we found Olu Igbo ² the lord of the forest. Placing his stick
in his back pocket, the little man fell silent and bowed. It was indeed an awesome sight ² a
giant stone effigy standing among great trees, with huge eyes and long arms spread out like
wings. Hoots and warbles percolated in from the foliage; rain began to fall but its drops,
intercepted by the manifold layers of leaves above, hardly touched us.

The pastor harrumphed. "I tell my people in church to abandon these beliefs for God." His voice
rang loud in the amphitheater of great trees. "Such ignorance. Our American pastors have a lot to
say about how ignorant we are. We are trying to change, but these beliefs persist. Life is hard in
our country. The people want to insure themselves, so they worship God and these idols. But it's
ignorance. Don't you agree?"

"Why did you come here then?" I asked him as we walked back to the road.

"To see the skilled work of our artisans."

That was as good an answer as any. At the gate we tipped the guide and parted ways.


c
 
  

Descriptive

A loud knock resounded through the house. ³It¶s Herbert!´ she screamed. ³It¶s Herbert´ She ran
to the door« All of a sudden the door came bursting open from the opposite side toppling over
Mrs. White on its way down. ³I¶m going to kill you,´ roared and screamed a disgusting creature
that vaguely resembled Herbert, came sluggishly through the door. He went for his father first.
Mr. White could still hear him being crushed through the machinery. He looked as if he had been
attacked by bears, and half feasted on by their cubs. Herbert then leaped forward at him, Mr.
White fell to the floor and while grasping for anything in sight, he grabbed on to the half of
Herbert¶s arm. Mr. White saw that his eyes had been oozing with orange maggot poop, and eggs
came out of his eyeballs. Mrs. White then jumped on top of Herbert, after freeing herself from
underneath the door. She tried to hug him and say, ³It¶s okay my baby Herbert, mommy¶s here,´
when she felt his rough head, where his hair was still slightly growing, and underneath that was
his scaly skin which seemed like an animal tried to peel off. The sound of files swarming his
body filled the air. Herbert then pulled out a pocketknife, turned around and stabbed his mother.
Mr. White grabbed the knife from him and stabbed Herbert in the face. Mr. White then quickly
got the first aid kit to heal Mrs. White¶s arm, and with success, the two walked off arm in arm.

Television has become a ³member´ of almost every single family on our planet. And not
just an ordinary member, but a very important one, because the time spent next to it exceeds the
amount of time spent together with any other family member. You do not have to apply any
efforts to talk or listen to complaints while ³communicating´ with it. You do not have to play
with your little son after a hard working day. You are SO tired! Can anybody respect that?


* 




*



"«Like the sorcerer of old the television set casts its magic spell, freezing speech and action,
turning the living into silent statues so long as the enchantment lasts«´
å
  

You can simply turn the TV on and everything is done: kids are quiet, your wife is not
complaining and you feel absolutely happy. It is so simple that it has become an integral part of
the culture of every family. It is the only time, when a person can forget about all the family
troubles and the failures of the day. The sofa opposite the TV set has become the place of
³reconciliation and spiritual unity´ of the family. And instead of playing together and having
emotional talks people prefer to watch an episode from a thriller. It is senseless to deny the all-
embracing negative effect the existence of television has brought to our lives. But to make our
point of view ultimately convincing we will introduce to your attention certain facts that people
do not want to accept and often try to justify. The base of the tomorrow¶s society ± are children
today. And on the way they develop depends how are world is going to look like tomorrow. The
television negative effect facts that are well known to every single parent, but are ignored by
them in order to put the responsibility for bringing up kids and showing them examples through
interaction on the shoulders of somebody else. Contemporary parents work a lot, but when they
come back home they are not eager to spend time with their child, the consequences of this fact
are the following: kids are given to themselves and watch everything they want or TV plays a
role of a babysitter. Therefore children learn moral principles from the television, where by the
age of 16 they observe 100,000 violent acts and 33,000 murders.

The models of life interactions given in the television are very exaggerated and garbled. Children
learn that they can gain what they want through being stronger and subordinating other people
that they can become popular through killing and that even if you are a ³good´ guy killing is o.k.
Statistics have proved that the growth of time spent next to the TV-set scales up the development
of aggression. Many years before the examples of imitation for children were their own parents;
now these examples come from hit-thrillers and violent films where the personages imitated are
cruel, impartial and often purely negative personages. Nowadays, resulting this phenomenon,
children instead of playing leap-and±frog on the open air pretend to be ³terminators´ and run
around ³killing´ each other. The fact of child¶s identification with a ³negative´ destructive image
has a vital impact on the development of his or her personality. Violence becomes an ordinary
way of interaction, alongside with anger. Early exposure to sexual scenes may lead to early
sexual contacts, with destroy the healthy development of a child. Young people are pressured by
such an amount of sexual scenes and these scenes normalize casual sexual encounters. They do
not to evaluate what they see ± they take it as the reality. All the listed above may cause a trauma
to a young consciousness and in combination with the violence may produce an unbalanced and
unhealthy conduct. We do not have to go far away for examples when kids get guns and go to
their schools shooting their teachers and schoolmates. This becomes a call to get somebody¶s
attention on them, the result of the TV violence and examples influences that overfills their
minds. Television has also a great influence on the self-image of people watching it. We see
perfectly shaped bodies hundred of times per day. All the men shown on the TV screen have big
muscles and are handsome, and all the women shown are very skinny and their faces and bodies
look like a complete perfection. This has caused numerous eating disorders, especially in the
teenage group. Such things as bulemia, anorexia and self-mutilation became a well-spread
phenomenon.

A person, especially a child that spends a lot of time next to the TV-set has a very high
probability of damaging the eye mechanics and the ability to focus and pay attention. Another
negative influence that is connected with the sight is the spoiling of the hearing due to the
shortage of auditory stimulation. Even if the programs watched are not violent, if they are
watched per hours may have a deep impact on the personality, causing psychological and
physiological problems. All the hidden effects in the films and commercials subconsciously
depress children and grown-ups. Another reaction of a child to the TV violence besides his
aggression is fair. A child, or a person may become so much scared of what they had observed in
the television that it might cause their depression and emotional misbalance. Television prevents
children from doing their homework and adults from completing their work, influencing in a
very bad manner the school grades and work productivity. It lowers the overage level of physical
fitness of a person, breaking the coordination. Children being attached to the TV-set loose the
possibility to learn the world through real nature, games, sports, etc. They do not feel the world
with all its colors and peculiarities. They do not read, and get acquainted with the unforgettable
characters of Robinson Crusoe or Tom Sawyer. They do not learn the messages that a book
carries inside. Due to that the personality of a person looses a very important piece and may not
by called complete. Television has converted or lives into a nightmare. A nightmare where
children kill not only on the TV screen and adults loose their will sitting next to the TV-set
eating ³junk food´. A nightmare where the time spent by a family next to the TV-set watching a
soup-opera is considered to be ³family time´. It is a nightmare where violent television performs
the role of the parents. What else can be said to show that television destroys the healthy
development of a child¶s personality. All the negative effects listed above concern grown-ups as
well, but through the special sensitivity of children towards the influences we wanted to show to
the full the destructive power of television. It has turned our lives into an addiction that
suppresses the beauty of our real life by the violent substitution. And can without any doubts be
called one of the worst inventions of modern times.