The Truth Is,
These Copies Were So Common, So Universal, In The Shops
And Everywhere, That They Presently Became As Intolerable
To The Wearied Eye As The Latest Popular Melody Usually
Becomes To The Harassed Ear.
In Lucerne, too, the wood
carvings of other sorts, which had been so pleasant to look
upon when one saw them occasionally at home, soon began
to fatigue us.
We grew very tired of seeing wooden quails
and chickens picking and strutting around clock-faces,
and still more tired of seeing wooden images of the alleged
chamois skipping about wooden rocks, or lying upon them
in family groups, or peering alertly up from behind them.
The first day, I would have bought a hundred and fifty
of these clocks if I had the money - and I did buy three
- but on the third day the disease had run its course,
I had convalesced, and was in the market once more - trying
to sell. However, I had no luck; which was just as well,
for the things will be pretty enough, no doubt, when I get
them home.
For years my pet aversion had been the cuckoo clock;
now here I was, at last, right in the creature's home;
so wherever I went that distressing "HOO'hoo! HOO'hoo!
HOO'hoo!" was always in my ears. For a nervous man,
this was a fine state of things. Some sounds are hatefuler
than others, but no sound is quite so inane, and silly,
and aggravating as the "HOO'hoo" of a cuckoo clock, I think.
I bought one, and am carrying it home to a certain person;
for I have always said that if the opportunity ever happened,
I would do that man an ill turn.
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