1 62 UNDER THE TREES. 



to us ; a sense of ownership of time of which we 

 had never so much as dreamed when we lived by 

 the clock. Those tiny ornamental hands on the 

 delicately painted dial were our taskmasters, dis 

 guised under forms so dainty and fragile that, while 

 we felt their tyranny, we never so much as sus 

 pected their share in our servitude. Silent them 

 selves, they issued their commands in tones we 

 dared not disregard ; fashioned so cunningly, they 

 ruled us as with iron scepters ; moving within so 

 small a circle, they sent us hither and yon on every 

 imaginable service. They severed eternity into 

 minute fragments, and dealt it out to us minute by 

 minute like a cordial given drop by drop to the 

 dying ; they marked with relentless exactness the 

 brief periods of our leisure and indicated the hours 

 of our toil. We could not escape from their vigi 

 lant and inexorable surveillance ; day and night 

 they kept silent record beside us, measuring out 

 the golden light of summer in their tiny balances, 

 and doling out the pittance of winter sunshine with 

 niggardly reluctance. They hastened to the end of 

 our joys, and moved with funereal slowness through 

 the appointed times of our sorrow. They ruled 

 every season, pervaded every day, recorded every 

 hour, and, like misers hoarding a treasure, doled 

 out our birthright of leisure second by second ; so 

 that, being rich, we were always impoverished ; 

 inheritors of vast fortune, we were put off with a 

 meager income ; born free, we were servants of 



