My Watch
by Mark Twain
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A humorous essay about the narrator's beautiful new watch, which had run perfectly for eighteen months until he let it run down. When he takes it to a jeweller merely to set the time, the man insists on 'regulating' it, and thus begins the watch's ruin. Passed from one incompetent watchmaker to another, the watch is repeatedly 'repaired' and each time behaves worse: it races ahead by days, then crawls behind into last week, then stops and starts, kicks like a musket, and finally spins madly and stops with a bang. The narrator wastes far more money on repairs than the watch originally cost. The last 'watchmaker' turns out to be a former steamboat engineer, a bad one, who advises hanging 'the monkey-wrench on the safety-valve'; the narrator 'brained him on the spot'. The essay closes with Uncle William's wisdom that a good watch is a good watch 'until the repairers got a chance at it', wondering what becomes of all the unsuccessful tinkers who become watchmakers. Through comic exaggeration and personification, Twain satirises the meddling incompetence of so-called experts.
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Mark Twain's essay is a comic tale of how a perfectly good watch is progressively ruined by a series of bungling repairers. Through exaggeration and by describing the watch in human, almost medical terms, Twain pokes fun at meddling 'experts' who make things worse in the name of setting them right.
The perfect watch is 'regulated'
The narrator's beautiful new watch ran for eighteen months without error until he let it run down. Taking it to a jeweller merely to set the time, he is horrified when the man insists on pushing up the regulator. From then on the watch begins to gain, racing 'faster and faster' until it is thirteen days ahead of the almanac.
From bad to worse
Successive watchmakers 'repair' the watch and each ruins it further. Cleaned and oiled, it slows so badly that the narrator drifts back into 'last week' and feels a fellow-feeling for a mummy. Another finds the barrel 'swelled'; another the 'king-bolt' broken; another makes the hands shut like scissors, then spin madly and stop with a bang. He spends thousands on a watch that cost two hundred dollars.
The engineer and Uncle William
The last 'watchmaker' turns out to be an old acquaintance, a former steamboat engineer, and not a good one, who declares the watch 'makes too much steam' and advises hanging 'the monkey-wrench on the safety-valve'. The narrator comically 'brained him on the spot'. He recalls Uncle William's saying that a good watch stays good 'until the repairers got a chance at it', and his wondering what becomes of the failed tinkers, gunsmiths and blacksmiths who turn into watchmakers.