On Top Of A Great Clock
Jan. 6th, 2013 10:00 pm"ULYSSES, you must climb Big Ben." Such was the brief but unmistakable message, boys, which I received from your discriminating editor a few days ago.
I confess it set me thinking--tingling. Often had I seen what is familiarly styled "Big Ben." In my nocturnal rambles along the river's banks in search of subjects for story and narrative, my eyes had frequently lifted themselves to its great moons of faces. Many a shudder, too, has passed over me as I contemplated the tremendous issues and awful consequences turning upon every movement of the slow yet fleeting hands of the great timepiece. I had watched its stern face at dead of night, at rise of sun, in broad day- light, and at setting sun; but then I was far off on terra firma below. The idea of climbing the mass of solid masonry--thirty-five feet square, of peering into the face of the giant measurer of Chronos, was a new sensation. What would the face say to me?
Winding
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