Page 254 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

It stopped when it liked, and before it struck
It croaked as if ’twere in pain.
It had seen many years, and it seemed to say,
" I ’m one of the real old stock/1
To the youthful boy, who, with reverence, looked
Oil the face of the old school clock*

I lew many a time I have labored to sketch
That yellow and time-honored face,
With its basket of flowers, its figures and hands,
And the weights and chains in their place 1
How oft have 1 gated with admiring eye,
A s I i^at on the wooden block,
And pondered and guessed at the 'wonderful things
That were inside that old school clock,
What a terrible frown did the old clock wear
To the truant who timidly cast
An anxious eye on those merciless hands,
That for him had been moving too fasti
But its frown soon changed, for it loved to smile
On the thoughtless, noisy flock,
And it creaked and whined and struck with glee
Did that genial, good-humored dock.

Well, years had passed, and my mind was filled
With the world, its cares and ways,
When again T stood in that little school
Where 1 passed my boyhood's days.
My old friend was gone! and there hung a thing
That my sorrow seemed to mock,
A s I gazed with a tear and a softened heart
A t a new-fashioned Yankee dock.

fTwas a gaudy thing, with bright painted sides,
And it looked with an insoient stare