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"Over the door of Minuit's whitewashed cabin on the knoll of Christina was the sign of a jovial, fat person, bearing some resemblance to himself, in the centre of whose stomach stood a clock inscribed, 'My time is everybody's. Past this little shop went the entire long caravan and cavalcade by land between the North and South, stage-coaches, mail-riders, highwaymen, chariots, herdsters, and tramps; for Christina bridge was on the great tide-water road and at the head of navigation on the Swedish river of the same name, so that here vessels from the Delaware transferred their cargo to wagons, and a portage of only ten miles to the Head of Elk gave goods and passengers reshipment down the Chesapeake.
"A very old man and a cripple, who lived across the way from Minuit's, affected to observe extraordinary changes in his stature according to the weather changes, elongating as the temperature rose, and in very cold weather sinking into himself; this man also observed, on the day of a solar eclipse, that for the period there was nothing at all in the place where the clock-mender's head had been except a ring of light which enlarged as the disk of the sun was released.
At Christinaham, in the delta of the Christina and the Brandywine, the tide flowed far inland to the rocks on which Minuit's Swedish expedition landed, leaving one dry spot called Cherry Island, a name still borne by a shoal in the river.
He filled a glass with good Madeira wine, and drank the devourer's health in these benignant words: "'May Minuit's baby run as long and as true as the article on which he has made his meal!
But in the hour's run down the river, including two landings at Minuit's and Craig's, Jack had time to remember that Francis Gray was a cunning man and might head him off by some trick or other. Meantime, Francis Gray had looked at Jack's lithe legs with apprehension. "I can never beat that boy," he had reflected. "My running days are over."
A little doctor in the Deutsch hills, who once prescribed for the clock-mender, reported that his pulse had a metallic beat, and, looking suddenly up, he saw, where Minuit's face had been, a round clock face looking down and ticking at him. This doctor was a worthless fellow, however, and loose of tongue.
"'Fresh fish, mighty surveyor! Fall shad, and the most beautiful yellow perch. Buy something for the sake of Minuit's baby!
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