My Watch
What an essay is; a perfect watch
Describe the watch before and after the jeweller's touch.
An essay is a short piece of prose written for general readers. Formal essays are serious and logical; informal essays are personal and relaxed, like a conversation with the reader.
The French writer Montaigne called his short pieces 'attempts' (essais, in French), and the English writer Francis Bacon began the use of the word 'essay' in English.
Mark Twain's 'My Watch' is a humorous informal essay. His beautiful new watch kept perfect time for eighteen months, until one night he forgot to wind it and let it run down.
Next morning he took it to a jeweller to set it. He begged the man not to touch anything else, but the jeweller insisted that the watch was running four minutes slow, and pushed up the regulator (the part that controls its speed).
From then on, the watch began to gain: faster and faster, day by day, until it was weeks ahead of the calendar.
One unwanted adjustment ruins a perfect watch.
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