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The Wonder Clock

The Wonder Clock

by Howard Pyle

First published 1888 · 318 pages · about 5 hours to read

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About this book

24 wonderful stories, one for each hour of the day (clock), each with frontispiece (woodcut?) by the author, who also collected and illustrated the stories in the book (perhaps he wrote some of them as well). The hourly frontispieces also described what was going on in The House at the hour in question. Pyle's pictures and text were antiquarian, quasi-medieval. My parents read these to all of their 5 children aloud over the years (1930s-1950s), usually on hot summer afternoons. We LOVED them.

Quotes

  • “There was a king travelling through the country, and he and those with him were so far away from home that darkness caught them by the heels, and they had to stop at a stone mill for the night, because there was no other place handy.”
    Chapter I
  • ““Oh! it is nothing but another baby that the good storks have brought into the house to-day,” said the miller.”
    Chapter I
  • “Now this is true that I tell you: when a great red fox and a grey goose marry, and hard times come, one must make it soft for the other—mostly it is the grey goose who does that.”
    Chapter IV
  • ““Alas!” said the princess, “I gazed upon that which I should not have gazed upon, and looked into that which I should not have looked into, and one hair touched the water and all was turned to gold.””
    Chapter XV
  • “As for the poor brother, he just turned his hand to being a doctor; and there has never been one like him since that day, for not only could he cure all sickness with his apple, but he could cure all sorrow as well.”
    Chapter XVI

Passages chosen with AI from the book's public-domain text on Project Gutenberg.

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