"NEVER BOIL AN ALARM CLOCK"
On the other hand, had the alarm clock been able to speak in its own defense, it might have made a pretty good case for itself. It might have pointed out to me that I was lucky to have an alarm clock at all - even one that lost five minutes a day. It might have suggested that for thousands of years the mightiest kings could not command a timepiece with that degree of accuracy.
But my alarm clock did not talk to me - it merely ticked. And so as my indignation with the imperfections of my alarm clock grew, I sought everywhere for a quick, easy and dramatic solution. The solution was soon presented. I was a subscriber to a popular boy's magazine, which contained much advice about how to build animal traps with starch boxes and the proper ways to make whistles out of willow twigs. I found one day an article of advice about alarm clocks. The article stated authoritatively that alarm clocks were apt to go astray because of gummy substances on the inside, and that this could be corrected by submerging them in boiling water for five minutes. That is how I came to boil my alarm clock. You may never have boiled an alarm clock. Therefore, you'll have to take my word for it that a boiled alarm clock has a great many more problems than being five minutes slow. A boiled alarm clock no longer ticks. Its only virtue is that it is unquestionably sanitary. With a little guidance from my mother, who was an expert both in rhetoric and with a hairbrush, a rather restricted piece of knowledge was impressed upon my mind: alarm clocks are not immersible in boiling water.
Now, this may seem to be too elementary an idea to be worth mentioning, but unfortunately it is an idea which mankind has not caught onto very well in some five thousand years of civilization. History is rich with examples of nations and societies boiling alarm clocks. Actually, for about four thousand years of man's history, much of civilization really changed very little. The four-wheel coach in which George Washington rode is surprisingly similar to the four-wheel wagons which were in use three thousand years before Christ. In the eighteenth century no government official would have had much difficulty in adjusting to the administrative policies of the ancient Romans, Greeks or even Egyptians. Things just hadn't changed that much.
It was the concept that human freedom encompassed not only freedom from bondage - but freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of enterprise, freedom of thought and freedom to make one's own economic decision. It was perhaps quite by accident that this concept coincided with the struggle of thirteen rather primitive and economically underdeveloped colonies to escape a relatively mild form of taxation imposed upon them by their mother country. It is perhaps less of a coincidence that the relatively feeble governmental structure of the newly merged colonies was wholly incapable of enforcing governmental restrictions on the freedom of its citizens. Since you are already familiar with what became of these thirteen underdeveloped colonies, it will not be necessary for me to advise you that in the short space of one hundred years it became evident that they had developed something unusual.
What was this mysterious ingredient? When I was a boy in school, we were taught that America owed her economic strength to the vast untapped resources that just happened to be on this particular continent. We had, I was told, oil, coal, iron and fertile fields. I was also told that we had flourished because of our democratic system of government which, if adopted everywhere, was a sure cure for man's ills. I was further assured that Americans were, for some reason, amazingly active inventors with superior technological skills.
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