The clock stands silently against the southern wall opposite the dusty fireplace, its unmoving hands now forever waiting at a quarter to three. No living hand comes again to wind it up, to give its metallic hands life as in olden days. No longer does its quiet, tick-tock, fill the little room. It is dead.
A chair draped in a white, ghostly sheet sits unused facing the fire that has gone. Beside it a little table, and on it a book, old and well read—but alas, who reads it now?—lies there, its cover covered in dust.Â
I have seen this little room, felt the coldness from that empty fireplace, the silence from that clock, and the whispers of that book, once well loved. I have seen it only in a dream, the room of a quarter to three. There are many like it in the hearts of men.
Tale Told 