the hour of ten
In the religious clock department were to be found Catholic , Presbyterian , Methodist , Episcopal , and Baptist time-pieces , which , in connection with the announcement of the hour and quarter , repeated some tenet of the sect with a proof text . There were also Talmage clocks , and Spurgeon clocks , and Storrs clocks , and Brooks clocks , which respectively marked the flight of time by phrases taken from the sermons of these eminent divines , and repeated in precisely the voice and accents of the original delivery . In startling proximity to the religious department I was shown the skeptical clocks . So near were they , indeed , that when , as I stood there , the various time-pieces announced the hour of ten , the war of opinions that followed was calculated to unsettle the firmest convictions . The observations of an Ingersoll which stood near me were particularly startling . The effect of an actual wrangle was the greater from the fact that all these individual clocks were surmounted by effigies of the authors of the sentiments they repeated . I was glad to escape from this turmoil to the calmer atmosphere of the philosophical and literary clock department .