 Given the proclivities of the Wrecking Crew, Wodehouse may have also have had in mind a poem inspired by Millet's work — Edwin Markham's "The Man with the Hoe," which begins

Gaunt, white-bearded, and funereal, "Old Father Time" is at once the most familiar and the most ominous member of the Wrecking Crew quartet.With his hour-glass he measures out the precious hours allotted us on earth; with the stroke of his scythe he mows us down when our hour has come.He is always before us on the fairway of life.