uled the idea of sending clocks to England where labor was so
cheap. They said that they never would interfere with Jerome in that
visionary project, but no sooner had I got them well introduced, after
spending thousands of dollars to effect it, than they had all forgotten
what they said about my folly, and one after another sent over the same
goods to compete with me and run down the price. As I have said before,
wood clocks could never have been exported to Europe from this country,
for many reasons. They would have been laughed at, and looked upon with
suspicion as coming from the wooden nutmeg country, and classed as the
same. They could not endure a long voyage across the water without
swelling the parts and rendering them useless as time-keepers;
experience had taught us this, as many wood clocks on a passage to the
southern market, had been rendered unfit for use for this very reason.
Metal clocks can be sent any where without injury. Millions have been
sent to Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, Palestine, and in fact,
to every part of the world; and millions of dollars brought into this
country by this means, and I think it not unfair to claim the honor of
inventing and introducing this low-price time-piece which has given
employment to so many of our countrymen, and has also, been so useful to
the world at large. No family is so poor but that they can have a
time-piece which is both useful and ornamental. They can be found in
every civilized portion of the globe. Meeting a sea captain one day, he
told me that on landing at the lonely island of St. Helena, the first
thing that he noticed on entering a house, was my name on the face of a
brass clock. Many years ago a missionary (Mr. Ruggles,) at the Sandwich
Islands, told me that he had one of my clocks in his house, the first
one that had ever been on the islands. Travelers have mentioned seeing
them in the city of Jerusalem, in many parts of Egypt, and in fact,
every where, which accounts could not but be interesting and gratifying
to me.

It was a long and tedious undertaking to introduce my first cargo in
England. Mr. Peck and my son wrote me a great many times the first year,
that they never could be sold there, the prejudice against American
manufactures was so great that they would not buy them. Although very
much discouraged, I kept writing them to 'stick to it.' They were once
turned out of a store in London and threatened if they offered their
"Yan