th enthusiasm. "People are
liable to associate him only with the banjo clock that bears his name;
but in reality he made clocks of every imaginable description--long-case
clocks, tower clocks, gallery clocks, shelf clocks. He was a born clock
lover if ever there was one! He was, moreover, a marvelous man who up to
the end of his long life was active and useful. Even after he became
very old he fought to conceal the limitations age brought and remain
cheerful and independent. A wonderful example of lusty manhood, truly!
In the first place you must remember he started out on his career with
the same meager equipment that hampered all the early clockmakers. A
file, drill and hammer were practically the only tools he possessed.
Neither you nor I would think it possible to construct so delicate a
mechanism as a clock with so few articles to work with. We should insist
that we needed and _must have_ this thing, that thing, and the other
thing to use, and then we probably should not be able to produce a clock
that would go--let alone one that would keep accurate time. But you did
not hear Simon Willard doing any fussing. There was nothing of the
whiner about him. The fact that he was obliged to import brass from
England, hammer it down to the thickness necessary, file it until it
was smooth, and then polish it by hand did not daunt him. A more
persistent, painstaking, conscientious clockmaker never lived. What
marvel that he scorned to advertise? While others cried their products,
he simply pasted in the back of each of his clocks the few modest facts
he wished to announce and let his work go out to speak for itself."

"_Ask the man who owns one!_" put in Christopher, quoting a well-known
and modern advertisement.

"Exactly!" agreed McPhearson. "Anybody that produces an A1 commodity
hardly needs to bark about it. People find out what goods are worth.
This, evidently, was Simon Willard's theory. You see he knew his trade
from A to Z, having been apprenticed to his older brother Benjamin when
only a small boy. The tale is that when barely thirteen years old he
made a grandfather clock that was in every respect better than that of
his master."

"Gee! Why, I am--"

"You are older than that already and could not make a clock, eh?"
interrupted the Scotchman with quick understanding. "Neither could I,
and I am many times your age. But life was different in the olden days.
Boys learned trades very early and went to work at them. M