to be put in Statuary
Hall. In the latter room there was already a very beautiful allegorical
clock but it needed new works. Willard was now getting to be an old man
and such a commission would have dismayed most elderly persons. But
although eighty-five the old clockmaker did not hesitate to fill the
order or travel to Washington to make sure his handiwork was properly
installed. It sometimes seemed as if he must have discovered the
fountain of eternal youth. Remember he was seventy-eight when he made
the turret clock for the Old State House in Boston. I have heard that
for some of this later work he used a hand engine to cut parts afterward
finished by hand; and of course as his fame traveled and his business
increased, he had apprentices to help him and he was obliged to move
into a larger shop. But even at that the miracle of what he did does not
lose its luster.

"At length, in 1839, he retired, a hale, respected veteran with a long
path of usefulness behind him. Until he was eighty he read without
glasses; and so accurate was his eye that never in all his life did he
measure the notchings on a wheel, and yet these free-hand calculations
proved to be unfailingly correct. But, alas, human machinery is less
long-lived than is artificial, and at the age of ninety-five Simon
Willard died.

"'_The old clock is worn out!_' was what he said, and indeed the words
were true. For close on to a century eyes, hands, and brain had
continuously labored for the well-being of others. Yet the works of a
good man follow him and in numberless homes, in public buildings, on
church spires, honored monuments to the memory of Simon Willard still
survive--monuments far more useful than are inert blocks of
marble--monuments that pulse with life and keep hourly before those who
look upon them the thought of one who performed for his fellow men a
practical and enduring service."

CHAPTER XVII

THE ROMANCE OF THE WATCH

"I asked Dad last night why he didn't have a Willard clock here in the
store instead of the one we've got," confided Christopher to McPhearson
the next morning, "and he was quite sore about it. He said that in the
first place a balcony clock of Willard make would cost a fortune and
probably could not be bought, anyway; and then he added that we already
had a Jim-dandy clock made by one of the Willard apprentices. I didn't
get the chance to ask him what he meant by that."

"Our clock is a Howard, one of the best