Nailsea glass works were noted for the Italian influence shown in the colour effects produced in them. Among other objects made at those famous glass works were flasks and bottles for wines and spirits in greens, browns, and blues, to which were added in smaller quantities red and yellow. Other trinkets of an ornamental character were glass tobacco pipes, bells, and coach horns. There were also Nailsea walking sticks made of twisted glass, and many curious cups. Most of these were given for luck, especially as love tokens when sailors were about to set out on a voyage, the superstition attached to the gift being that if the glass pin were broken it was a sign that the vessel in which the giver had sailed had been wrecked. Hence it was that a ribbon was securely attached, and the gift hung up out of harm's reach. [Illustration: FIG. 85.--OLD WELSH LOVE SPOONS. (_In the National Museum of Wales._)] In association with glass rolling-pins and other love tokens there are many sundry curios which from the mottoes upon them were evidently given with a similar purpose. Even objects of metal and brass were frequently inscribed with loving reminders of the donor. The pleasing little trinket and patch boxes of enamels and glass, referred to in another chapter, were given from sentimental motives as evidenced by their inscriptions. Covers of pocket books and tobacco pouches were covered over with similar legends, like a delightful beadwork tobacco pouch in the Taunton Castle Museum, on which is the motto or sentiment, "LOVE ME FOR I AM THINE, 1631," wrought by a seventeenth-century needleworker. Similar mottoes are found on the little pincushions formerly carried in the capacious pockets of women of olden time, sometimes wrought in needlework and at others in beads. XIV THE MARKING OF TIME CHAPTER XIV THE MARKING OF TIME Clocks--Watches--Watch keys--Watch stands. The early marking of time was simple enough, for we are told that the Arabs, by driving a spear or a staff into the sand of the desert, told the time of day. The shadow of the sun roughly gave those who were familiar with astronomy the lay of the land and the time, approximately. When the dial and the gnomon were understood, dialling became a popular science, and ere long the sundial on the church tower, in a public place, or in a private garden, told the time. Then came the marking of time by pocket dials--an advance which foreshadowed the watch which was to come. The pocket dial was soon followed by mechanical clocks, the clock watch, and the more delicate work of the watchmaker. The watch has become more accurate in its marking of time by the introduction of machinery in its manufacture; and it is cheapened by competition, so that now every one for a mere trifle can carry in his pocket a watch by means of which he can tell accurately the hour of day, as Shakespeare has it in "As You Like It":--