"The saying goes that one has to get up in the morning to beat a Yankee or a Scotchman at a bargain," was McPhearson's quiet observation. "I could add to this tale many another one of the early clockmakers. They were ingenious old fellows. Indeed, they had to be. Some of them, to be sure, brought tools with them from England; but at best there were only a few such articles to be purchased even on the other side of the water where every type of machinery was scarce and still in its infancy. Therefore the majority of workmen had to fashion their own implements and make their clocks with only a hammer, file, and drill to help them. When you consider that, it is little short of a miracle they were able to produce articles that would keep time with even a reasonable degree of accuracy. But they contrived to--oh, yes, indeed! Of course they did not reach their best results immediately. It took a while. Still as clocks continued to make their appearance the product generally became better and better. An excellent one, put up in a church steeple in Newburyport in 1786, was made by Simon Willard, a great Massachusetts clockmaker of whom I will sometime tell you more. There was also a clock of Boston make on the Old South Meeting House sometime before 1768; and Gawen Brown, who made it, also made a long-case clock for the Massachusetts State House. There were good clockmakers in both New York and Philadelphia by the year 1750. So, you see, it was quite possible to buy either a watch or a clock fairly early in our colonial history." "What type of clock did such makers turn out?" was Christopher's interrogation. "For use in the homes the long-case clock was the style favored," McPhearson responded. "Some of these had brass works and seconds pendulums and ran eight days, and others were thirty-hour clocks with works of wood. Nevertheless, although they were to be had, they were still something of a luxury and every one did not possess the money to purchase them; nor, indeed, were they held to be indispensable, many of the more conservative families preferring still to use the hourglass even as late as 1812." "That was the year of the war, wasn't it?" the lad hazarded.