"The thing is very simple. Our clock-making, like all our home pursuits, is the natural result of the unproductiveness of our soil, and the indivisibility of our large, entailed estates. Younger sons, and all whose whole capital consists in their industry, must make the most of that, if they would earn a living. Hence that natural aptitude for work, that strict, unresting carefulness, that are common among us. Our forests supply the best wood for machinery and cases, and as long as our wooden clocks found a good market, a manufacturer, with the help of his wife and children to paint the dial-plate, could make an entire clock in his own house. But now that metal clocks have been introduced, and have, in a measure, supplanted the wooden ones, a division of labor has become necessary. There is a strong competition in France, in America, and especially in Saxony. We must give up pendulums, and take to springs. These changes cannot be effected without the help of some general and binding association among the workmen. The stone-cutters, in old times, used to form themselves into a guild, presided over by a chosen head, and that is what is wanted here. The workmen, scattered about on the mountains, must enter into a league with one another, and work into each other's hands. The difficulty is to bring about such a league among our people. In Switzerland a watch passes through a hundred and twenty hands before it is finished. But the very perseverance of the good people here, which is undoubtedly a virtue, makes them unwilling to adopt new ways. Only by unexampled frugality and application could our home manufactures have been carried on as long as they have. You would hardly believe what a morbid sensitiveness our people have contracted by their constant and close confinement at their work. They have to be handled as tenderly as their own clocks, which an awkward touch will break." "It seems to me," answered the young man, "that the first thing wanted now is a better case for your clocks, that they may become more of a parlor ornament." "I quite agree with you," said Bertha, the second daughter. "I spent a year with my aunt in the capital, and, wherever I visited, I found one of my compatriots, a Black Forest clock, like Cinderella, in the kitchen. In the best room, resplendent with gold and alabaster, was sure to be a French mantel-clock, never wound up, or never right if it was, while my compatriot in the kitchen was always going, and always exact." "Cinderella needs to be metamorphosed," said the young man; "but she must keep her virtues, and tell the truth, when she gets into the best parlor."