"Yes; but you can't afford to be without one, Silas." And, dismounting, he would unstrap one of the clocks and bring it up to the stone wall. Then would follow the period of bargaining, so dear to the shrewd, hard-headed sons of Connecticut. Perhaps when young Terry climbed back into the saddle and said "Gid-dap," one of his clocks would stay behind with the farmer. Like most successful salesmen, Terry was a close observer of human nature; he knew that habits once formed are hard to break. He discovered early that if a prospective customer could be made to depend upon a clock for telling time, the clock would soon sell itself. One day, during a rain-storm, he sought refuge in a farmer's home. He brought in with him one of his clocks and placed it on the mantel over the fireplace, explaining that he would like to leave it there, where it would not get wet, while he continued on his journey. "I'll be back for it in a few days," he said, as he waved good-by. When Terry returned, some days later, the farmer realized that the clock, which he had first regarded as an extravagance had somehow become a necessity, and, with no urging on Terry's part, the sale was quickly completed. Some of the original clocks are still running in the very farmhouses where Eli Terry succeeded in selling them, and where they have ticked off the minutes of American history since the days of Adams and Jefferson. They were truly remarkable clocks, in spite of the fact that their works were cut out of hard wood with country tools, and put together by a carpenter. The first American clocks were made of wood, and most of the early clockmakers were at first carpenters. We have seen clockmakers developing from priests and astronomers and blacksmiths and locksmiths and jewelers; but here is a new gateway to the trade. This came about naturally enough in a country where the cheapest and most plentiful material was wood, and where the carpenter and joiner was accustomed to constructing every possible thing of it. Eli Terry of Connecticut was one of the best known of these early New England craftsmen. He was born in East Windsor, just a few years before the Revolution. By the time that he was twenty, he had made a few clocks, cutting the wheels out of hard wood with saw and file, and making wooden hands, dials, and cases. Then he moved to Plymouth, not far from Waterbury, and set up a small shop where he employed several workmen. They would make a dozen or two at a time, entirely by hand. Then Terry would take these out and sell them, sometimes as far as the "new country" across the New York state line.