Knowledge and Inventions 



though made more than fifty years ago, is still 

 a good timekeeper. 



My mind still running on clocks, I invented 

 a big one like a town clock with four dials, with 

 the time-figures so large they could be read by 

 all our immediate neighbors as well as ourselves 

 when at work in the fields, and on the side next 

 the house the days of the week and month were 

 indicated. It was to be placed on the peak of 

 the barn roof. But just as it was all but fin- 

 ished, father stopped me, saying that it would 

 bring too many people around the barn. I then 

 asked permission to put it on the top of a 

 black-oak tree near the house. Studying the 

 larger main branches, I thought I could secure 

 a sufficiently rigid foundation for it, while the 

 trimmed sprays and leaves would conceal the 

 angles of the cabin required to shelter the works 

 from the weather, and the two-second pendu- 

 lum, fourteen feet long, could be snugly encased 

 on the side of the trunk. Nothing about the 

 grand, useful timekeeper, I argued, would dis- 

 figure the tree, for it would look something like 

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