Like the first it indicates the days of the week and month, starts
fires and beds at any given hour and minute, and, 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 finished, 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 pendulum, fourteen feet
long, could be snugly encased on the side of the trunk.
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