In
another room in my house, a bedroom, there is a beautiful little French
clock that is the only object allowed on the mantel shelf. The beautiful
carving of the mirror frame back of it seems a part of the clock, a
deliberate background for it. This is one of the many wall clocks which
were known as bracket clocks, the bracket being as carefully designed
and carved as the clock itself. Most of the clocks we see nowadays grew
out of the old bracket models.
The American clockmakers of the Eighteenth Century made many of those
jolly little wall clocks called Wag-on-the-Wall. These clocks may be
still picked up in out-of-the-way towns. In construction they are very
much like the old cuckoo clock which has come to us from Switzerland,
and the tile clock which comes from Holland. These clocks with long,
exposed weights and pendulum, have not the dignity of the French wall
clocks, which were as complete in themselves as fine _bas reliefs_, and
of even greater decorative importance.
Every room in my house has its clock, and to me these magic little
instruments have an almost human interest. They seem always friendly to
me, whether they mark off the hours that weigh so heavily and seem
never-ending, or the happy hours that go all too quickly. I love clocks
so much myself that it always astonishes me to go into a room where
there is none, or, if there is, it is one of those abortive,
exaggerated, gilded clocks that are falsely labeled "French" and sold at
a great price in the shops.
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