No one in the yard knows how the old clock got there,—it probably drifted there, as have so many other waifs and strays. At noon every day it is set by official time received from the Naval Observatory in Washington, and most of the other clocks in the yard depend upon this reliable time-piece which has come down from the frigate "Brandywine."
The collecting of clocks is a fad which few people indulge in. Yet there are those who own ten or a dozen timepieces, and who like to have them in running order. The old Dutch clocks, while looking very well, are notoriously ill-regulated time-keepers. A collector took a prize lately acquired to an old German clock-repairer who seemed more learned in the ways of ancient clocks than many a more pretentious maker. The clock did not come home when it was promised, and the owner went to see what was the matter. She found her old clockmaker diligently studying a little German volume with a title which read something like this, "Thirteen Hundred Reasons why a Clock in Perfect Order Won't Run."
CHAPTER X.
HANDLES, FEET, STUFFS, ETC.
In the manufacture of furniture at one time or another nearly every variety of wood has been used, if not for the body of the frame, then for its enrichment, and every quarter of the globe has been laid under contribution. The island of Borneo yielded Amboyna wood, with its beautiful mottlings and curlings, and a very splendid cabinet was made of it for the ill-fated Marie Antoinette by the famous cabinet-maker of her day, Riesener. Ceylon, held by the Dutch as a colony from the middle of the seventeenth century until nearly the nineteenth, produced splendid ebony which was used for whole pieces of furniture as well as for decoration. The French term ébéniste, or worker in ebony, was given to the French makers of fine work.
To what abundant usage oak, walnut, and mahogany was put we know. Rosewood, too, was another of the choicer materials. Satin-wood, with its brilliant colour; tulip-wood, more showy still; kingwood, dark and rich; zebra wood, with its black and white effect, as well as leopard and partridge woods,—were all in use before 1800. There were, besides, cherry, yew, pear, walnut, cedar, fir, olive, beech, sycamore, cypress, chestnut for timber work, poplar, acacia, with limewood and boxwood for carving.
Figure 98. KITCHEN OF WHIPPLE HOUSE, IPSWICH, MASS.