"It simply proves that a determined man will find a way," McPhearson declared. "Simon Willard was not a person who allowed circumstances to master him. Lack of tools, limitations of space, the utter absence of all those aids we should now deem indispensable—none of these obstacles deterred him from making clocks that have seldom been outranked."
"A bully good sport, wasn't he!" exclaimed Christopher.
"A sport in the best sense," agreed McPhearson. "As a humble member of his craft I take off my hat to him. It was in 1801 that he made his first banjo clock—a clock that, as he asserted, could be hung on the wall and stood no risk of being knocked off or moved about as a shelf clock did. The patent for this article bore the autographs of President Jefferson and James Madison, who was at the time Secretary of State. The same year Willard made a clock for the United States Senate Chamber and went to Washington to assure himself that it was properly put up and also explain how it should be cared for. This clock, unfortunately, was ruined when the British burned the Capitol; nevertheless, Willard's journey hither was not in vain, for while in the city he made the personal acquaintance of President Jefferson and the two men, both of them interested in mechanics, formed a lifelong friendship. In fact, it was through Jefferson that Willard received the order to make a large clock for the University of Virginia."
"And did he have to go down there, too?"
"He did go down. During Jefferson's lifetime he was more than once a guest at Monticello. The clock, however, was not completed until after the President died, and when Willard finally went to put it in place he stayed with Madison who had a home no great distance away."
"He seemed to make friends wherever his business took him," remarked Christopher thoughtfully.
"Not only that, but his work made friends for him," was McPhearson's answer. "It was so well done that people appreciated its worth and gave him more orders. For fifty years he had charge of the clocks at Harvard University and in 1829 the Corporation awarded him a vote of thanks for his faithful services. It is something of a record to have performed work so satisfactorily for half a century."
"I'll say it is!"
"In 1837 the United States Government engaged Mr. Willard to make two clocks for the new Capitol at Washington, one of them to take the place of the Senate clock that was burned and the other to be put in Statuary Hall. In the latter room there was already a very beautiful allegorical clock but it needed new works. Willard was now getting to be an old man and such a commission would have dismayed most elderly persons. But although eighty-five the old clockmaker did not hesitate to fill the order or travel to Washington to make sure his handiwork was properly installed. It sometimes seemed as if he must have discovered the fountain of eternal youth. Remember he was seventy-eight when he made the turret clock for the Old State House in Boston. I have heard that for some of this later work he used a hand engine to cut parts afterward finished by hand; and of course as his fame traveled and his business increased, he had apprentices to help him and he was obliged to move into a larger shop. But even at that the miracle of what he did does not lose its luster.
"At length, in 1839, he retired, a hale, respected veteran with a long path of usefulness behind him. Until he was eighty he read without glasses; and so accurate was his eye that never in all his life did he measure the notchings on a wheel, and yet these free-hand calculations proved to be unfailingly correct. But, alas, human machinery is less long-lived than is artificial, and at the age of ninety-five Simon Willard died.