"Apollo, drawn in his chariot by prancing horses, typifies Sunday; Monday we have Diana with her stag. Tuesday comes Mars, Wednesday Mercury, Thursday Jupiter, Friday we have the goddess Venus, and Saturday Saturn."
"Some clock!" gasped Christopher.
"Oh, that isn't half of it," protested McPhearson, "although it sounds amazing enough; there is yet more. Above all these gods and goddesses is a clock dial showing ordinary time; a contrivance that gives the movements of the planets; and a globe indicating the phases of the moon. Nor have we reached the end of the marvels yet. Still higher up are figures to symbolize childhood, youth, manhood, and old age, each of which strikes one of the quarter hours. Beside the ordinary clock dial you will see a moving figure that strikes with its scepter the first note of each quarter hour, while at the same time a figure opposite it turns an hourglass to mark the complete passing of the hour."
"Gee!"
"Oh, don't imagine you are through with this marvelous clock yet. There is in addition a grim statuette of death which is to remind man of his frailty and the shortness of his days; this strikes each hour with a bone. It is at the very top that we get the touch of more modern Christianity in a procession of the twelve apostles, who at noon pass before a figure of Christ, bowing at his feet, while he makes the sign of the cross in response, and it is at this instant that the tragic denial of Peter is portrayed by a cock, which from its perch on one of the turrets, flaps its wings and crows three times."
"Why, it would almost be worth a trip to Europe to see such a wonder!" burst out Christopher.
"Almost. You could also see the clock at Berne while you were about it—a clever mechanism made by the Swiss in 1527. Berne, as you doubtless know, if you have faithfully studied your geography, took its name from the word bären, meaning bears; and you know, too, how it came about that the Swiss selected that name for it. In all the shops you will find large and small bears for sale, all carved from wood and converted to every imaginable purpose."
"And the clock—has it bears too?"
"It certainly has. Three minutes before the hour a cock gives warning of the time by crowing and flapping its carved wings. Then out comes a procession of bears that march solemnly round a bearded Father Time, whereupon the cock crows again, and a jester, hammer in hand, strikes a bell. At the sound the bearded old man raises his sceptre, opens his mouth, and turns an hourglass. And at each stroke of the bell a bear nods his head. All this done, the cock crows again and the fantastic pantomime is finished.
"You therefore can see how it came about that when the nobles and the rich began to wish to have clocks of their own, in order to save the trouble of sending their servants to the public square to find out all the big clocks had to tell, clockmakers felt they must give them at least some of the things to which they had become accustomed, and therefore made clocks showing the sun, moon, stars, or tides, or those that would play tunes on miniature chimes of six or eight bells. It was all a relic of the past. Possibly, too, clockmakers were curious to see what they could do in more limited space. Be this as it may, musical clocks died hard. The old bracket clock we have just sent home, you will recall, played seven different tunes. Purchasers liked the notion of having music to mark the hours. Later on, however, when they became better educated, the frivolous little tinkling jigs and dances gave place to a more dignified and sonorous striking of a single rich-toned bell, or a group of such bells, and resulted in the Westminster chimes or others not unlike them."