d placing it on the
table, left a light burning near it and went to bed. While thinking over
my business troubles and disappointments, I could not help feeling very
much depressed. I said to myself I will not give up yet, I know more
about the clock business than anything else. That minute I was looking
at the wood clock on the table and it came into my mind instantly that
there could be a cheap one day brass clock that would take the place of
the wood clock. I at once began to figure on it; the case would cost no
more, the dials, glass, and weights and other fixtures would be the
same, and the size could be reduced. I lay awake nearly all night
thinking this new thing over. I knew there was a fortune in it. Many a
sensible man has since told me that if I could have secured the sole
right for making them for ten years, I could easily have made a million
of dollars. The more I looked at this new plan, the better it appeared.
My business took me to South Carolina before I could return home. I had
now enough to think of day and night; this one day brass clock was
constantly on my mind; I was drawing plans and contriving how they could
be made best. I traveled most of the way from Richmond by stage.
Arriving at Augusta, Geo., I called on the Connecticut men who were
finishing wood clocks for that market, and told Mr. Dyer the head man,
that I had got up, or could get up something when I got home that would
run out all the wood clocks in the country, Thomas's and all; he laughed
at me quite heartily. I told him that was all right, and asked him to
come to Bristol when he went home and I would show him something that
would astonish him. He promised that he would, and during the next
summer when he called at my place, I showed him a shelf full of them
running, which he acknowledged to be the best he had ever seen.

I arrived home from the south the 28th of January, and told my brother
who was a first-rate clock maker what I had been thinking about since I
had been gone. He was much pleased with my plan, thought it a first rate
idea, and said he would go right to work and get up the movement, which
he perfected in a short time so that it was the best clock that had ever
been made in this or any other country. There have been more of this
same kind manufactured than of any other in the United States. What I
originated that night on my bed in Richmond, has given work to thousands
of men yearly for more than twenty years, built up