the crown
jewels of the world and knew where celebrated collections of cameos,
jade, and quaint Egyptian ornaments were exhibited. Indeed he seemed to
have read and studied omnivorously and not a week passed that he did not
add to his store of learning some interesting romance of a pair of old
Sheffield candlesticks or a royal ruby.

In fact Mr. Rhinehart was not just a man; he was a walking story-book,
and, like McPhearson, a thoroughly delightful companion. Oh, he did not
consider his job a humdrum one, it was easy to see that. He had lifted
the traffic of jeweled ornaments, by means of which he earned his daily
bread, out of the class of mere salesmanship.

"You never get tired of your work, do you, Mr. Rhinehart?" commented
Christopher, when on a day trade was light, he stood listening to the
alluring adventure of a string of black pearls.

"Tired of it? Why should I?"

"But lots of the men do," was the naive observation. "They come in
yawning in the morning, and seem bored to death at having to do the same
old thing."

Mr. Rhinehart smiled.

"Work is what you make of it. A job can be interesting and carry you far
beyond its narrow limitations or it can sink into becoming a daily
grind. It's all as you see it. You get out of it just about what you put
in."

"I begin to think you do," agreed Christopher. "I'm sure Mr. McPhearson,
who repairs clocks upstairs, gets a hundred times more fun out of them
than do the other men."

"McPhearson, the old Scotchman, you mean? A fine old chap, isn't he? So
you have picked him out already! Well, you have chosen well, for there
is almost nothing about clocks that he doesn't know," asserted Mr.
Rhinehart with enthusiasm.

"I had no idea there was so much to know about them," confided the boy.
"All I ever thought about a clock was to look and see whether it was
right or not, and blame it if it wasn't. Now I've begun to believe it is
pretty wonderful when it is."

"It is pretty wonderful," Mr. Rhinehart agreed. "The trouble with us is
that we live in an age of wonders and have come to accept with
complacency the fruit of the many brains that have given us myriads of
perfect mechanisms. Almost every convenience and luxury about us was
produced by toil and patient experiment. Clocks, for example, were very
long in becoming the fine, reliable products they now are, as no doubt
you have already learned. When their first makers got them to go at all
the feat seemed so remar