instances of my boyhood and later day experiences if my health, and
strength would permit. It has been no part of my plan to boast,
exaggerate, or misrepresent anything, but to give "plain facts."

A history of the great business of Clock making has never been written.
I am the oldest man living who has had much to do with it, and am best
able to give its history. To-day my name is seen on millions of these
useful articles in every part of the civilized globe, the result of
early ambition and untiring perseverance. It was in fact the "pride of
my life." Time-keepers have been known for centuries in the old world;
but I will not dwell on that. It is enough for the American people to
know that their country supplies the whole world with its most useful
time-keepers, (as well as many other productions,) and that no other
country can compete with ours in their manufacture.

It has been a long and laborious undertaking for me in my old age to
write such a work as this; but the hope that it might be useful and
instructive to many of my young friends has animated me to go on; and in
presenting it to the public it is with the hope that it will meet with
some favor, and that I shall derive some pecuniary benefit therefrom.

NEW HAVEN, August 15th, 1860.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.--MY EARLY HISTORY.--Birthplace; nail making; death of my