"Antonio Stradivari has an eye That winces at false work and loves the true.” I hate a thing done by halves. If it be right, do it boldly; if it be wrong, leave it undone. - GILPIN. Doing well depends upon doing completely. - PERSIAN PROVERB. If I were a cobbler, it would be my pride The best of all cobblers to be; If I were a tinker, no tinker beside Should mend an old kettle like me. OLD SONG. If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. — EMERSON. Seize upon truth, where'er 't is found, Amongst your friends, amongst your foes, On Christian or on heathen ground; The flower's divine where'er it grows. WATTS. "SIR, it is a watch which I have made and regulated myself," said George Graham of London to a customer who asked how far he could depend upon its keeping correct time; "take it with you wherever you please. If after seven years you come back to see me, and can tell me there has been a difference of five minutes, I will return you your money." Seven years later the gentleman returned from India. "Sir," said he, "I bring you back your watch." 66 "I remember our conditions," said Graham. "Let me see the watch. Well, what do you complain of ?" "Why," said the man, "I have had it seven years, there is a difference of more than five minutes." and "Indeed! In that case I return you your money." "I would not part with my watch," said the man, "for ten times the sum I paid for it." "And I would not break my word for any consideration," replied Graham; so he paid the money and took the watch, which he ased as a regulator. He learned his trade of Tampion, the most exquisite mechanic in London, if not in the world, whose name on a timepiece was considered proof positive of its excellence. Character is power. When a person once asked him to repair a watch upon which his name was fraudulently engraved, Tampion smashed it with a hammer, and handed the astonished customer one of his own masterpieces, saying, "Sir, here is a watch of my making." Graham invented the "compensating mercury pendulum," the "dead escapement," and the "orrery," none of which has been much improved since. The clock which he made for Greenwich Observatory has been running one hundred and fifty years, yet it needs regulating but once in fifteen months. Tampion and Graham lie in Westminster Abbey, because of the accuracy of their work. To insure safety, a navigator must know how far he is from the equator, north or south, and how far east or west of some known point, as Greenwich, Paris, or Washington. He could be sure of this knowledge when the sun is shining, if he could have an absolutely accu rate timekeeper; but such a thing has not yet been made. In the sixteenth century Spain offered a prize of a thousand crowns for the discovery of an approxi mately correct method of determining longitude. About two hundred years later the English government offered £5,000 for a chronometer by which a ship six months from home could get her longitude within sixty miles; £7,500 if within forty miles; £10,000 if within thirty miles; and in another clause £20,000 for correctness within thirty miles, a careless repetition. The watch akers of the world contested for the prizes, but 1761 came, and they had not been awarded. In that year John Harrison asked for a test of his chronometer. In a trip of one hundred and forty-seven days from Portsmouth to Jamaica and back, it varied less than two minutes, and only four seconds on the outward voyage. In a round trip of one hundred and fifty-six days to Barbadoes, the variation was only fifteen seconds. The £20,000 was paid to the man who had worked and experimented for forty years, and whose hand was as exquisitely delicate in its movement as the mechanism of his chronometer. "Make me as good a hammer as you know how," said a carpenter to the blacksmith in a New York village before the first railroad was built; "six of us have come to work on the new church, and I've left mine at home.” "As good a one as I know how?" asked David Maydole, doubtfully, "but perhaps you don't want to pay for as good a one as I know how to make." "Yes, I do," said the carpenter, "I want a good hammer." It was indeed a good hammer that he received, the best, probably, that had ever been made. By means of a longer hole than usual, David had wedged the handle in its place so that the head could not fly off, a wonder ful improvement in the eyes of the carpenter, who boasted of his prize to his companions. They all came to the shop next day, and each ordered just such a hammer. When the contractor saw the tools, he ordered two for himself, asking that they be made a little better than those for his men. "I can't make any better ones,' said Maydole; "when I make a thing, I make it as well as I can, no matter whom it is for." The storekeeper soon ordered two dozen, a supply unheard of in his previous business career. A New York dealer in tools came to the village to sell his wares, and bought all the storekeeper had, and left a standing order for all the blacksmith could make |