Wall clocks first came into France in the early part of the Seventeenth Century, and are a part of the furnishing of all the fine old French houses.  A number of the most interesting clocks I have picked up were the wooden models which served for the fine bronze clocks of the Eighteenth Century.  The master designer first worked out his idea in wood before making the clock in bronze, and the wooden models were sold for a song.  I have one of these clocks in my dining-room.  It is as much a part of the wall decoration as the lights or the mirrors.

The wall clocks I like best are fixed directly on the wall, the dial glass opening so that the clock may be wound with a key.  You will notice such a clock in the photograph of one of my dining-rooms.  This fine old clock is given the place of honor in the main panel of the wall, above the console table.  I often use such a clock in a dining-room, just as I use the fine old French mantel clocks in my drawing-rooms.  You will observe a very quaint example of the Empire period in the illustration of my drawing-room mantel.  This clock is happily placed, for the marble of the mantel, the lighting-fixtures near by and the fine little bronze busts are all in key with the exquisite workmanship of the clock.  In another room in my house, a bedroom, there is a beautiful little French clock that is the only object allowed on the mantel shelf.  The beautiful carving of the mirror frame back of it seems a part of the clock, a deliberate background for it.  This is one of the many wall clocks which were known as bracket clocks, the bracket being as carefully designed and carved as the clock itself.  Most of the clocks we see nowadays grew out of the old bracket models.

The American clockmakers of the Eighteenth Century made many of those jolly little wall clocks called Wag-on-the-Wall.  These clocks may be still picked up in out-of-the-way towns.  In construction they are very much like the old cuckoo clock which has come to us from Switzerland, and the tile clock which comes from Holland.  These clocks with long, exposed weights and pendulum, have not the dignity of the French wall clocks, which were as complete in themselves as fine bas reliefs, and of even greater decorative importance.

Every room in my house has its clock, and to me these magic little instruments have an almost human interest.  They seem always friendly to me, whether they mark off the hours that weigh so heavily and seem never-ending, or the happy hours that go all too quickly.  I love clocks so much myself that it always astonishes me to go into a room where there is none, or, if there is, it is one of those abortive, exaggerated, gilded clocks that are falsely labeled “French” and sold at a great price in the shops.  Somehow, one never expects a clock of this kind to keep time—­it is bought as an ornament and if it runs at all it wheezes, or gasps, or makes a dreadful noise, and invariably stops at half-past three.