There is not very much to interest in old guns of English make, for few found in houses date back beyond the commencement of the nineteenth century. Among them, however, are flint-locks and here and there an old wheel-lock. The pistols met with among household curios are often handsome and have been preserved in leather cases, carefully stowed away. Some of them record the days of duelling, others the dangers of the road, when highway robbers lurked in every wood, and many a family coach was waylaid and its occupants robbed of their jewels and their purses of gold. To those interested in sporting, and familiar with the breech-loading guns of the present day, much interest attaches to the old powder flasks which were once necessary accompaniments of sportsmen. There are many beautifully engraved, embossed, and decorated flasks in museums, some of the early seventeenth-century specimens being made of boxwood, others of ivory, frequently ornamented with hunting scenes. In Fig. 92 is shown a curious flint-lock powder tester, then also regarded as one of the essential accessories of the sportsman's outfit. The copper powder flask illustrated in Fig. 93 is now in the Hull Museum. It is specially interesting in that the plain copper work is engraved in the centre with its original owner's monogram--"W R" in script. This flask, made about the year 1750, was evidently a keepsake, for engraved round the circular disc is the legend "Keep this for Joseph's sake." In the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington there are some more elaborate specimens, two of which are illustrated in Fig. 94. They are magnificent examples of metal repousse work--a favourite decoration in the eighteenth century, copied in more inexpensive forms in the nineteenth century by makers of sporting accessories, who stamped them from dies and reproduced some of the old hunting scenes. A review of the outdoor sports and relics of former days would scarcely be complete without some mention of swords and rapiers, which were once commonly worn, along with pistols, alas! too frequently in use when a hasty word called forth a challenge to a duel. Many of these old swords are rusty, but they frequently show marks of former use. They are needed no longer by civilians in this country, and take their places in trophies of arms, forming important features in the decorative curios of the household. [Illustration: FIG. 92.--A POWDER TESTER. FIG. 93.--A PRIMING FLASK. (_In the Municipal Museum, Hull._)] XVII MISCELLANEOUS CHAPTER XVII MISCELLANEOUS Dower chests--Medicine chests--Old lacquer--The tool chest--Egyptian curios--Ancient spectacles--Curious chinaware--Garden curios--The mounting of curios--Obsolete household names.