I have not found, as did the members of the China Hunters’ Club, that country housekeepers would, as a rule, rather have money than china; my country people will not sell their china willingly—they prefer china to silver. Times have changed since 1876; a fancied knowledge, an exaggerated estimate of the value of old “crockery” now fills many a country soul, and a high monetary value is also placed on family relics, on “storied urns” and on the power of association. I will confess that, as a last resort in times of direst stress, when you really cannot go without that Pilgrim plate, when you positively need it—if you take your money out and lay it on the table in full sight of the plate-owner, you wield a powerful lever to work the transfer; nor do I consider such a statement at all derogatory to the character of my New England neighbors, nor is the trait peculiar to them. But do not make too aggressively prominent the money part of the transaction. Be courteous and careful even to extremes in addressing your country people for purposes of china purchase. Never ask them to sell their china—_sell_ is a most offensive and brutal word—ask them if they are “willing to part with it.” Never hint, by word or deed, that you fancy they really need the money. Never disparage the desired articles, the shrewd country wives would see through your pretence at once—“Why, if it be so commonplace, do you wish it?” A base and deceitful, though clever, china hunter of my acquaintance declares that she has found it invariably to her advantage to say that the coveted article matched exactly, either in shape or decoration, something which she had at home. The staid country mind, liking to see things in “sets,” always appeared to be most immoderately and unaccountably influenced to sell by this disingenuous assertion. We have many times during the past five years crossed the trail of a collector who appears to have wholly depleted of china the old farm-houses of the Connecticut Valley. We have found, through comparing the accounts of his visits, that he has a little slyness too. He always desires to purchase his particular bit of china simply to form a link in a chain. He either has a specimen of the entire succession of production of a factory except the very piece the farm-wife has, or he has a perfect list of historical plates except the very plate she owns, or he has a choice bit of every known color of lustre except her special pitcher. The satisfaction of supplying the long missing link, and the value that link will give to a history the purchaser is going to write of such china, seem to prove a powerful lever to effect the transfer to his catenulate collection.