The stanch ships of Elias Haskett Derby, of William Gray, of Joseph Peabody, brought to Salem hogsheads and boxes and crates of this old blue Canton china; it still lingers close-hidden and high-shelved in Salem cupboards; it has been crushed grievously under foot in Salem attics; has been sold ignominiously to Salem junkmen, and also proudly and eagerly bought by Salem collectors. Many a “venture” was sent out by New England dames to “far Cathay” in these East India trading-ships, and many a pretty blue Canton teapot and cups and saucers, or great ringing punch-bowl came home from China in return for the hoarded egg-money, the inherited Spanish dollars, or the proceeds of the year’s spinning and weaving. Do you know what a “venture” was a hundred years ago? It was a gentle commercial speculation in which all Puritan womankind longed to join, just as all New England ministers legally and soberly gambled and revelled in the hopes and disappointments of lottery tickets. An adventurer in those days was as different from an adventurer of to-day as was an undertaker of 1792 from an undertaker of 1892. When a ship sailed out to China in the years following the Revolutionary War, the ship’s owner did not own all the cargo (if cargo of ginseng it bore), nor send out all the contents of the bags of solid specie that were to be invested in the rich and luxurious products of the far land. There were no giant monopolies in those days. All his friends and neighbors were kindly and sociably allowed to join with the wealthy shipmaster in his risks and profits, to put in a little money on speculation—in short, to send out a sum large or small on a “venture.” Sometimes orders were given that this “venture” should be invested in special forms of merchandise; sometimes it was only placed in the supercargo’s hands to share in its proportion the general profit. Complicated books must Elias Haskett Derby have had to keep through all these petty “ventures,” but good profits did that honest man render, though he left at his death the largest fortune of any American in that century. Women, fired by these alluring profits and assailed by a gambling obsession, sold their strings of gold beads, their spring lambs, their knitted stockings, and eagerly sent out the accumulated sum by the ship’s purser, and received in return tea, spices, rock-candy, crapes, china, anything they coveted for their own use or fancied they could sell at a profit. Men, too, sent out a “venture” as a gift to their new-born children, or to fill their own pockets; fair maids bought through a “venture” their bridal finery. From Bristol one young miss sent in to a ship-owner her gold earrings to “venture” for “a sprigged and bordered India muslin gown of best make,” and she got it too, thin and sheer, close-sprigged and deep bordered, just as well selected and carefully conveyed as if she had “ventured a hundred pound.”