There is in New Bedford one very interesting old teapot which lays a very definite, decided, and special claim to having been brought over in the Mayflower. It is said to have been the property of Elder Brewster, and is known as the “Elder Brewster Teapot.” It is a pretty little cylindrical vessel with fluted bands, and is decorated with gilt lines and dark red flowers and border. Scoffers, of course, will bring up to you all the oft-enumerated points—that the Pilgrims had no china, that tea was not known in England, and probably not known in Holland in 1620; that teapots are a comparatively modern invention—but still we feel an interest in this “Elder Brewster Teapot.” It brought at the sale of Governor Lyon’s effects only $45, which low price was, I fear, an indication that the belief of the scoffers prevailed among the buyers there assembled. The firm of Richard Briggs & Co., of Boston, caused to be manufactured in 1874 a number of reproductions of this teapot. Before taking the original to Messrs. Wedgwood, at Etruria, they were careful to obtain the opinion of a china expert, Mr. Townsend, of the South Kensington Museum, who pronounced the “Elder Brewster Teapot” old Delft, and showed to Mr. Briggs several specimens similarly decorated. Whatever it may be—old Delft, old Meissen, old Staffordshire, or even comparatively modern ware—the reproduction is certainly a pretty little teapot, even if the Mayflower episode in the career of the original be said to be fabulous. The story of the acquisition of this teapot by Governor Lyon is very interesting. He bought it from an old lady in Vermont, but only after repeated visits, much cajolery, many rebuffs, and a very stiff purchase sum. There is in Morristown, in the beautiful old colonial mansion known as Washington’s Headquarters, a tall teapot which is dissimilar in shape to the Elder Brewster teapot, but which is exactly like it in paste, in decoration of dull vermilion and maroon, and as a further resemblance, it has the same rather curiously modelled flower as a knob on the cover. This teapot is labelled “Old English ware,” and old English Delft it apparently is. It certainly looks like a sister of the Elder Brewster teapot. At this home of the Washington Association may be seen many other curious and interesting teapots—old Spode, Staffordshire, and Wedgwood. Black basalts and cream-ware specimens of good design are found in the well-kept and well-arranged cases. All have a story or a history of past owners to make them interesting, aside from the longing we feel for them as “specimens.” I would we could pour out from their spouts in old-time words the stream of Continental tattle that has been poured into them; we could write therefrom a social and economic history of our country that would excel in point of detail Boswell’s Johnson, Pepys’s Diary, and Horace Walpole’s Letters all rolled into one.