What tales of colonial and continental times an old American punch-bowl could tell if it only could and would repeat half that it has heard; what gay drinking-songs, what stirring patriotic speeches, what sharp legal wit, what sober and circumspect clerical jokes, what kindly eleemosynary plans would echo cheerfully out of its great sounding bell could it, like the phonograph, give forth what has rung into it in the past! What scenes of rollicking mirth, of dancing feet and dicing-games have been photographed on its insensitive and unchanging glaze! In what scene of cheerfulness and of seriousness alike did not the colonial punch-bowl take its part? It encouraged the soldier on eve of battle, it bade the sailor God-speed. The heavy Delft bowl stood filled and refilled to the brim at the husking-party, the apple-bee, the wood-spell, the timber-rolling, the muster, the house-raising, the lottery-drawing, the election; while the big India china bowl stood even on the church steps at an ordination or a church dedication. It held the water to christen the baby; it made cheerful the wedding-feast; and even in times of sadness it was not banished, but side by side with the funeral baked meats the omnipresent punch-bowl stood to greet and cheer every sad comer. Indeed, at a funeral the punch-bowl specially shone. Great pains were taken and no expense spared to properly concoct and serve the sombre funeral-punches. “Rum, lemons, a loaf of sugar, and spices,” sometimes also “Malligo raisins and rose-water,” were items on every reputable and _à la mode_, as they called it, undertakers’ bills. A sober, responsible, and above all, an _experienced_ committee was appointed to carefully mix and flavor the last libation that could ever be offered to the dead friend. Small wonder with such good cheer that even sober Judge Sewall openly called a funeral a “treat.” And we can understand why a very worthy old gentleman, a lover of the olden times, complained with much bitterness in the early part of this century that “temperance had done for funerals.” The gayly-flowered and gilded punch-bowl was not sadly draped in trappings of woe, nor set one side in seclusion, but standing cheerfully in a prominent position with its spicy welcome, made even sad mourners feel that life was still worth living.