One piece of advice I give to china hunters—advice, the wisdom and advantage of which I have learned at the cost of much unpleasant and disappointing experience. Do not hurry prospective china sellers: bustling city ways annoy them, fluster them, and worry them, and in sheer bewilderment they say “No” to get rid of you. Be tentative and gentle in your approach. Do not—as we did—rush in upon a deaf and timid old lady and frighten her, by the bouncing and bustling inquiries we made, into vehement denials of china-possession and simultaneous refusals to sell anything. This dear old “Aunt Dolly” lived in the sole new house in a village of old colonial dwellings, and we rather contemptuously thought to pass by the brand-new French roofed intruder, but decided “just to ask”—and “just to ask” and receive a frightened negative answer was all we did do, and we left with self-important assurance, to hunt elsewhere. A tin-peddler (a “china runner” perhaps in disguise), with quieter voice and more truly well-bred manners, carried off her rare treasures about a week later—a canopy-topped mirror with Washington and Franklin mirror-knobs, a “Boston State-House” pitcher, four “Valentine” plates having Wilkie’s design, half a dozen Staffordshire plates with the “cottage” pattern, and two Wedgwood teapots; and Aunt Dolly took as payment two shining new tin milk-pans and a cheap wringing-machine that wouldn’t wring. We knew her well in after years when it was too late, and she confessed to us that at our first meeting we talked so fast, and talked together, and “hollered so she couldn’t hear,” and that she did not understand what we meant or what we wanted, and said “No” to obtain peace.