It may be asked how all these pieces of Presidential china come to be found in private collections, and offered for sale, and so generally distributed over the country. A very reprehensible custom existed until recent years (and indeed may still be possible) of selling at auction at the end of each Presidential term, or in the middle if thought necessary, whatever household effects the house steward and house occupants chose to consider of no further use. These Presidential sales were, of course, eagerly attended by relic-hunters. At such a sale in President Grant’s day a lot of “old truck,” as it was irreverently called, valued at $500, brought $2,760. As there must be, of course, much breakage of china in the pantry and dining-room of the White House, and as it was considered for many years necessary to have full “sets” of china table-ware, enough to serve an entire dinner, the odd plates, cups and saucers, and dishes were ruthlessly “cleared out” whenever an appropriation was made by the Government, or the President desired to buy a new set. It seems a pity that a few pieces of each of these “state sets” should not have been preserved in a cabinet at the White House to show us the kind of china from which our early rulers ate their daily meals and served their state dinners, as well as to show our varying and halting progress in luxury, refinement, and taste. XIII. DESIGNS RELATING TO WASHINGTON One scarcely knows where to begin or end this list when one considers the vast number of pieces of pottery and porcelain that bear the name and ostensibly bear the portrait of Washington—more and more varied even than the Lord Nelson prints in England. Often Washington’s portrait is found with that of Franklin or Lafayette; in such cases I have given the subject of the most prominent or the named design the honor of determining the place on the list. The largest number of these Washington designs occur upon Liverpool mugs and pitchers in black prints. Some few are in blue upon Staffordshire earthenware. In the Huntington Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, may be seen a vast number of ceramic likenesses of the great American. Many of these are single specimens painted by hand—both by artists and amateurs, apparently. One set of four plaques has copies of the Savage, Trumbull, Peale, and Stuart portraits of Washington. Such I have not attempted to describe or classify. One specially comical portrait plaque, painted in China, shows an almond-eyed Washington with his hair _à la chinoise_, with feminine hair ornaments, while on his republican shoulders rests the dark blue sack garment familiar to us as the festival garb of our Chinese washermen. There are in the Trumbull-Prime Collection a large number of Washington pitchers, from which some of the entries on this list are described.