Tears of disappointment fairly sprang to our eyes; but the contrast, the revulsion of feeling, the sense of the ludicrous, was so keen, that we gave way to hysterical laughter; we could not suppress it. Where, alas! were our “manners?” I was the first to recover my self-possession. I turned to Mrs. Maybee, who stood before us speechless with angry astonishment, and said pacifically: “You were very good to let us see it. It is not quite what we expected to find. It is so much newer than an old spinet! I fear my sister could not afford to buy it, as she has one piano already. It is very curious and very ingenious, and no doubt you will sell it to someone.” We were walking slowly toward the open door in the hope of immediate escape; but we were not to escape so easily, not without punishment for our adventurous raid. As we drew back, Mrs. Maybee advanced; and it seemed for a while that we should be obliged to buy the old melodeon and take it off with us. But I seized upon a diversion, a godsend, in the shape of a row of window-plants in the kitchen. One fine geranium flourished in this “copper-lustre” pitcher, which had had a hole knocked in the bottom, to permit the water to drain out. I immediately began to admire that geranium, and offered Mrs. Maybee a dollar for the pitcher and plant. This diverted her mind from the unfortunate “spinet;” and after much sharp talk and bargaining we paid her one dollar and seventy-five cents for the geranium and pitcher, rushed from her inhospitable door, and drove away with our poet. “The True Story of the Life, Temper, and Adventures of Orvilla Maybee,” related to us in legal verse by “Rhyming Darius” on our homeward drive, made us wonder that we escaped unharmed from that New England vixen. So our broken lustre pitcher was all that we had to carry home with us from our “spinet hunt.” And I will close this little tale of New England experience with a simple statement of the cost of the pitcher and the geranium (which died when transplanted). Two fares to Pardon and return $4 00 Bill for supper, bed, and breakfast for two 1 50 Wagon, poetry, and legal advice 1 00 Paid Mrs. Maybee for pitcher 1 75 ————— Total cost of pitcher $8 25 As I have since seen a fac-simile of our pitcher (only whole and unbroken) in a bric-a-brac shop, ticketed $2, we cannot consider the trip financially successful; though, truth to tell, it was far more so than many another expedition we have made. But a golden lustre, the memory of our legal poet, englamours forever in our eyes our copper pitcher. When we look at it we hear again the strident voice, the bizarre pronunciation, the voluble rhymes of our poet of the soil, our Darius, as he exclaimed in amazement: