“Ye don’t hang ’em on the wall, Them cracked old kitchen dishes! An’ keep a frac-tured pitcher As if ’t was act-ure-ly precious! They say that city folks Is mighty extrav-ure-gant, But with such test-ure-mony I’m willin’ to swear they ain’t. There ain’t a party in this town So stingy an’ such a non-com As to hang that pitcher on the wall, Lookin’ ’s if ’t was jest goin’ ter fall, An’ the hole showin’ in the botturm.” Many ghosts has our china hunting revealed to us; the ghosts of the past, the visions and dreams that never become realities, the inexorable fate, the sad kismet of New England life. Such was the story of the house of Hartington, a story sadly typical of many New England homes; a story which the sight of these little lettered and escutcheoned cups always retells to us. A description had been given to us of an old town with old houses and old people and old china, and after a gloomy night in a hideous country hotel we started out to find some townsman of whom we could hire a horse and carriage of some or any sort to carry us to Rindge and Anthony Hartington’s house—the oldest house of all. A thin, auburn-haired, freckle-faced Yankee, about twenty-one years old, answered our questions with the greatest interest, and finally offered us the use of his own horse and open wagon for the whole day for two dollars. “And I’ll drive fer ye, too,” he added, with enthusiasm. “Ye’d never find old Hartington’s if ye took the hoss yerself, an’ I do’ ‘now as I can neither, without some pretty tall huntin’ and questionin’.”