At last I wrote to the wife at the farm, telling her of the old letter; asking of the career of George Hartington, his success, his life, his fate. I thought he must be Anthony’s grandfather or granduncle. The answer came, written in a stiff, uneven hand, but showing more intelligence than her conversation: “George and Oriana Hartington were my husband’s father and mother. My husband is seventy-five years old, and was their only child. George Hartington died three years after he was married. My husband remembers his mother as a feeble, sickly woman who didn’t have much to say on the farm, and seemed always afraid of Madam Hartington. She died of consumption when he was twelve years old. That was her china you bought with the O on it. His grandmother lived to be ninety-two years old. He is not very well this winter, he has a bad cough. If you know of any good cough medicine, I could buy it with the money you gave us for the table and china,” etc. And this is the end of all Madam Hartington’s ambitions—a broken-down, broken-hearted, childless old man. It is the New England kismet. Sad often are many of the memories, sad are the pictures, brought to my mind by my old china. It speaks to me too often of deserted farms, of unthrifty farmers; of shabby homes, the homes of drunken fathers and sickly mothers; of rasping young Philistines, haters of old things and old ways; of miserly old women and extravagant young ones; of gloomy widowers and miserable bachelors; of the hopeless round of toil of New England farm-wives, those human beasts of burden, bending grievously under the heavy load of loneliness and labor; it speaks sadly to me of the pinched ways and poor living, the _res angusta domi_ too frequently to be seen, alas! in my beloved New England. All these shadows, however, are softened and lessened by the lapse of time, just as in my memory the days of my china hunts have all been sunshiny and bright; it never rained, nor was it cold nor windy, nor was it ever sultry or dusty when I have been a china hunting; all china days were Emerson’s “... charmed days When the genius of God doth flow. The wind may alter twenty ways, A tempest cannot blow; It may blow north, it still is warm; Or south, it still is clear; Or east, it smells like a clover-farm; Or west, no thunder fear.” XIX. CHINA COLLECTIONS