Nor can you be over-confident that all auctions held in the country are true country auctions. The ways of “antique men” are past finding out. A sale of the household furnishings of an old farm-house in the heart of the White Mountains, attracted a vast number of summer travellers, and brought forth purchase sums that bewildered the farm residents for miles around. Ere the sun went down on the day of the sale, a thrifty dealer who happened to be present had had a conference with the farm-wife, and as a result it was announced that she had a reserve stock of furniture and china in her garret, which would be sold the following week. Back to town sped the dealer, packed up a vast collection of unsalable débris which he chanced to have on hand, and an “assorted lot” of modern willow-pattern ware, freshly imported Canton china, new copper-lustre and painted tea-sets, with a sparse sprinkling of old pieces. He sent the entire lot by rail to the New Hampshire town; conveyed it by dead of night to the farm-house; placed the crockery in the cupboards, the brand-new brass candlesticks on the mantels, and the flimsy new andirons in the old fireplaces, arranged all the furniture in judicious shadow, and had a successful auction of “rare old colonial furniture and family china.” A famous starting-point, or rather rallying-point, on a china hunt is the district school. Driving along the quiet country road, you chance, in some barren and unlovely spot, often at some lonely cross-roads, upon a small unshaded, single-storied building, whose general ugliness and the beaten earth of whose door-yard tell to you its purpose and character without the proof of the high-pitched and precise chorus of monotonous three-syllabled words that vibrates shrilly out through the open window. Hitch your steed to a tree, a fence, by the roadside, and enter one of the twin portals of the abode of learning, passing by the low-hanging rows of ragged straw hats, gingham sun-bonnets, and chip “Shakers,” over the “warping floor,” in front of the “battered seats, with jack-knife’s carved initial.” “Teacher” is glad to see you, the children are gladder still. She sends a grinning barefooted boy out to draw a pail of fresh well-water. You are asked, as a distinguished visitor, to address the scholars. If you are a man, and thus of course an orator, you do so with fluent tongue. If you are a woman, and thus tongue-tied in public, you can ask for “recess” to be given, and make your address informally to each little freckled face. You are, of course, anxious to refurnish a house like the one in which you lived when you attended the village school in the days of your youth. Do the children know of any old blue china plates with trees and houses on them? Have their mothers or grandmothers any pitchers with pictures of soldiers, or sailors, or ships? Of course the children know; they know everything—far more than grown people. You soon have an exact ceramic