report from every house in town whose little sons and daughters are in the school, and of the homes of all their neighbors too. You have extracted an unbiassed account from a set of little ready-tongued and keen-eyed spies, whose penetration is acute, and whose memory is active. If you can draw you can quickly show the children with chalk and blackboard the kind of china you wish, and can depart with a long list of houses which will repay you to visit. But why do I longer tell the story of the chase, or vainly try to give advice and rules for china-finding? I can only “pay you my penny of observation,” knowing well that “Gutta fortunæ præ dolio sapientiæ.” Nor can I fitly paint the pleasures, nor tell the pains of the search, more than I could mould and shape the treasures it has brought to my home. Nor can I hope to fire in other veins the fever that burns in mine; I must be content to say with Olivia, “’Tis a most _extracting_ frenzy of mine own.” II. TRENCHER TREEN AND PEWTER BRIGHT The history of the use of china as table-ware in America would be incomplete and ill-comprehended, without some reference to the preceding forms of table furnishings used by the earliest colonists, the dishes of wood and pewter, which so long influenced the form and even the decoration of their china successors. As in the “Life of Josiah Wedgwood” we are given an account of the pottery and porcelain of all times, so in my story of china in America I tell of the humble predecessors that graced the frugal boards of our ancestors. In a curious book, Newbery’s “Dives Pragmaticus,” written in 1563, a catalogue of English cooking utensils and table-ware is thus given by a chapman: “I have basins, ewers of tin, pewter, and glass, Great vessels of copper, fine latten, and brass, Both pots, pans, and kettles such as never was. I have platters, dishes, saucers, and candlesticks, Chafers, lavers, towels, and fine tricks; Posnets, frying pans, and fine pudding pricks; Fine pans for milk, trim tubs for souse.” These were practically the table and kitchen furnishings brought by the Pilgrims to New England, and for similar furnishings they sent to old England for many years. The time when America was settled was the era when pewter ware had begun to take the place of wooden ware for table use, just as the time of the Revolutionary War marked the victory of porcelain over pewter. Governor Bradford found the Indians using “wooden bowls, trays, and dishes,” and “hand baskets made of crab shells wrought together.” Both colonists and Indians used clam-shells for plates, and smaller shells set in split sticks as spoons and ladles.