Some of the teapots are really beautiful in shape, and are decorated with a quaint engraved design of leaves and round flowers. These were undoubtedly of Dutch manufacture, and are identical in shape and ornamentation with teapots authentically known to have been imported from Holland. These teapots were probably used for company “tea drinkings” and such state occasions, and thus the engraving on the soft metal was not worn by daily use. Pewter spoons, too, are there in every size, though Betsey Sumner surely had silver teaspoons, for were they not inherited from her by her son, the old parson? As these pewter spoons were liable to be quickly bent, worn, or broken, every thrifty household had its various sized spoon moulds of heavy metal, into which the melted pewter was poured and came out as good as new, or, according to the apparent law of pewter, better than new. Button moulds, too, were common enough, containing deep holes to form half a dozen buttons at once. And perhaps Betsey Sumner turned her old spoons into buttons to adorn John’s coat, and polished them till they shone like the silver and cut-steel buttons of the French Court. Many of the pewter articles in this homestead have had recently engraved upon the underside various commemorative dates, and the names of past owners, and the outlines of any eventful story connected with the dish, if story there fortunately be remembered to tell. And every owner of pewter plate or porringer, who knows by tradition the story of his old relic, should have the statement engraved now upon the back of the piece, for even in one generation these facts are forgotten, and the article is rendered valueless as an historic record. In the kitchen of the great colonial house at Morristown, N. J., now owned and occupied by the Washington Association of New Jersey, may be seen a fine collection of old pewter table and cooking utensils; while at Indian Hill, at Newburyport, still is shining in cupboard and dresser the rare pewter collected by Ben Perley Poore. To a day well within the remembrance of many now living, round pewter meat platters were used in farm-houses, long after the other pewter dishes had vanished; for it does not dull a carving-knife to cut upon pewter as it does upon porcelain or crockery, and old farmers cling stubbornly to usages and articles that they are acquainted with; and no “boiled dinner” ever could taste quite the same to them unless all heaped together on a great shining pewter platter.