China appears to have been more plentiful in Philadelphia than in New York. Benjamin Lay, the “Singular Pythagorean Cynical Christian Philosopher,” to show his hatred of the use of tea, brought in 1742 all his wife’s china into the market-place at Philadelphia, and began to break it piece by piece with a hammer; “but the populace, unwilling to lose what might profit them, overset him, scrambled for the china, and bore it off whole.” As the “Singular Pythagorean Philosopher’s” wife was dead, this wanton destruction of her dear china was not so cruel as at first appears. An old lady wrote in 1830, about things as they were before the War of Independence—“Pewter plates and dishes were in general use. China on dinner tables was a great rarity. Glass tumblers were scarcely seen. Punch, the most common beverage, was drunk from a silver tankard. China teacups and saucers were half their present size, and china teapots and coffee-pots with silver nozzles were a mark of superior finery. Where we now use earthen ware they then used Delft ware imported from England, and instead of queen’s ware (then unknown) pewter platters and porringers made to shine along a dresser were universal. Some, especially country people, ate their meals from wooden trenchers.” That frugal and plain-living man, Benjamin Franklin, though he constantly impressed upon his wife, as well as upon the public, the wisdom and necessity of great economy, and the propriety and good taste of simplicity in all modes of living, still could find time and money to pick out for her, when he was in England, and to send to her many a piece of china for her beaufet in Philadelphia. He writes thus from London, in February, 1758, to his Deborah: “I send you by Captain Budden a large case and a small box containing some English china, viz: melons and leaves for a dessert of fruit and cream or the like; a bowl remarkable for the neatness of the figures, made at Bow, near this city; some coffee-cups of the same; and a Worcester bowl, ordinary. To show the difference of workmanship, there is something from all the china workers in England; and one old true china basin mended; of an odd color.... I also forgot among the china to mention a large, fine jug for beer, to stand in the cooler. I fell in love with it at first sight, for I thought it looked like a fat, jolly dame, clean and tidy, with a neat blue and white gown on, good-natured and lovely, and put me in mind of—somebody. Look at the figures on the china bowl and coffee-cups with your spectacles on, they will bear examining.” This was certainly a very tender attention on the part of Franklin, and one particularly grateful, doubtless, to his good dame, if she loved china as do others of her sex. In 1765 she wrote to her “dear child” (of over three score years) while he was in France, and thus describes a room that she had been furnishing: “The blue room has a set of tea china I bought since you