Let me be just and honest in my tale; though all is ideal happiness in the hours of the china chase, the counting of the spoils is sometimes vastly disappointing. “As high as we have mounted in delight In our dejection do we sink as low.” There is no hobby of so uncertain gait, none other fancy in the pursuit of which one meets with so many rebuffs as in china collecting. I mean in real china collecting by individual search and pursuit, not in china buying at high prices at a fashionable china-shop. For such Crœsus buyers, who know not the sweet nor the bitter of true china hunting, these pages are not written. Sad, sad failures does your china hunter often make, but there is a blessed delight and pride when a long search is at last successful which rewards him and makes him, or rather her, forget the cruel blows of the past, and makes hope spring eternal in her breast, undying, and undimmed. Disappointments were few in early china-collecting days in America; friendly farm-wives then gladly brought out their precious and plentiful stores, and eagerly sold them for silver to buy a new cotton gown or a shell-comb, and attics and pantries were ransacked and depleted with delight. Now can the china hunter drive for days through the country, asking for old crockery at every house which is surmounted by a gambrel roof, has a great square chimney, or an old well-sweep, without even hearing of one old teapot; and yet such is the power of china-love, she will start out again the next week, cheerful, hopeful, and undaunted, “to fresh woods and pastures new.” Nor will it always prove clear sailing should she discover the home of the sought-for treasure. She may learn from friendly and loquacious neighbors that “old Miss Halsey” or “John Slade’s widder” has stores of old crockery in barrels in the attic, or on the top shelf of the pantry, or even “up over the wood-shed,” but she cannot obtain one glimpse of the hidden hoards—far less can she purchase them.