We have visited again and again one gray old farm-house in Massachusetts, a farm-house with moss-covered “lean-to,” which we know contains enough old English pottery and porcelain to found a museum; but cajoleries, flatteries, persuasions, open demands, elaborate explanations, and assumptions of indignant and hurt astonishment at refusals—one and all are in vain; not even one old plate have we ever seen. The farmer’s wife greets us most cordially, gives us doughnuts and milk in summer, and apples and cider in the winter, maple-sugar in the spring, and hickory-nuts and butter-nuts in the fall, but in aggressively modern pitchers and dishes; and when we leave she urges us hospitably and warmly to “come again.” We know well where her precious china is hidden. High up on either side of the great mantelpieces in “living-room” and “best room” are cupboards, so high that one would have to climb upon a chair to see into them; and from the good wife’s frequent and furtive glances—speaking though silent—at her locked cupboard doors, we know well what treasures are stored therein. At that china-hiding abode we often have concocted for us an old-time country drink, composed of water flavored with molasses and ginger, which was in Revolutionary times called “beveridge.” Gallons of that vile fluid have I drunk with the hostess, hoping that the joys of the flowing bowl might loosen her tongue and unlock her cupboard doors, but I have risked my digestion in vain. Still I sit “smiling with millions of mischief in the heart,” for life is short, and I am waiting, wickedly waiting; the farmer and his wife are old, very old, and when they depart from this life they cannot take their keys and crockery with them.