Pieces of willow-pattern ware are often of astounding age and fabulous value. Forty dollars is the favorite price that knowing country owners assert they can get in the city for their willow-pattern platters. I have a favorite formula which I always use in answer to these aspiring traders—my “willow-pattern answer.” I reply, gravely, “Yes, that pattern is priceless.” It does not mean anything and it pleases them, and if you told them that the platter was worth about two or three dollars they would look upon you as a swindler. Modern willow-pattern ware is also offered at fancy valuations. I have never been able to decide whether an old farmer who brought two willow-ware plates about a year old to sell to me, assuring me (though they bore the visible mark and stamp of modern production) that “this old crockery had been in his fam’ly more’n a hundred year”—I have never decided whether that ingenuous bucolic were a deep-dyed swindler or the innocent tool of some crafty sharper. I answered him soberly with my patent “willow-pattern answer”—“That pattern is priceless,” and he went away hugging his antiques with delight. I have seen within a year at a well-known dealer’s in New York, a modern willow-pattern platter upon which was pasted this printed inscription: “This platter belonged to Miles Standish, and was often used by him, and is therefore very rare and of great historical value.” This was an auction label cut from the catalogue of a sale, and the dealer let it remain as a joke for the knowing ones, and possibly as a bait for the unsophisticated. “The Broseley Blue Dragon” and the “Broseley Blue Canton” pieces and their imitations are frequently found. These patterns were also made at the Caughley or Salopian Works. The “cabbage leaf jugs” came from that manufactory. I have never been able to understand why the willow-pattern should have been so much more popular than the Blue Dragon. The latter is certainly very handsome and consistent, or rather congruous throughout, while the willow-pattern is neither “fish nor fowl nor good red herring”—it is not English, and it is certainly not wholly Oriental. The color is good, as was all blue at that time.