And while I am speaking of transfer-printing, let me call attention to some pretty little ceramic relics of a quaint old-time fashion, that are sometimes overlooked by collectors—“mirror-knobs”—“Lookeing Glasse Nobs” I find them called in ante-Revolutionary advertisements. These knobs consisted usually of a painted or printed medallion, frequently enamelled on the metal, or on little oval porcelain placques or discs, which were then fastened in brass, gilt or silvered frames, and mounted on a long and strong screw or spike. Two of these knobs were screwed into the wall about a foot apart, so that the oval-framed medallions stood out two or three inches from the wall. The lower edge of a mirror or picture frame was allowed to rest on the iron screws behind these two ornamental heads. These mirror-knobs were also used to fasten back window curtains. The head of the mirror-knob was usually decorated by the process of transfer-printing; sentimental views of shepherds and shepherdesses, mincing heads of powdered French dames, and unintentionally funny likenesses of many of our Revolutionary heroes and statesmen. The portrait of Washington which was employed was fairly good; of Franklin in the fur-cap, quite well drawn; but the others that I have seen vied with one another in comical ugliness, save that of John Jay, always too fine in feature to be caricatured. In the Huntington collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, may be seen a few of these mirror-knobs with portraits of Franklin, John Jay, C. Thompson, W. H. Drayton, John Dickinson, S. Huntington, Major-General Gaines, and an exceptionally ugly one of H. Laurens, with a phenomenally attenuated neck, a mere bone of a neck. Often these little printed miniatures are in black and white, but more frequently they are printed in outline, and faintly and delicately colored. I wish I knew where they were made, and who ordered them and imported and sold them, and who drew them. I think that they were made in Worcester, not in Liverpool. Aged country people tantalizingly tell me of mirror-knobs made of discs with white raised heads and figures on blue grounds—Wedgwood medallions, were they not? But they have all vanished from my ken, even the printed knobs are now seldom seen. I know one drawer of an old dressing-case in quiet Hadley town that holds fifteen beautiful mirror-knobs, all whole, uncracked, unscratched; but you will never see them nor buy them. You might steal them, perhaps, if you only knew which elm-shaded house contained them—you might steal the whole dressing-case, indeed, if you were only quiet about it, and you might walk the entire mile and a half of the beautiful main street with the stolen furniture on your back and meet not a soul to question or wonder.