At the rooms of the Essex Institute in Salem, Mass., is an old spinet made by Dr. Samuel Blyth in that town. Henry M. Brooks, Esq., author of _Olden Time Music_, has in his possession a bill for one of these American spinets that shows that the price in 1786 was £18. In the Memorial Hall at Deerfield, Mass., may be seen another dilapidated one, made by Stephanus & Keene. This belonged once to Mrs. Sukey Barker, of Hingham. In the _Newport Mercury_ of May 17, 1773, is advertised, “To be sold a Spinnet of a proper size for a little miss, and a most agreeable tone--plays extremely easy on the keys. Inquire of the Printer.” Advertisement of the sale of spinets and of instruction on the spinet do not disappear from the newspapers in this country even after formidable rivals and successors, the harpsichord and forte-piano, had begun to be imported in comparatively large numbers. The tone of a spinet has been characterized concisely by Holmes in his poem, _The Opening of the Piano_,--the “spinet with its thin metallic thrills.” I know of nothing more truly the “relic of things that have passed away,” more completely the voice of the past, than the tinkling thrill of a spinet. It is like seeing a ghost to touch the keys, and bring forth once more that obsolete sound. There is no sound born in the nineteenth century that at all resembles it. Like “loggerheads” in the coals and “lug-poles” in the chimney, like church lotteries and tithingmen, the spinet--even its very voice--is extinct. Since in the _News-Letter_ first quoted in this chapter virginals are named, I think the musical instrument of Queen Elizabeth must have been tolerably familiar to Bostonians. Judge Sewall, who “had a passion for music,” writes in 1690 of fetching his wife’s “virginalls.” I cannot conceive what tunes Madam Sewall played on her virginals, no tawdry ballads and roundelays, no minuets and corams; she may have known half a dozen long-metre psalm tunes such as the Judge set for so many years in meeting. “Forte-pianers” were imported to America, as were other musical instruments. It is said the first one brought to New England was in 1785 by John Brown for his daughter Sarah, afterwards Mrs. Herreshoff. It is still possessed by Miss Herreshoff, of Bristol, R. I. The first brought to “the Cape” was a Clementi of the date 1790, and found for many years a home in Falmouth. It is in perfect preservation, a dainty little inlaid box lying upon a slender low table, with tiny shelves for the music books, and a tiny little painted rack to hold the music sheets, and a pedal fit for the foot of a doll. It is now owned by Miss Frances Morse, of Worcester, Mass. An old Broadwood piano, once owned by the venerable Dr. Sweetser, may be seen at the rooms of the Worcester Society of Antiquity; and still another, a Clementi, at the Essex Institute in Salem.