One of the very oldest forms known to have been decorated in this country is the one which bears in relief a design of the first railroad, represented by a horse drawing along rails a four-wheeled car heaped with cotton bales and lumps of coal. This picture runs lengthwise of the bottle and bears the legend "Success to the Railroads" about the margin of the panel. This could not have been produced earlier than 1825. Some of the Washington designs belong to earlier periods, as do the eagle and United States flag. Most of the Masonic decorations belong between 1840 and 1850. The log cabin designs are connected with the notable Harrison "hard cider" campaign of 1840, as are the inkstands made in the form of log cabins, cider barrels, and beehives. The dark brown whisky bottles in the shape of a log cabin are souvenirs of the same period of political excitement, and were made by a New Jersey glass firm for a certain liquor merchant in Philadelphia. The Jackson bottles belong to the period of the stormy thirties. The "Hero of New Orleans" is represented in uniform, wearing a throat-cutting collar which entirely obscures his ear. A Connecticut firm, in the late sixties, sent out a bottle of modern shape, decorated with a double-headed sheaf of wheat, with rake and pitchfork, having a star below. At about the same time a firm in Pittsburg put upon the market a highly decorated flask, similarly modern in outline, having upon one side an eagle, monument, and flag; upon the reverse, an Indian with bow and arrow, shooting a bird in the foreground, with a dog and a tree in the background. Some bottles of unknown origin were decorated with horns of plenty, vases of flowers, panels of fruit, sheaves of wheat, a Masonic arch and emblems, ship and eight-pointed star, and a bold Pikes Peak pilgrim with staff and bundle to celebrate the passage of the Rocky Mountains. Among the early curio bottles shown are numerous fancy designs in the form of animals, fishes, eggs, pickles, canteens, cigars, shells, pistols, violins, lanterns, and the like. To this class belongs the Moses bottle, which also goes by the name of Santa Claus. It is of clear and colorless glass, with a string fastened about the neck and attached to each end of a stick which crosses the top. Should the collector enlarge his fad so as to take in bottles from foreign lands, he would find that his collection would gain much in beauty. In the Metropolitan Museum of New York there is a very comprehensive exhibit of rare Venetian glass bottles and vials, which was the gift of James Jackson Jarves. These are the most brilliant and elegant types of their kind, graceful and refined, dainty and ethereal. CHAPTER XVI OLD PEWTER