Thirty-six years later, in 1866, the aged Doctor died, and went, doubtless, to an English paradise. His browbeaten wife had given up the struggle many years before. The daughters, now elderly women, with a long-concealed but unsubdued hatred born of years of tyrannical browbeating and oppression, at once made a triumphal holocaust of many of the cherished treasures of the British tyrant; and the first victim doomed to destruction was the old English coach in which their English grandmother had ridden in state through the country. This broken-down, moth-eaten, rat-nibbled, cobweb and dirt-filled relic had stood unused for fifty years--an abominable nuisance, an inconvenient obstruction, a hated eyesore, in the carriage-house connected with their dwelling. The Doctor had cherished it on account of its English birthplace; but now its fate was sealed. As the first heavy blow of the destroying iconoclastic axe struck the hated coach, a loud rattle as of falling crockery was heard, and the executioner paused. A careful investigation discovered an unknown compartment under the driver’s seat which had been constructed for the purpose of hiding despatch-boxes and, perhaps, the bride’s jewel-cases--and in this hiding-place were twenty-six dirt-covered, dark-blue Staffordshire plates. A sudden light of comprehension and recognition came into the faces of the sisters--here were the long-lost pie-plates! The cantankerous old Doctor had craftily arisen in the night, hobbled out silently, in spite of his gout, thrown the carefully and daintily made Thanksgiving pies to the pigs, stealthily packed the plates in the old coach, watched maliciously the unsuccessful plate-search, kept silence throughout the despoiled Thanksgiving dinner and through nearly forty pieless years, and died triumphant. Half of this treasure-trove, which the Doctor could hide, but, happily, could not take with him, were the Dr. Syntax plates; and from that half came my share. The other plates were of well-known English views--Payn’s Hill, the City of Liverpool, Blenheim Castle, Fulham Church-yard, Windsor Castle--no American views were on any of his crockery; no landing of Lafayette, no State plates, were ever allowed to grace that rank old Tory’s pantry. Thus, one good, one noble result came from this “ugly trick”--the hidden pie-plates were all saved unscratched, unbroken, for the Doctor’s kinsfolk to-day, who, in gratitude for his unintentional posthumous favor, suitably reward him by telling the story of his spiteful midnight theft whenever we show the plates. And, moreover, we wantonly and openly insulted and jeered at his memory and his gastronomic laws by formally and derisively naming the dark-blue salvage from the coach the Doctor’s Pie-plates. MY DELFT APOTHECARY JARS