University of Virginia Library

THE CHINA QUESTION.

“You never see sich chaney no ware now, as this,”
said Mrs. Partington, as she took from an obscure corner
of the old cupboard a teapot of antique appearance, noseless
and handleless, and cracked here and there, and
stayed with putty where Time's mischievous fingers had
threatened a dissolution of the union. “That teapot was
my grandmother's afore she was married; I remember it
just as well as it was yesterday.”

“Remember when your grandmother was married?”
queried Ike.

“No, no, the teapot,” responded she; “and it was a
perfect beauty, with the Garden of Eden on it, and the
flowers and Adam and Eve on it, so natural that you
might almost smell their fragrance.”

“What, smell Adam and Eve?” said Ike.

“No, the flowers, stupid!” replied she; “my grand'ther
gave it to her as a memento mori of his undying
infection, because the colors wouldn't fade, and they
never have, though children are destroying angels, and
they made the mischief among the crockery, as they
always do now-a-days.”

She had held the teapot in her hands as she spoke,
and now she gazed in silence upon the picture of Adam
and Eve, partially concealed in the bushes, and she
revelled in the memory of the past, and wondered if her
grandmother ever came back to look at that old teapot

that she had preserved so carefully, as an heir-loom;
then, carefully brushing off some dust that rested upon
it, she replaced it, and charged Ike impressively to keep
it most sacrilegiously for her sake. He said he would, as
plain as his mouth full of preserved plums would let
him, and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his best
jacket.