rious
useful forms for table and culinary appointments. Hard-metal was a
superior sort of pewter. Prince's metal (so called from Prince Rupert),
a fine brass alloyed with copper and arsenicum, is occasionally named.

Leather, strangely enough, was also used on the table in the form of
bottles and drinking cups and jacks, which were pitchers or jugs of
waxed leather, much used in ale-houses in the fourteenth and fifteenth
century, and whose employment gave rise to the belief of the French that
Englishmen drank their ale out of their boots. Endicott received of
Winthrop one leathern jack worth one shilling and sixpence. I find
leathern jacks, bottles, and cups named among the property of
Connecticut colonists.

Nearly all the glass ware of the eighteenth century was of inferior
quality, full of bubbles and defects. It was frequently fluted. Many
pieces have been preserved that have been painted in vitrifiable colors,
the designs are crude, the colors red, yellow, blue, and occasionally
black or green. The transparent glass thus painted is said to be of
Dutch manufacture. The opalized glass similarly decorated is Spanish.
Drinking-glasses or flip-mugs seem to have been most common, or, at any
rate, most largely preserved. The tradition attached to all the pieces
of Spanish glass which I have found in New England homes is that they
came from the Barbadoes. Bristol glass also was painted in colors, and
came to this country, being advertised in the _Boston News-Letter_.

Glass bottles were frequently left by will in early days, being rare and
valuable; but by newspaper days glass was imported in various shapes,
and soon was plentiful enough. In 1773 we find this advertisement:

"Very rich Cut Glass Candlesticks, cut Glass sugar Boxes & Cream
Potts, Wine, Wine & Water, and Beer Glasses with cut shanks, Jelly
& Syllabub Glasses, Glass Salvers, also Cyder Glasses, Free Mason
Glasses, Orange & Top Glasses, Glass Cans, Glass Cream Buckets and
Crewits, Royal Arch Mason Glasses, Glass Pyramids with Jelly
Glasses, Globe & Barrel Lamps, Double Flynt Wyn Glasses," &c.

The most curious glass relics that are preserved are the flip-glasses or
bumper-glasses; they are tumbler-shaped, and are frequently engraved or
fluted. Some hold over a gallon.

The names of table furnishings varied somewhat in the eighteenth
century. There were milk-pots, milk-ewers, milk-jugs, ere there were
milk-pitchers; sugar-box