am bottles, two-eared cups, and flasks. Virginians and
Marylanders in the seventeenth century had much more silver than New
Englanders. Some Dutch merchants had ample amounts. It was deemed a
good and safe investment for spare money. Bread-baskets, salvers,
muffineers, chafing-dishes, casters, milk pitchers, sugar boxes,
candlesticks, appear in inventories at the end of the century. A tankard
or flagon, even if heavy and handsome, would be placed on the table for
every-day use; the other pieces were usually set on the cupboard's head
for ornament.

The handsome silver tankard owned by Sarah Jansen de Rapelje is here
shown. She was the first child of European parents born in New
Netherland. The tankard was a wedding gift from her husband, and a Dutch
wedding scene is graven on the lid.

There was a great desire for glass, a rare novelty to many persons at
the date of colonization. The English were less familiar with its use
than settlers who came from Continental Europe. The establishment of
glass factories was attempted in early days in several places, chiefly
to manufacture sheet-glass, but with slight success. Little glass was
owned in the shape of drinking-vessels, none used generally on the
table, I think, during the first few years. Glass bottles were certainly
a great rarity, and were bequeathed with special mention in wills, and
they are the only form of glass vessel named. The earliest glass for
table use was greenish in color, like coarse bottle glass, and poor in
quality, sometimes decorated in crude designs in a few colors. Bristol
glass, in the shape of mugs and plates, was next seen. It was opaque, a
milky white color, and was coarsely decorated with vitrifiable colors in
a few lines of red, green, yellow, or black, occasionally with initials,
dates, or Scriptural references.

Though shapes were varied, and the number was generally plentiful, there
was no attempt made to give separate drinking-cups of any kind to each
individual at the table. Blissfully ignorant of the existence or
presence of microbes, germs, and bacteria, our sturdy and unsqueamish
forbears drank contentedly in succession from a single vessel, which
was passed from hand to hand, and lip to lip, around the board. Even
when tumbler-shaped glasses were seen in many houses,--flip-glasses,
they were called,--they were of communal size,--some held a gallon,--and
all drank from the same glass. The great punch-bowl, not a very handy
vessel to