and
fifty dollars. It is very rare. The man said the Etruscans used to keep
tears or something in these things, and that it was very hard to get
hold of a broken one, now.

I also set aside my Henri II. plate. See sketch from my pencil; it is
in the main correct, though I think I have foreshortened one end of it
a little too much, perhaps. This is very fine and rare; the shape is
exceedingly beautiful and unusual. It has wonderful decorations on it,
but I am not able to reproduce them. It cost more than the tear-jug, as
the dealer said there was not another plate just like it in the
world. He said there was much false Henri II ware around, but that the
genuineness of this piece was unquestionable.

He showed me its pedigree, or its history, if you please; it was a
document which traced this plate's movements all the way down from its
birth--showed who bought it, from whom, and what he paid for it--from
the first buyer down to me, whereby I saw that it had gone steadily up
from thirty-five cents to seven hundred dollars. He said that the whole
Ceramic world would be informed that it was now in my possession and
would make a note of it, with the price paid. [Figure 8]

There were Masters in those days, but, alas--it is not so now. Of course
the main preciousness of this piece lies in its color; it is that old
sensuous, pervading, ramifying, interpolating, transboreal blue which is
the despair of modern art. The little sketch which I have made of this
gem cannot and does not do it justice, since I have been obliged to
leave out the color. But I've got the expression, though.

However, I must not be frittering away the reader's time with these
details. I did not intend to go into any detail at all, at first, but
it is the failing of the true ceramiker, or the true devotee in any
department of brick-a-brackery, that once he gets his tongue or his pen
started on his darling theme, he cannot well stop until he drops from
exhaustion. He has no more sense of the flight of time than has any
other lover when talking of his sweetheart. The very "marks" on the
bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering
ecstasy; and I could forsake a drowning relative to help dispute about
whether the stopple of a departed Buon Retiro scent-bottle was genuine
or spurious.

Many people say that for a male person, bric-a-brac hunting is about as
robust a business as making doll-clothes, or decorating J