h he considered half a weakness,
but he yielded to it, and afterward had cause to congratulate himself
when he found an opportunity for disposing of the cup at a remunerative
rate. This gave him an impulse of curiosity toward any heirlooms in the
way of china and pottery to be found among the farmers' wives in the
section of New England he traversed; and his activities soon had their
reward. At that date the passion for ceramics was but just beginning to
invade our cities, and not a suspicion of it stirred the minds of the
good women who artlessly opened their cupboards and displayed their
treasures of Worcester china and willow-ware to the ingratiating Knapp.
No man in the world was ever better calculated to drive good bargains
for himself, yet leave an impression on his victim's mind that the
peddler's interest in a "sort of china which matched a set his
grandmother used to have" was running away with his better judgment.

Knapp became shortly a most interesting personage to people who were
making collections, and he attained, besides ingenuity, genuine taste
and skill in detecting marks and discerning values. In a year he had as
nice a knowledge of china and pottery as any one in the country, and if
the farmers' wives were so much the poorer by the loss of what had been
in the family for generations, they did not recognize their loss.

However, it was by old clocks and brass andirons and fenders that Knapp
made his fortune. A gentleman asked him to procure him some
old-fashioned articles of this sort, and the peddler at once went into
the matter on speculation, and bought up all the old brasses he could
find within a radius of fifty miles. These fenders and andirons were
gladly parted with, growing rusty as they had been for years, and almost
forgotten in garrets and cellars. New England farmers remember too
distinctly the shiverings and burnings of their youth not to feel an
insurmountable prejudice against open fires. So Knapp, whose wider
knowledge made him master of the fact that this present generation,
sickened of stoves and dreary black holes in the wall and burnt dead
heat, and longing for some cheerful household centre, were restoring the
old fireplaces and open fires, where the flames could leap and roar,
and the logs burn and glow and smoulder,--Knapp, I say, humored this
fancy by opening his shop and offering his old-fashioned fenders and
andirons to the public. He had bought them at a mere song, and sold