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