We were driving slowly along, when the door of a long, low wood-shed opened, and an elderly man walked out on the single broad stone step and stood, in the lazy country fashion, staring openly and sociably at us as we passed by. He had in one hand a piece of dark wood which he was slowly rubbing with sand-paper. We had driven past his door when my companion suddenly exclaimed: “That man had a claw-foot.”
“A claw-foot!” I answered in astonishment; “what do you mean?—a cloven foot or a club-foot, perhaps?”
“No, you goose; that man had in his hand a claw-foot—the leg of a chair, I am sure, and I am going back to see to what it belongs.”
So we whisked the pony around and drove to the door where the claw-footed man still stood, and we then saw in the one dingy window a small sign bearing the words
ELAM CHADSEY
GENERAL REPAIRER
“Are you Mr. Chadsey?” my fellow china-hunter asked. “We saw you with something that looked old-fashioned in your hand, and we thought you might have or know of some antique furniture or old crockery that the owners would be willing to sell.”
“Wal, I ain’t got any to sell; I only mend furnitoor. I’ve got a couple of tall clocks in here repairin’, but they ain’t mine, so I can’t sell ’em. N-o—I don’t know of none—except—What furnitoor do you want?”
“Oh, anything, almost, that is old, and china especially; any old blue pie-plates or such things.”
Elam stood slowly rubbing his claw-foot and at last answered: “I know some old blue-and-white crockery preserve-jars, or jell-pots, ye might call ’em, which I ruther think ye could get ef ye want ’em. Ye see, Abiel Hartshorn, he’s a widower an’ he’s a-goin’ ter marry a school-marm up ter Collation Corners, an’ she’s got awful highty-tighty notions, an’ he’s a-goin’ ter sell the farm, an’ she come down ter see what things she wanted saved out of the house fur her. An’ Abiel’s fust wife she had all these old blue-an’-white pots with letters on ’em, an’ some had long spouts, an’ she always kep’ her preserves an’ jelly an’ sweet pickles in ’em, an’ mighty handy they was too. An’ when this woman see ’em she was real pleased with ’em, but her brother was along with her, and he’s a clerk in a drug-store, an’ he bust out a-larfin’, an’ says he: ‘Them letters on them jell-pots means senna, an’ jalap, an’ calomel, an’ sweet syrup of buckthorn, an’ lixypro, an’ lixylutis, an’ all sorts of bad-tastin’ medicines.’ An’ then she fired right up, an’ says she: ‘I won’t have any of my preserves kep’ in them horrid-tastin’ old medicine-bottles;’ so I guess Abiel would be glad enough ter sell ’em fur most anything.”
We suspected at once that these “jell-pots” with blue lettering of the names of drugs were Delft apothecary jars, and that the “ones with spouts” were the old jars, so rarely seen, that are identical in shape with the “siroop-pots” of Dutch museums. When the Dutch used these jars a century or more ago, they covered the open top with tightly tied oilskin and poured the contents from the spout, which at other times was kept carefully corked. By what strange, roundabout journey had these Delft jars strayed to that New England farm? We asked eagerly where we could see the despised “jell-pots.”