August, 1913 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



XI 



lars. The Emmett collection in the New 

 York Public Library contains an auto- 

 graph letter of John Quincy Adams to 

 Payne, franked by Adams, and also a 

 letter by Payne to Bushrod Washington, 

 George Washington's nephew. 



B. C. N. : It is not surprising that you 

 are mystified as to the use of the long- 

 handled "claw" object of which you send 

 a sketch. This identifies it as the some- 

 what unelegant instrument of comfort 

 supposedly familiar to previous genera- 

 tions under the uneuphonious name of 

 "back-scratcher." Back-scratchers have 

 an ancient ancestry if not a noble one, 

 although old-time writers mention them 

 as having been in use without apology 

 from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to 

 perilously near our own day. 



H. G. N. : Striking watches are of early 

 invention. In Ben Jonson's Staple of 

 News, for instance, the opening scene ex- 

 hibits a dissolute junior anxiously await- 

 ing his majority, who "draws forth his 

 watch, and sets it on the table ;" im- 

 mediately afterwards exclaiming: 



"It strikes ! — one, two, three, four, 



five, six. Enough, enough dear watch, 

 Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now sleep and 



rest; 

 Would thou couldst make the time to do so 



too; 

 I'll wind thee up no more!" 



G. C. R. : A fine document on vellum 

 signed by Louis XV of France should be 

 worth from $10 to $20, depending upon 

 the importance of its context. 



F. E. F. : L T nfortunately the miniature 

 about which you ask is of no importance 

 as a work of art. It does not even appear 

 to have the virtue of being either an imi- 

 tation of a master hand or of exhibiting 

 the saving grace of one stroke of merit. 

 It is so badly executed that this fact taken 

 with your having no knowledge of whose 

 portrait it was intended to be leads one 

 to express the unreserved opinion that 

 it would be a reprehensible waste of 

 money to pay the purchase price you say 

 is asked for it. 



H. T. E. : The little box you describe 

 and illustrate by the sketch is not a bon- 

 bon box but a patch box of the period of 

 Louis XV, the beauties of whose court 

 though they had made a notable dis- 

 covery when they gummed pieces of black 

 taffeta on their cheeks to heighten the 

 brilliancy of their complexions, and kept 

 these "patches" in little enameled boxes 

 of the sort for which there was great de- 

 mand. The fops of Elizabethan Eng- 

 land, however, had long before antici- 

 pated this fad, for in Elizabethan days 

 the dandies had taken to decorating their 

 faces with black stars, crescents, and 

 lozenges. 



"To draw an arrant fop from top to toe 

 Whose very looks at first dash show him so ; 

 Give him a mean, proud garb, a Tappergrace, 

 A pert dull grin, a black patch cross his face." 

 So rhymed the poetesters of the day. 



J. G. B. : The first issue of any news- 

 paper to be printed upon a steam-power 

 printing press was that of the London 

 Times for November 29, 1814, and not 

 that of February 1821, the paper you 

 have. 



A. D. V.: The large uniface medal com- 

 memorates the Capture of the Bastile, 

 1789, and appears from the legend upon 

 its edge to have been made of metal of 

 the links of the chains of the prisoners 

 of the Bastile. 



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