A story is told of the time before the line to Oxford from Wolverhampton and Worcester was built, when persons visiting Oxford from the Vale of Evesham had to travel by road.  An old yeoman family, having decided upon the Church as the vocation for one of the sons, sent him, in the year 1818, on an old pony, under the protection of an ancient retainer for his matriculation examination.  On their return, in reply to the question, “Well, did you get the young master through?” “Oh, yes,” he said, “and we could have got the old pony passed too, if we’d only had enough money!”

Partly as an excuse for a bicycle ride I used often to visit distant villages where auction sales at farm-houses were proceeding, and sometimes I came home with old china and other treasures.  Wherever there are old villages with manor houses and long occupied rich land, wealth formerly accumulated and evidenced itself in well-designed and well-made furniture, upon which time has had comparatively little destructive effect.  As old fashions were superseded, as oak gave way to walnut, and walnut to Spanish mahogany, the out-of-date furniture found its way to the smaller farm-houses and cottages, in which it descended from generation to generation.  Now that the cottages have been ransacked by dealers and collectors, the treasures have not only been absorbed by wealthy townspeople, but are finding their way with those of impoverished landowners and occupiers to the millionaire mansions on the other side of the Atlantic.

There is no limit to the temptation to collect when once the fascination of such old things has made itself felt—­furniture, china, earthenware, glass, paintings, brass and pewter become an obsession.  If I had only filled my barns with Jacobean and Stuart oak and walnut, William and Mary, and Queen Ann marquetry, and Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite mahogany, instead of wheat for an unsympathetic British public, and at the end of my time at Aldington offered a few of the least interesting specimens for sale by auction, I might still have carried away a houseful of treasures which would have cost me less than nothing.

An old friend of mine, who had been collecting for many years, and in comparison with whom I was a novice, though my enthusiasm long preceded the fashion of the last twenty-five years, told me that he once discovered a warehouse in a Cotswold village crammed with Chippendale, and that the owner, having no sale for it, was glad to exchange a waggon-load for the same quantity of hay and straw chaff.

Among the more interesting articles which my cycling excursions and previous pilgrimages on foot produced, I have a charming blue and white carnation pattern, Worcester china cider mug with the crescent mark.  These mugs are said to have been specially made for the Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769 at Stratford-on-Avon when Garrick was present.  The date corresponds with the time when the mark was in use, and establishes the age of the mug as 150 years.  The china in my old neighbourhood was naturally Worcester, Bristol and Salopian, of which I have many specimens—­of the Worcester more especially—­ranging from the earliest days of unmarked pieces through the Dr. Wall period, Barr, Flight and Barr, down to the later Chamberlain.