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I need not here repeat the compact treatise on it which I prepared for the Joint Committee on the Censorship of Stage Plays, and prefixed to The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet.

To make clear Cakes of Plums. Take Plums of any sorts, Raspiss are the best, put them in a stone Jug, into a pot of seething water, and when they are dissolved, strain them together through a fair cloth, and take to a pint of that a pound of sugar, put to as much color as will melt it, and boil to a Candy height; boil the liquor likewise in another Posnet, then put them seething hot together, and so boil a little while stirring them together, then put them into glasses, and set them in an Oven or Stove in a drying heat, let them stand so two or three weeks, and never be cold, removing them from one warm place to another, they will turn in a week; beware you set them not too hot, for they will be tough; so every day turn them till they be dry; they will be very clear.

A similar vessel, frequently handleless, was what was spelt, in various colonial documents, posned, possnet, posnett, porsnet, pocneit, posnert, possenette, postnett, and parsnett. It is derived from the Welsh posned, a porringer or little dish. In 1641 Edward Skinner left a "Postnett" by will; this was apparently of pewter. In 1653 Governor Haynes, of Hartford, left an "Iron Posnet" by will.

It would be easy to end with the lion lying down with the lamb, the wild Irishman tamed or taming everybody, Shaw reconciled to the British public as the British public is certainly largely reconciled to Shaw. But as I put these last papers together, having finished this rude study, I hear a piece of news. His latest play, The Showing Up of Blanco Posnet, has been forbidden by the Censor.

Take the Raspis, and set them over the fire in a Posnet, and gather out the thin juyce, the bottom of the skillet being cooled with fair water, and strain it with a fine strainer, and when you have as much as you will, then weigh it with Sugar, and boil them till they come to a Gelly, which you may perceive by drawing your finger on the back of the spoon. To dry Fox Skins.

I have found no advertisements of them in early American newspapers, even with all their varied array of utensils and vessels. I fancy the name fell quickly into disuse in this country. In Steele's time, in the Tatler, he speaks of "a silver Posnet to butter eggs."

In his Preface to Blanco Posnet he exposes and ridicules the Dramatic Censorship, just as in Getting Married he exposes and ridicules the popular conception of happy domestic life, and in like manner in The Doctor's Dilemma the superstition that the faculty of medicine is infallible.

Shaw, in his comparatively mild-mannered preface to "The Showing Up of Blanco Posnet," recognizes the Puritan hostility to the theatre, but, somewhat perversely, ascribes it to the fact that the promenoirs have always been used as show-windows by the courtesans of each generation. I suspect, however, that that hostility was more deeply rooted.

The theology of the women who told us that they became atheists when they sat by the cradles of their children and saw them strangled by the hand of God is succeeded by the theology of Blanco Posnet, with his 'It was early days when He made the croup, I guess. It was the best He could think of then; but when it turned out wrong on His hands He made you and me to fight the croup for Him.