WAYSIDE GEMS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 210, 4 September 1900, Page 8

WAYSIDE GEMS.

Really witty adaptations of well-known quotations and proverbs are frequently made use of by enterprising tradesmen to attract custom. A cycle dealer, whose name is "Nettle," turns his prickly cognomen to business account in this singularly apt quotation from Henry IV.: "Out of this nettle danger I pluck the flower safety;" while a costumier In the same town,, whose sympathetic name is "Love," Informs his customers, in letters half a foot long, that "Love hath a large mantle." A provision merchant turns the same name to useful account by this announcement, which speaks for Itself: "George Herbert says 'Love is a personal debt,' but this Love's terms are strict cash." The proprietor of a large storY in New York, whose name is appropriately "S. Egg," has clearly a good conceit of himself, for be announces to the world at large that "opportunities, like .Bgg(s), come one at a time," thus making a commercial asset of a well-known proverb. A grocer and provision dealer called Little had a practical monopoly of the custom of a small town in the Midlands, when to his natural annoyance a rival settled in the place and opened a shop under the name "John Strong." Within a few days a dignified protest appeared in the outraged grocer's window: "Man wants but Little here below" (Goldsmith). But the new-comer was a man of nt least, equal learning and powers of quotation; for on the following day this supplementary notice appeared in his window: "Nor wants that Little long" (Goldsmith). Smarter still were tro rivnl notices of .two watchmakers, one of whom was called "I.Wise." Mr Wise had adopted as his business motto, "He is AVise that's wise in time." To this the new-comer retorted by this quotation from Wordsworth: "He Is oft the wisest man who is not Wise at all." By no means the least clever, of these humorous trade announcements was that of a rbookseller called "Hart," who supplied for many years all the books used in a local grammar school. Mr Hart's business motto was this couplet:—"Who in life's race would fain a good start, Should always get his 'books by Hart.' "