THE MOTTO HABIT

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVIII, Issue 89, 17 April 1914, Page 2

THE MOTTO HABIT

SOME AMUSING EXAMPLES.

A recent magazine, treating of "house-inscriptions," commends the ancient practice of placing mottoes on your outside wall to welcome or to warn the approaching guest. It does not remark, however, upon the pre-sent-day tendency to ornament with | pithy sayings rooms where guests may i eat or sleep. G. F. Benson makes some bitter fun abouti this motto habit, as it was exhibited by his selfsatisfied Rector in "Sheaves." Swinburne, the school inspector, in his reminiscences, confesses to having been troubled by texts and mottoes during I his frequent "visiting out.." In one ! hiouse, having no hot water, and wishing to shave, he looked for the bell. "The hook was there but the rope was gone, and where the rope should have been an amateur illumination I confronted me: 'Let your requests be [ made known unto God.' I could , hardly pray for shaving-water, so I idid without." In another house, 'Wash me and I shall be clean," was the wall illumination, but there was no bath. Then; where "Rest in the Lord," hung over a most uncomfortable bed, "I could not help thinking, I certainly cannot rest here,' and Warm our cold hearts,' in a morning room, was incongruous enough with breakfast unpunetual, chilly, and uninviting." The critic himself was helped, however, by some lines seen on a vicarage, staircase: "Downward, ever downward, falls the slope of sin; Stopping isn't easy, therefore don't begin." "It reminded me," he says, "of Spurgeon s famous object-lesson when lie slid down tho bannister of his platform to. show the ease of the downward path, and climbed laboriously up the stairs to show the arduous upward way." He applauds, too, the good adage once met with, beneath a quaint picture of a Bible and* a plough—"Culture harmeth neither folk nor field." Tt might stand as a motto for the Bible>-in-Schools movement,! In a.recent novel a girl admits that she likes, the textfe^putiij> on the windowvs of the Tube. "I a l- j ways try to get opposite a window I with a text on it. It's sure to be the ' only thing in the train worth reading". Its better than a list of diseases beginning with a furred tongue and '

t.. • ■■■«"s»'-'^»)»:f; 'jatti'tmiMK-i. ._. .. , *~<_±~. .. , r7 , •--. _^. ; ending with _a disordered liver anyh°T v A.Pf3- ama S^°P m.a<^ really a. touching choice when it set as motto straggling above the shelves, "We trust m-God." And for a fine saying decidedly in the wrong place, lt is hard to beat the example given by a Malay cook at a planter's bungalow, wiien he iced m agreeable pink letters on the cake he made as a Christmas present for his master, •Prepare to meet thy God." .

? TTB 1^ *Wtjilo J SajS the "BpUW--' . Herald) that the Postmaster-Genera! opened two brand new post offices lastweek in Otago. It is equally note- . worthy' that this Department is sopoverty stricken that it has never"" been able to afford to pufbty up thewindows of the Milton Post Office, which were injured by a fire two yearsago. These window panes are held together by bits of board, tacked on, and any person can take the glass- . out,of them in a minute or two, step in-to" the office, and take away> the safe. i _.