MOTTOES ON DOORS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15504, 10 January 1914, Page 5 (Supplement)

MOTTOES ON DOORS.

GRAVE AND JOCULAR.

" Over my door I will write the word ' Whim,' " says Emerson in one of bis essays. He was speaking metaphorically, of course, expressing by this figure of speech his scorn of conventionality and consistency. Jack London looks back with something of the pride that apes humility to his youthful experiences as a tramp. Nevertheless, those experiences have not taught him hospitality to the masses. On the front door of his home in California this legend greets the wayfarer: " No admission Except on. Business. No Business Transacted Here." The back door is equally forbidding. " Please," so runs the sign. "Do Not Enter without Knocking. Please Do not Knock." Marquis de Gallifet, one of tho survivors of Sedan and the Second Empire, follows in Jack London's lead, though his notice to callers is not quite so brusque: Knock one. knock twice. And some one wills come ; If you have to knock tfcrice It means " Not at Homo." Hans von Bulow, tho pianist, at one time posted on his door a notice that was quite in tho London vein, " Before Noon, Not Receiving; AfternooD, Out."

There is a French proverb which says, By reason of a punctuation mark Martin lost his donkey." And thereby hangs a tale: Over the Abbey of Asinello in Italy (" as inello," it may be further explained, is a diminutive, meaning a little ass) there once presided a liberal-minded monk who caused these versus to be inscribed over the outside door: Ba open evermore, O thou my door! To none be shut, to honest or to poorl This cheery man died, and was succeeded by a Brother Martin, who was as penurious as his predecessor had been prodigal.- Martin retained the couplet; but altered the punctuation as follows: Be open evermore. O thou my door. To none! Be shut to honest or to poor! When the Pope's attention was called to tho remodelled inscription, Martin was summarily deposed. When Bandon, in Ireland, was taken by. King William's men in 1689, the following notice was posted up by the victors on the town gates, " A Turk, a Jew, or Athiest may enter here; but not a Catholic." A Jacobite of the forbidden faith took mischievous revenge by chalking the following couplet underneath the notice: Whoever wrote those words, he wrote them well; The same are written on the gates of hell. To an obscure Connecticut minister is attributed a well-known line which he is said to liave written on the gatepost of a cemetery- in his native village, after perusuing the fulsome epitaphs on the headstones within : " Here lie the dead, and hore the living lie."

(luatave Dore once bought a villa on the outskirts of Paris, and wrote over the ontrance this muscial rebus, Do, Mi, Si, La, Do, Re. This, properly interpreted, is " Domicile a Dore," or in plain English, " Home of Dore."Victor Hugo had these lines inscribed over the door of his study:— To rise at six, to dine at ten. To sup st six to sleep at ten, Makes a man live for ten times ten. A Yorkshire schoolmaster is credited with the following motto, which appeared ovor the door of his house :— Time is thou hast; eco that thou well employ. Time past is gone; thou canst not that employ. Time future is not, and may neTer lie; Tuns present is the only time for theo. The Latin motto in John Fisko'a library in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was " Disce ut semper victurus, Vive ut eras moriturus," which may bo roughly translated, '" Work as if you were to live forever ; live as if you were to die to-mor-row." This motto he translated for the portrait of himself in his workroom, which is now in the collection at Princeton.