A Warning

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 10, 7 March 1907, Page 9

A Warning

The man that makes a ' sheep of himself will find a good many people ready to shear him. And how many Catholics in this country have allowed their locks to be taken by the bland, smiling, and oily-tongued itinerant vendor ! In countless homes one meets with worthless books, gaudy religious gewgaws, trashy pictures, and tuppenny-ha'penny ' shrines ' that sleek and enterprising road-knights ha-\e pawned off" on -them at prices ranging from thirty shillings to three pounds. Full many a time and oft we have issued warnings to our Catholic readers against the payment of exorbitant prices for objects — and especially for rubbishy— objects of devotion. Many have profited by our words. There are others whom— to their cost and through their own fault —our monitions have never reached. And there are others not a few who have heard good counsel and then (like Poor Richard's friends) on the first opportunity made haste to set it at defiance. One must, -however, suffer the foolish. And till the crack o' doom there will ever be some into whose brain-cas3s the point of a joke or a lesson of caution can only be inserted with the aid of a diamond-drill. We leave them to their own reflections and to the poimgent comfort of any Cynic Diogenes that may be in their neighborhood. In another and allied connection, our warning in regard to highprice purchases of low-price wares is botoi appropriate and useful at the present time. A word to the wise ought to be sufficient.