NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 4 August 1921, Page 26

NOTES

Give a Dog a Bad Name e A correspondent wants to know the origin of the proverb, Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Some reader may be able to oblige in the matter. It was a character in one of the Waverley Novels that said with much truth that as a rule a dog that got a bad name went and did something that deserved hanging. That observation ought to be written on the tablets of the mind of every man and woman in power over others. No teacher who has an ounce of sympathy or discernment can ignore the fact that many a boy or girl is positively driven to mischief by getting a bad name and by being treated as an outlaw. Superiors of all sorts ought to ponder on it. Only at the Day of Judgment will the harm and ruin wrought by the systematic persecution and oppression of the dog with the bad name be realised. It is the same story with regard to suspicion and want of trust and candidness. In colleges there are, from time to time, superiors who are always spying on the pupils, always suspecting them, always taking the worst view of everything that lends itself at all to a bad view. The consequence is deplorable for honbr and manliness. The spying and the suspicion breed sneaks and tale-bearers and cunning and deceit, t- i Silence Is Golden Speech is silvern , silence is golden is another wise proverb—even though it be German. If any man offend not with his tongue the same is a perfect man : no truer word was ever said than that. And, of course by man” in the context, woman is also meant. To keep silent at the times that one ought be silent is a great achievement ; to speak when one ought to speak is only less great. To speak when speech is hurtful is bad ; but to be silent when honor and honesty demand frank speaking is worse. And anyone can see that in the light discernment of the tempera taeendi et loquendi there is opportunity for the practice of great virtue. What does puzzle one is the fact that very often the most sanctimonious persons are the greatest scandalmongers. When one knows that half the tittle-tattle and gossip and back-biting in a parish has its beginning in a coterie of devout church-goers who would deem it as natural that they should miss week-day devotions as that they should omit to discuss their neighbors on the way home from church, one cannot help having certain doubts as to the,depth and solidity of these paragons of virtue. In fact one thinks of that respectable Jewish gentleman who prayed loudly and proudly with one eye on the pool sinful publican at the door. In Devereux’s old catechism there was a fine robust answer that ought to be incorporated in every catechism in the world. It was this: “Tale-bearers and scandal-gatherers live in a damnable state and should be shunned as if afflicted with the plague.” Strong language, indeed, but very wholesome and very true. When reading the Divinn Comedia one frequently feels sorry for the poor wretches whom Dante has consigned to the circles of the Inferno. The poor schoolmaster whose mind is on the little streams that run down the green hills beside the Arno moves us to pity; Paolo and Francesca, swept by the infernal tempests, touch the tears of things — lachri/mae rerum —with their sad A essun mnggior dal ore die ricordarsi del tempo fehce nella miseria ; but the knowledge that in the lowest and darkest and most dreadful circles of hell are located the scandal-mongers, and the liars, and the deceitful mends is as sweet to the healthy-minded reader as revenge to a Corsican bandit. Repetition “Repeat yourself. Repetition is a powerful figure of rhetoric. They daily partake of the same dishes, go to see the same pieces, and listen to the same tunes ” Thus a writer in the Figaro on the public taste. How

far he is right we will not venture to say, for we are able to speak for only one of the public and that one does hot like repetition by any means. But, when we ponder on the relations between supply and demand it dawns on us that there may be people who differ from us ; for surely many of the writers who repeat themselves to weariness, and many of the preachers whose secondly winds back upon their firstly, and whose thirdly, fourthly, and fifthly are as like the firstly as taps of a hammer on the same nail are like- one another have reason to believe that there are some whom they are not wearying. Whatever the fact may be, we have no manner of doubt ourselves that the bane of much writing of our time is endless repetition and padding, and we speak ex cathedra as to our conviction that we have not heard in all our life a round dozen of sermons that could not have been preached with better effect in one third of the time their delivery took. Once we saw in an Irish paper a humorous suggestion that offenders ought to be condemned to hear a certain long-winded parish priest preach once, twice, or thrice, according to the enormity of their offence much as if we suggested that there ought to be a Dantean circle in the Inferno where the united society of New Zealand day-liars ought to be compelled to listen for eternity to the editor of the ()tar/o Daili/ Timex reading selections from his thousand and one leading articles on Ireland. Old Remedies and Nostrums People no longer take cowslip wine for sleeplessness, add saffron to their tea as a remedy against low spirits, and put goose-grass in their porridge in spring as a preventive of scurvy. We do not hear of conserve of marigold for “passion of the heart,” or of trefoil, primrose leaves, and pounded yarrow for toothache. Snails, now merely a table delicacy for those who know, were recognised as a cure for consumption, while a spider enclosed in a goose-quill and hung round the neck was infallible for the ague. The following passage from Herbert’s Country Carson is like a picture of ye ancient days of the simple .dife : “In the knowledge of simples, wherein the manifold wisdom of God is plainly seen,, one thing would be carefully observed ; which is to know that herbs may be used instead of drugs of the same nature, and to make the garden the shop: for home-bred medicines are both more easy for the parson’s purse and more familiar for men’s bodies. So, where the apothecary useth for loosing Rhubarb, or for binding Bolearmena, the parson nseth damask or white roses for the one, and plantaine, shepherd’s purse, knot-grass for the other, and that with better successe. As for spices, he doth not only prefer home-bred things before them, but condemns them for vanities, and so shuts them out -of his family, esteeming there is no spice comparable, for herbs, to rosemary, thyme, savoury, mints; and for seeds, to fennell and carroway seeds. Accordingly, for salves, his wife seeks not the city, but prefers her garden and finds before all outlandish gums. And surely hyssope, and mercury, adders, tongue, yerrow, melilot, and Saint John’s wort made into a salve; and elder, camomill, nallowes, comphrey and smallage made into a poultic have done great and rare cures.” Considering how common was the idea among our ancestors that home-made medicines were the best it is a wonder that the human race is not extinct. Once we were given a home-made medicine' and told to take it before going to bed. We did, and nearly burst. Later it was explained to us that a spoonful, not a tumblerful should have been taken. The explanation was too late; but the lesson was timely for many a subsequent attempt to practise homicide on us.