SOMETHING IN A SIGN.
Romeo would never have asked "What's in a name?" if he had but lived to take a tour in England, and become acquainted with the nomenclature of some of our inns. To us there is hardly a sign in the kingdom which is not thoroughly sign-ificant: and any traveller, we should think, who has his mental eyes about him, may see at a glance outside the way in which he will be taken in. Who, for instance, would expect to enter the jaws, or doors, of a Lion without being bitten, or to get away from an Eagle without considerable bleeding? A little matured, the Lamb becomes decidedly indicative of fleecing; while every Bear, we know, is naturally prone to squeeze as many as he can lay his paws on. Roguery in the Fox is what everybody looks for, and plucking and roasting are, of course, inseparable from a Goose and Gridiron. Nor is the Blue Boar an exception to the rule, for it most aptly symbolises your complexion when you leave it: and no one, we should think, would enter a Green Man, when reminded on the threshold of his verdancy in doing so.
Of all our signs, however, perhaps there is none more suggestive than the Magpie and Stump, which any one may see is merely a contraction for the far more significant Magpie and Stump Up.