—an invitation issued to the frequenters of some inn where the brown jug bearing the inscription had an abiding place.
Another mug essays to point a moral while the toper is draining its contents. The potter who would strew his moral lessons in stoneware had about as much sense of the ludicrous as the gentleman who used to mark the London pavements with the text “Watch and Pray,” which he had printed in reverse on the soles of indiarubber shoes he would wear. On the bottom of a drinking mug the notion is quaint enough—
“When this you see,
Remember me—
Obeay God’s Word.”
For our part, we prefer the following, which has a truer ring about it—
“Drink faire,
Don’t sware.”
A large bowl of Bristol delft bears on it “Success to the British Arms.”
A fine breezy inscription, dated 1724, smacks of the hunting field. One can hear the rollicking voices of the eighteenth-century squires such as Randolph Caldecott loved to depict. Only two lines, but they ring in one’s ears as a message from the good old times—