In foreign countries some strange methods are adopted for identifying the contents of the wash-tub. In some parts of France linen is defaced with the whole name and address of the laundry stamped upon it, and an additional geometrical design to indicate the owner of the property. In Bavaria every patron of the wash-tub has a number stamped in large characters on his linen. In Bulgaria every laundry has a large number of stamps engraved with designs, and in Russia the laundries mark linen with threads worked in arrow shapes. In some Russian towns the police periodically issue regulations for laundries. In Odessa books of marks are furnished annually to the laundry proprietors, and these marks and no others can be used to identify them.—Albany Journal.
(1485)
IDLENESS
Says George S. Hilliard:
The ruin of most men dates from some vacant hour. Occupation is the armor of the soul, and the train of idleness is borne up by all the vices. I remember a satirical poem in which the devil is represented as fishing for men and adapting his bait to the taste and temperament of his prey; but the idler, he said, pleased him most, because he bit the naked hook.
(1486)
Killing time? I would as soon think of cutting an angel’s throat that I met on God’s highway, coming straight from His throne. Pleasure-mongering! Somebody to entertain them! As if life were a cheese and men were maggots boring in it! Are there not thousands of foreigners asking to be taught? Are not the Spaniards knocking at our door, asking us to organize for them a school of morals, a Bible school, a school of religion, a school of patriotism, on Sunday afternoon? Are there not social settlements that ask for hundreds of workers and teachers? How would it look if a regiment of soldiers at a critical moment at Gettysburg had sat down on the grass and looked for a cool tree and paid some man to come in with a jew’s-harp and play to them, while the struggle for liberty went on? (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.
(1487)
Idol-worship—See [Fetishism].