Executors I will none make, thereby great stryfe may grow,
Because the goods that I shall leave wyll not pay all I owe.
THE TRIPOD.
According to the Babylonian Talmud, Beracoth, p. 8, and in Jalkud Schimoni on Ps. lxviii, 20, “Nine hundred and three axe the kinds of death made in this world.” Physiologists drop the nine hundred, declare that life stands on a tripod, and assert that we die by the lungs, the heart, or the brain.
IMPRECATORY EPITAPH.
The Shakspearean imprecation, “Curst be he that moves my bones,” is paralleled in an epitaph in Runic characters at Greniadarstad church, in Iceland, which according to Finn Magnussen’s interpretation, concludes thus:—
“If you willingly remove this monument, may you sink into the ground.”
THE FLEUR-DE-LIS.
Nothing, says an old writer, could be more simple than the lily, which was the distinctive badge of the French monarchy; nor, at the same time, could anything be more symbolic of the state of the nobility and gentry, exempted from the necessity of working for a livelihood or for dress, than lilies, of which it is said: “They toil not neither do they spin,” neque laborant neque nent,—which was the motto of the royal arms of France.