—Quarles, in his Emblems, b. 2. 12, p. 124., edition 1812, has the following passage: "Christ's cross is the christ-cross of all our happiness," i. e. the alphabet, the beginning, perhaps the alpha and omega. Grose, in his Olio, p. 195., 1796, relates the following story:
"An Irishman explaining the reason why the Alphabet is called the Criss-cross-Rowe, said it was because Christ's cross was prefixed at the beginning and end of it."
W. B. H.
Manchester.
Meaning of "Waste-book" (Vol. iii., pp. 118. 195. 251. 307.).
—The gentlemen who have hitherto attempted to explain this term are very evidently unacquainted with the subject on which they write; with the exception, however, of MR. CROSSLEY, whose quotation from the Merchant's Mirrour confirms what I am about to say. To the clerk in a merchant's counting-house, like him
"Who pens a stanza when he should engross,"
the waste-book may indeed be a weary waste; but he does not call it so for that reason, any more than he gives poetical names to the day-book or ledger. In short, we must not go to the merchant's counting-house at all to discover its meaning; or, if we do, "the book-keeper and cashier" who makes the Query may refer us to one of the elders, or head of the firm, who, if he be not too proud to own it, may just recollect that his progenitors or predecessors in the chandler's shop made their rough entries in a book which was literally waste. For origins we must look to the lowest forms or types existing. The merchant's system of book-keeping was not invented perfect; and we may see its various stages in the different gradations of trade at the present day. In many respectable shops, in the country especially, the waste-book is formed by a quire or two of the commonest paper used in the particular trade, that will bear pen and ink, sown together. An advance upon this is the waste-book as a distinct book, bound and ruled, of which the day-book or journal is merely a fair copy; and this being made, the former is held of no account. The importance, however, of reference to original entries has no doubt led to the preservation of the "Waste-book" in regular book-keeping, and a modification of its character.
S. H.
St. John's Wood, April 22. 1851.