Visiting Cards (Vol. iv., pp. 133. 195.).
—"Marriage à-la-Mode," Plate IV., supplies an additional proof of playing cards having done duty as Visiting Cards and Cards of Invitation during the middle of the last century. There are several lying on the floor, in the right-hand corner of the picture. One is inscribed—"Count Basset begs to no how Lade Squander sleapt last nite."
C. FORBES.
Temple.
Absalom's Hair (Vol. iv., p. 131.).
—Your correspondent P. P. remarks in the number of "NOTES AND QUERIES" for August 23, that "Absalom's long hair had nothing to do with his death; his head itself, and not the hair upon it, having been caught in the boughs of the tree." Even allowing the silence of Scripture upon the matter, the tradition has certainly the basis of respectable antiquity to rest on. Bishop J. Taylor thus writes in his Second Sermon upon St. Matthew, xvi. 26. ad finem:—
"The Doctors of the Jews report that when Absalom hanged among the oaks by the hair of the head, he seemed to see under him Hell gaping wide ready to receive him; and he durst not cut off the hair that intangled him, for fear he should fall into the horrid Lake, whose portion is flames and torment, but chose to protract his miserable life a few minutes in that pain of posture, and to abide the stroke of his pursuing enemies. His condition was sad when his arts of remedy were so vain."
RT.
Warmington, Sept. 3, 1851.