February, 1906 
of them, the most important one being placed in front of his 
home at Mount Vernon. The old dial which stood in the 
garden of Mary Washington, the mother of George Wash- 
ington, still stands in Fredericksburg. Ring and pocket dials 
were used one hundred and fifty years ago. A very appro- 
priate motto for one is, ‘‘Set me right and use me well and 
I ye time to you will tell.” 
The introduction of mottoes on the sun-dial appears to 
have come into use with dial making. Where could a short 
moral lesson, a suggestion, or inspiring thought be better 
placed? The most heedless or indifferent could not fail to 
see the instructive words. The mottoes were frequently in 
Latin, a few in Greek or Hebrew, but the old English mot- 
toes seem the most appealing. What a graceful appeal from 
the dial to the sun is this, ‘ook on me that I may be looked 
on.” Another old English motto, ‘I only reckon the bright 
hours,” so true of the dial face dependent on the sunshine, 
so suggestive of deep reflection upon every one’s experience 
of this checkered life! 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 97 
the value of one-third of a dollar, dated February 17, 
on one side of which was a chain of links bearing the name 
of the thirteen original States, inclosing a sunburst bearing 
the words ‘‘American Congress, we are one’’ 
posite side there was a print of a sun-dial on which was in- 
scribed the following motto, ‘“Fugio.” ‘‘Mind your busi- 
ness.’ The origin of this motto may be of interest. 
taken from one placed in the Inner Temple, in London, of 
which the following story is told. A dialer had been in- 
structed by the Benchers to send at a certain hour to get a 
motto to place under the dial in the Inner Temple; when 
the man arrived at the library at the appointed hour he 
found a surly old man poring over a musty book. To him 
he said, ‘‘Please, sir, the gentlemen told me to call this hour 
for a motto for the sun-dial.”’ “Begone about your business,”’ 
was the testy reply. The man painted the words under the 
dial, and the chance words seemed so appropriate to the 
Benchers that they were never removed. 
To the architect the sun-dial finds its place, for how many 
L7G, 
on the Op- 
It was 
6—A Sun-Dial of the Italian Style with an Ornate Pedestal 
In Sir Walter Scott’s grounds at Abbotsford there is a 
sun-dial, on the face of which is inscribed this motto, ‘‘For 
the night cometh.”’ 
There is a certain sense of humor attached to the follow- 
ing motto, of English origin: 
‘Time wastes us, our bodies and our wits, 
And we waste Time, so Time and we are 
quits. 
The following motto, 
Life’s but a shadow, 
Man’s but dust, 
This dyall sayes, 
“ Dy all we must,” 
is of English origin, and is frequently seen, but I must con- 
fess that it is too poor to be associated with so beautiful a 
thought as a sun-dial inspires. 
The figure of a sun-dial played an interesting part in the 
early history of the United States, for in the first notes 
issued for currency by the American Congress was one for 
aie. 
7—A Pedestal, Copy of an Old Roman Altar 
awkward spaces of a blank wall have been covered with a 
blind window, or a senseless ornament, that a dial with its 
carved and painted face would have better filled, as is shown 
in the illustration Figure 11, and on which is inscribed, ‘I 
mark time, dost thou?’’ and at the bottom of which is 
‘Tempus fugit’’—time flies. 
In many of the formal gardens planned by skilled archi- 
tects sun-dials are now springing up to the importance of 
forming the central keynote to the whole general scheme 
of a garden, and is one of the objects of the greatest beauty 
and interest. The sun-dial, Figure 2, which is placed in the 
bay of the upper terrace in the garden of ‘‘Yaddo,”’ at Sara- 
toga, N. Y., is especially beautiful with its metal face rest- 
ing on a marble slab, supported on two carved standards of 
classic design representing lions, which are copies of those 
two splendid standards unearthed in the house of Cornelius 
Rufus, of Pompeii, and which may now be seen in that 
famous dwelling, restored in that ancient city; these standards 
were made with the permission and under the supervision of 
the Italian Government for the owner of the garden of 
“Yaddo,”” Mr. Spencer Trask. Upon the metal face of the 
