is subject has lent itself to some picturesque im- 
ngs. Many fantastic meanings have been ascribed 
2 most casual and ordinary symbols of the ancients. 
. old writers of skill and authority have allowed 
‘imagination to invest the worthies of antiquity 
armorial bearings and fanciful attempts have been 
to figure out a system of heraldry dating back to 
istoric ages. In a sense this attempt is justified. 
d Morgan has gone so far as to ascribe armorial 
bearings to Adam and also to Eve in which serpents and 
es and fig leaves are ingeniously woven through the 
s. Another writer claims that Adam’s shield was 
rst red, but that he was compelled to change it some- 
at after the fall and modified it with a garland of 
t leaves. Hye’s shield was white, but after she passed 
from Paradise it was silver with a little apple tree in 
th 1e center. 
beth her zealous interest to establish the gentility of all 
Beh a very commendable and altruistic motive, Lady 
Juliana Berners has discovered that Adam was a gentle- 
man i in which we may all agree and lay the flattering 
3 unetion to heart with no trace of sarcasm in the humor. 
if there are any sticklers as to Adam trying to 
_ shield himself behind his fair partner in disgrace let him 
hold his peace. 
_ Many a pleasantry underlies the writings of the most 
j _ prosaic and profound, a very ripple of mirth under the 
_ dullest sagacity. We take down a tome,and open it 
and look into withered, mummy faces of forgotten sages 
of most forbidding aspect that soon, however, gleam 
_ with m°:riment under the grim cerements if we give 
_ them our attention. 
The reader was told that heraldry had its court jester, 
or words to that effect. These are some of the choice 
gems of humor that the writer in his delectable search 
_ has dug up from some musty and dry heaps taken from 
fireproof vaults where the precious dust reposes with’ 
its glittering particles, for which he trusts his read- 
ers are duly thankful. 
No incomparable Mark Twain ever perpetrated a finer 
jest than Lady Juliana Berners and yet her name is 
missed from the list of the world’s humorists. 
. Too much of such fanciful and rediculous speculation 
will spoil any science as it has hurt religion and bring 
discredit upon it which is unjust. Mark Twain in writ- 
ing about a cearbuncle on his neck says that the 
dictionary defines acarbuncle as a jewel and de- 
plores the humor as out of place. Of course any 
- one can see that too much of that sort of jesting in a 
dictionary would depreciate and very soon destroy the 
- art of lexicography. And therefore the fantastic tilts 
of such writers might easily bring into disrepute all the 
evidences of ancient heraldry, especially among so seri- 
ous a class of scholars as heralds whose zeal in the cause 
of systematic and scientific heraldry has dried up all 
their springs of humor, as zeal in any science is apt to 
do. Beware of the withering drought of scientific zeal. 
; Fanciful descriptions are given by a few of ensigns 
and emblems with which these antiquarians fictionists 
have invested Abraham and Moses and the dim figures 
of the classical and mythological ages. 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 7 
A Tale of Heraldry. 
BY REV. LOUIS H. RUGE. 
' (COPYRIGHTED, 1910, BY L. H. RUGE.) 
Guillim with some warrant perhaps has invested the 
men of Israel with armorial bearings. These attributive 
arms of Samson and David down to the wise men of the 
east and Jesus himself, whom these enthusiasts upon 
the subject have invested with a coat of arms, are not 
authenticated sufficiently by any records or research 
that can be found. 
It is true that in sacred and profane history 
we find seals and symbols. The Bible gives the symbols 
of the twelve tribes and in Herodotus are recorded sym- 
behe signs that distinguished communities and armies 
from earliest times, as also in the Aeneid. In Genesis 
35:18 the Hebrew word meaning signet refers to a ring 
seal for sealing documents. Jezebel we read used the 
King’s seal. From Numbers 2:2; Psalms 20:5; 60:4; 
Isaiah 13:2; and Jeremiah 22:24 we gather the same in- 
formation about insignias and seals worn on the hand or 
suspended on a ribbon round the neck as they are still 
worn in the east, or emblazoned upon banners. All this 
was perhaps the genesis of armorial bearings in later 
periods. 
Bolton is known as a writer upon the subject who has 
devoted his life in tracing and inventing a coat of arms 
for all the heroes of past ages. Ferne ascribes armorial- 
bearings to the Egyptian Kings; the priesthood of 
Kigypt’s wierd and magical rites being the custodians 
of all symbols in those days. 
Darius is known to have used a signet as did his lords. 
Alexander the Great is accorded a shield with a golden 
chair upon which is a lion represented as amusing him- 
self in playing with a battle ax. 
The Romans and Goths and Vandals used many sym- 
bels. Tiles of the 11th century bear armorial devices. 
The symbolie arms of the Saxon monarchs and Anglo- 
Norman Kings, so largely a matter of tradition and un- 
authenticated and unsystematized are still presumptive 
evidence in which a coat of arms later is traced to Wil- 
liam J, two lions on a shield, as also armorial bearings 
to Matilda, his wife. 
Archaeology is full of evidences, as Hallam claims, 
that emblems and devices similar to modern heraldry 
were used from time immemorial. Antiquity has passed 
down indisputable evidences that nations and individ- 
uals distinguished themselves by the use of insignias 
that although haphazard and unsystematized served the 
same purpose as the emblazoned shield of the tourna- 
ments and erusades in later centuries. 
Many Egyptian and pre-historic seals are found in the 
world’s great museums formed of clay and even at- 
tached to documents by means of papyrus bands and 
cords bearing the hieroglyphies of heathern deities and 
kings. At first these designs were anything of an allu- 
sive association, of plants, animals, familiar objects, ar- 
tificial designs and mythological monsters. 
The unsystematie condition and usages of these sym- 
bols and insignias is no worse than was civilization and 
government of that day. No one presumes to say that 
civilization is purely a modern affair because it is more 
orderly, refined and moral than that of the ancients. 
As civilization fades away into antiquity scarcely dis- 
tinguishable from the debris of barbarism so the syn» 
