The new conundrum of “bread pats,” as the ladies call the epigrammatic
impressors that their work-boxes are always full of now, pleases me
mightily. Nothing could be more stupid than the old style of
_affiche_--an initial--carefully engraved in a hand always perfectly
unintelligible; or a crest--necessarily out of its place, nine times in
ten, in female correspondence--because nothing could be more
un-“germane” than a “bloody dagger” alarming every body it met, on the
outside of an order for minikin pins! or a “fiery dragon,” threatening a
French mantua-maker for some undue degree of tightness in the fitting of
the sleeve! and then the same emblem, recurring through the whole
letter-writing of a life, became tedious. But now every lady has a
selection of axioms (in flower and water) always by her, suited to
different occasions. As, “Though lost to _sight_, to memory dear!”--when
she writes to a friend who has lately had his eye poked out. “Though
absent, unforgotten!”--to a female correspondent, whom she has not
written to for perhaps the three last (twopenny) posts; or, “_Vous le
meritez!_” with the figure of a “rose”--emblematic of every thing
beautiful--when she writes to a lover. It was receiving a note with this
last seal to it that put the subject of seals into my mind; and I have
some notion of getting one engraved with the same motto, “Vous le
meritez,” only with the personification of a _horsewhip_ under it,
instead of a “rose”--for peculiar occasions. And perhaps a second would
not do amiss, with the same emblem, only with the motto, “_Tu l’auras!_”
as a sort of corollary upon the first, in cases of emergency! At all
events, I patronise the system of a variety of “posies;” because where
the inside of a letter is likely to be stupid, it gives you the chance
of a joke upon the out.--_Monthly Magazine_
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