Not long ago this country woke up to the fact that with a good
deal of our canned food we were not getting just what the
colored label on the outside of the can led us to suppose. It
was a shocking disillusionment to find that the label showed
luscious peach jelly, when the inside of the can contained only
some nicely prepared and flavored gelatine, quite innocent of
any relation to peaches. The country at once had indigestion,
and passed laws to keep the peaches and the labels in the
neighborhood of the same can.
The labels on persons are also misleading, because one can
see the label but not always the real person. The titles and
degrees are supposed to be descriptive of the owner’s brains,
and sometimes they are; but they are not always accurate, and
they never make brains. A university might confer a B.A. or an
LL.D. on a lineal descendant of Balaam’s beast of burden, and
yet it would not make him wise.--JAMES M. STIFLER, “The
Fighting Saint.”
(1744)
See ENVY GRATIFIED; NEW, THE.