4:00 P.M.

MARCH 15, 1973

Meeting # 1200

SOME UNRECOGNIZED SHRINES
IN REDLANDS

by Lawrence E. Nelson Ph.D.

Assembly Room, A. K. Smiley Public Library

I take my text today from the first few verses of a fourteenth century Pilgrims' Progress as related with great gusto by Geoffrey Chaucer, American Revised Version:

When that April with his showers sweet
The drought of March hath pierced to the root

Then longen folks to go on pilgrimages,
And palmers to seek strange strands
And far shrines known in varied lands,
And specially, from every shire's end
Of England, to Canterbury they wend..

The wending of medieval pious, and sometimes not so pious pilgrims to and from the shrines of Cbristendom has left marks etymological, entomological, malacologi›al and occasionally scatalogical upon modern language, literature and theology.

The easy gait of the pilgrims' ponies on their way to the shrine gave rise to the term Canterbury gallop, which has now lost four of its original six syllables and become merely a canter. The shape of the little bells jingling upon the bridles of the shrine-bound steeds has given name to some blue, pink or white blossoms, Canterbury Bells.

Pilgrims returning from Jerusalem bearing palm branches as sacred symbol were called palmers. Presumably the twenty-three families of Palmers now listed in the Redlands telephone directory are family descendants who have retained the name. Certainly the small caterpillars which inch busily along as if measuring the miles of their pilgrimage are still called Palmer worms, as William Umbach's dictionary will bear witness. Pilgrims to Rome were prone to wide wanderings and amorous delays, giving us the terms to roam sad Romeo, I sometimes wonder whether the ten Romero families in our telephone book are their descendants.

The Shell Oil Company still adorns its multitudinous wayside shrines with the magnified and intensified golden glow of its Pectens Jacobeus shells, for centuries the symbol of the plodding pilgrims who-- and why does not some one remind the company of the obvious fact-- never imbibed gasoline, and always returned home tirelessly Jubilant after visiting the shrine of Saint James of Compostella in Spain.

Last winter Stuart Lindenberger, eon of our deceased club member, Edwin Lindenberger, made a Triage to Spain and brought me back a Pecten shell, which he had obtained, after searching the seashore in vain, from the filling station he patronised there, In other words the restaurant waiter noting his covetous stare at the shell upon which his salad had been served, gave it to hint

Our world famous malacologiat, Stillman Berry, can of course tell us instantly how closely or distantly akin it is to the Shell of Saint James, Pecten iacobeus.

Fifty-eight years after Gooffrey Chaucer death effectively stopped his writing about imaginary pilgrims on their way to the tomb of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, a group of actual pilgrims journeyed with many discomforts to the emotion stirring shrines in Jerusalem. They went with considerable trepidation, not knowing how the then Saracen overlords would treat then.

The unbelievers treated the believers very well indeed. I quote from page 24 of R. J. Mitchell’s The Spring Voyage subtitled The Jerusalem Pilgrimage in 1458.

"The sale to these tourists of mass-produced reproductions of the Holy Sepulchre and other such souvenirs area one of the more important sources of revenue. Still more lucrative was the traffic in "the earth from which God fashioned Adam." (Glen Adams’ forefather, several times removed).

"The Saracens used to dig this in large quantities, loading the precious soil into crates and exporting it not only throughout Europe but also to Egypt, Ethiopia and the Indies."

And then I love the next sentence:

"The supply was virtually inexhaustible., . . This earth was treasured not only as a relic but also as a safeguard against epilepsy."

Lest we be too supercilious about these pilgrims of the fifteenth century, I place in evidence a trophy recently brought back triumphantly and reverently by a college professor and his wife. The sack machine sewn with Number 60 thread, reads, "Holy Land Nazareth", the supply of which is still virtually inexhaustible though at least one Italian cemetery has been completely covered with it., and on the rear of the sack, also printed, is "Needle Work Hand Made Israel". The hand made needlework shows forth the cross of Jesus, in which Israel does not believe, and whose missionaries it is currently threatening with expulsion.

Verily, the world changeth but remaineth much the same. Of course I shall say nothing about the fragments from the recently repaired Church of the Nativity which repose in my own office desk drawer.

Instead, since I too chance to be a lineal descendant of Adam, with shreds of original sin still clinging closely to my carcass, and since by a curious coincidence my own back yard is composed of that same reddish soil from which God fashioned Adam, I generously bring you a bottle of it, which you are at liberty to auction off and place the entire proceeds in the club treasury. No warranties are made or implied, but I have walked over it since 1925, and have never been troubled by epilepsy.

Medieval pilgrims thronged river Jordan for baptism, and lugged home so many containers of its water that chamberpots came to be called jordans; a fact of which the twelve families of Jordans here are doubtless aware and properly proud.

We hear a good deal nowadays about a certain chicken-hearted Kentucky colonel. In i906 another Kentucky colonel, Clifford E. Nadaud, "organised the International River Jordan Water Corporation, capitalized for $5,000,000; obtained from the Sultan of Turkey exclusive right to ship Jordan water all over the world for religious purposes only, and ran glaring newspaper ads for both baptism and burials:

Over the Flower-Strewn Casket of Your Loved One,
Over the Rose-Covered Grave of Your Sainted Dead
Sprinkle Refreshing Water, Like the Dew of Heaven,

From the Sacred River Jordan. (Robert St. John, Roll. Jordan. Roll, p. 375)

Unfortunately, green scum upon his tons of imported Jordan water guillotined his venture.

In 1964 England announced, following centuries of British royal custom, that queen Elizabeth's fourth child would be baptized with water from the river Jordan especially flown in under supervision of the British ambassador.

Thereupon the profit-hungry Jordanian government announced immediate formation of a new department 'to provide mothers everywhere with Jordan water for baptizing their newborn children. "Five hundred such bottles were flown to London as souvenirs for those attending the royal christening." (L. E. Nelson Rivers Show Biblical Influence. pp. 15f.)

History fails to record the use to which the emptied bottles were put.

Three years after the royal splurge in England, five hundred more bottles of Jordan water were received in Redlands by a member of the Fortnightly Club. Since he belongs to a sect ecologically wasteful of water, insisting upon total immersion, the contents seemed somewhat scanty for baptism, so he glued the water to the pages of books he was writing, to prevent those books becoming dry reading. (See preceding title on paragraph above).

Twenty-five years after our pious pilgrims joyously bought Adam's-earth at Jerusalem a death-defying group of about twenty dared the dangerous farther Journey to Mount Sinai "where the Bush burned with the Presence of the Angel of God and was not consumed . . . sanctified by the dread converse of the Patriarch Abed with his Creator" H. F. M. Prescott, Once to Sinai, P. 77) and there were sheltered in the even then extremely old Monastery of Saint Catherine, whence in the nineteenth century the German scholar Tischendorff extracted (whether by fair means or foul there has been bitter dispute) the world famous Slnaitic Manuscript, until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls one of the oldest of Biblical treasures. As preoof of something or other I quote gently from jack Smith’s column in last Thursday’s Los Angeles Times "Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Commandments." Brother Woodrow will doubtless explain.

In the Treasure Room at the University o Redlands library, guarded by Fortnightly member Larry Marshburn, is the personal facsimile copy of the Sinaitic Manuscript formerly belonging to early Fortnightly member Jimmy Kyle, secured by Kyle. God knows how, I hope cyanide was not involved. Recently joining it there is the finest and most enduring color facsimile copy of Dead Sea Scrolls that man now can make, generous gift of our late Fortnightly member Louis Mertins and his wife, Esther. Doubtless the recently established Mertins Memorial Fund will make possible acquisition of other treasures.

I omit detailed discussion of the university and Smiley libraries solely because from here on I limit myself to entirely unrecognized Shrines in Redlands.

How can I recognize a shrine? There are several telltale symptoms:'

Crowds throng to shrines.

As crowds grow the shrines grow.

Crowds require food, so foodstuffs must be abundant and easily accessible. Even the almost inaccessible Monastery of Saint Katherine on Mount Sinai could never have survived without a food-producing oasis and a protecting wall.

Most shrines prefer not only protecting walls but also plenty of elbow room. Finally, a shrine must be deeply rooted in religion, even though that fact is not always adequately recognized,

According to the preceding very casual criteria there are at least six totally unrecognized shrines in Redlands.

We call them SUPERMARKETS and recognize readily their secular existence but not their odor of sanctity. We will admit readily that our Redlands supenmarkcets like plenty of elbow room, alias Parking Space, that most of these are wall-enclosed, that crowds continually make pilgrimage to them, that food is abundant and easily accessible. The lifted eyebrows come at the assumption of a religious heritage permeatingly present.

Since time permits but a few sample suggeations, I limit myself to Sage’s, sage being a common ingredient of stuffing for Christmas and Thanksgiving turkeys.

Aa I near the main entrance I note tall flagpoles, and recall that the historian for our Navy in 1917 asserted that the colors of our flag and of the flags of most of Europe resulted frown the colors of the hangings surrounding the Old Testament's Table of the Shewbread. The rapid service mail deposit box I pass has the five-pointed Christian star rather than the six-pointed star I will find on the Mogen David beverages inside, and its posted hours of collection differ on Sundays and holidays (formerly spelled and pronounced holydays) from those of other daye. I wonder how many cards symbolizing the birth of Jesus, bearing pictures of Saint Nicholas shouting "Twas the night before Christmas," or showing scenes from the Nativity, or the baldheaded pate of a former president bearing the Biblical ruins of David, and reared in a Kansas town with the Biblical name of Abilene, passed through that mail box last year.

The flowering plants I pass are an ecclesiastical calendar. Poinsettias and holly¾ Christmas cometh! Lilies¾ Easter arriveth! My wife received a Tiffany Camellia. Tiffany? Short for the Epiphany, of which Bill Umbach's etymological Bible says, "in moat Christian churches, a yearly festival, held January 6, commemorating the revealing of Jesus as the Christ to the Gentiles in the persons of the Magi at Bethlehem; also called Twelfth Night.

That same towering tome of Bill's reveals that all camellias are named for G. J. Kamel, a seventeenth and early eighteenth century Moravian Jesuit missionary , who found the plants in the Far East and brought them to the admiring attention of the western world,

The ancient Magi found the Christ by following a star; today's youths find Him by following superstars. As I step on the magic mat and the super-door to the super-store swings open I recall that I sought in vain in downtown Rodlands for the recording of "Jesus Christ, Superstar" for which my granddaughter and her husband yearned for Christmas, but found it quickly at Sage's.

As I: enter, directly in front of me is the Jewelry section, flaunting clusters of cheap costume beads for sale¾ shades of Tiffany and Bill Umbach! But again Bills good old Bill, comes to my rescue - I'm thinking of adopting him as my patron saint, for I read: "Bead . . . noun (Middle English, bede, prayer, prayer bead; shortening of ibede; Anglo-Saxon gebed, prayer, from bidden, to pray). A small, usually round piece of glass, wood, metal, etc., pierced for stringing. Plural, a string of beads for counting off prayers; rosary... necklace . . . foam or head on beer, etc...."

I already own several rosaries, and I don't like beer, so I turn left¾ and there directly in front of the pie counter, occupied by waiters for lunch, are two benches, one what my furniture salesman brother correctly calls a Deacon's Bench, the other, a Deaconess Bench. In these days of woman's lib I shall pusillanimously refrain from telling which is which and hasten by with averted eye, en route to the pharmacy section to buy a box of gauze, named from its origin in that famous city from which Biblical Samson carried off the gates one Halloween night.

Oh, well; boys will be boys; trick or treat, and they obviously gave him gauze. He needed it later for his eyes.

I turn away with my box of guaze, marked with the Red Cross, cribbed in reverse from the flag of Swiitzerland, which in turn had been cribbed from the Crusaders’ Cross because, said the Swiss, their crusade for freedom was as sacred as the Orusader's struggle for the tomb of Christ:!!

Shrewdly shelved so ma to meet my eyes as I turned was St. Joseph's Aspirin for Children!: My childhood remedy had been Castor Oil. How much more easily it would have gone down had I but known that for centuries it had been known as Oleum Christi, Oil of Christ.

On the other hand, Oliver Cromwell died because he stubbornly refused to take Quinine not because of its terrible taste, but because it then was called Jesuit’s Bark. Mixing theology and medicine is sometimes very bad business, from both points of view.

Sometimes it is very good business, from both points of view.

The Reverend Edward Stone of Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England, was a firm believer in the then current Doctrine of Signatures, which held that near the source of every disease God furnished its cure, With an identiifying mark to show what disease it would heal. The only known cure malaria was Cinchona (Jesuit) bark, extremely bitter because it contained the still unrecognized quinine.

Malaria was rife in his swampy parish; willow trees were also plentiful. Perhaps that was the signature. He tasted willow bark; bitter as gall; he tried it on his parishioners; their fever subsided. So he proudly read a paper before the Royal Society of London, 'An Account of the Success of the Bark of the Willow in the Cure of Agues." Actually he was wrong, dead wrong, but more brilliantly successful than he dreamed.

Cinchona bark (quinine) kills malaria germs; willow bark does not kill the germs, but eases pain. Inadvertently, because of his religious belief, he had stumbled upon today’s most widely used drug in the world--- aspirin.

Instinctively I shun the perfume counter, lest I be ensnared by the insidious lure of MY SIN, only to find myself enmeshed in women's wear, between Levi's and panty hose.

Levi’s-- Levi Strauss of Gold Rush Days, namesake of Biblical Levi, son of Jacob, founder of the Tribe of Levi and the Levites, whose task was to carry the Ark of the Covenant into the Promised Land, and who received no part in the distribution of that Promised Land because 'their portion was the Lord,' and whose duties were detailed in the Biblical Book of Leviticus.

Pantyhose-- outwardly a lineal descendant of the doddering old fool of Italian comedy; actually a jealous potshot at highly su¢cossful Venice, with its patron saint of Mark the Evangelist, whose heraldic figure, taken from the visions of Ezekiel, was the Lion. To this day the symbol of Venice is the Lion of St. Mark. First the satiric character was the Pantileoni, the All Lion; then he was the pantaloon, then his ridiculous garments reaching to his instep were first pantaloons, then pants, and their feminine versions became pantalettes, panties, and a feminine man became a panty-waist, and now the garment has gone back to its original length-- pantyhose, though not at all what Ezekiel originally envisioned,

Blushing red as a beet I head for the vegetables, to commune with the cabbages, only to find them even more religious than the pantyhose and the Levi’s, for they, along with the radishes and the mustard, and about twelve hundred other plants, because of arrangement of their fourpetalled flowers, have entered the heartland of Christianity; they are the Cruciferae, the Botanic Order of the Bearers of the Cross.

The lettuce has a double duty; not only is it a Crucifer; it also is one of the five bitter herbs permitted to the Jews for their Passover. When young, it Is sweet and tender; grown old, it becomes bitter and harsh.

That, rule the rabbis, is the history of our sojourn in Egypt. When we arrived, the Egyptians treated us sweetly and tenderly; later their treatment became harsh and bitter. Accordingly they high-tailed it out of Egypt so hastily that there was no time to put yeast in the bread dough; so today Sage's sells matzos greaseless, yeastless and saltless, though the label specifies that it is not kosher for Passover. You may, if you wish buy kosher salt there.

But we must get back to our garden sass section.

No sooner had the Hebrews gotten well dieted and dessicated by the desert than they began to forget the lettuce of Egypt and long for other well remembered delicacies, which with watering mouths, as well as their parched tongues permitted, they enumerated¾ "the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic. It sounds as if they were visualizing Sage's. As tar as I am concerned, they can have the whole shebang, leeks, cucumbers, garlic, onions, everything except the melons. The melons of Egypt were watermelons, and I can think of nothing more delicious in a hot, dry desert, than a big, juicy, ice cold watermelon,

Oranges, which I passed a few tables back, wouldn't be so bad, either, though they take me straight back to the venom-tongued monk in Robert Browning’s Soldiloquy of the Spanish Cloister.

"What's the Latin name for parsley?" the cantankerous churchman snarls. I wonder whether he knows that the reason parsley is so slow in sprouting is that the seed must make seven trips to the devil before it germinates. He knows all the outer complexities of Christianity and none of its inner simplicities and sublimities. When he finishes he meal he always lays his knife and fork crosswise, in praise of Jesus. He drinks his orange Juice in three gulps, to illustrate the Trinity,

Did he also lay his carrots crosswise, in praise of Jesus? Quien sabe?

It would have been appropriate. I quote again from that same March 8, 1973, issue of the Times. Since carrots are a root vegetable, very appropriately the article was authored by Waverley Root, Who notes that the French historian Decaux says that the carrot was being cultivated in Gaul before the Christian era, and continues. "There is in any case a French legend which places the carrot in the very beginning of our age, at a time when Christians were still being persecuted.

".Once upon a time carrots were white," the story begins. And some of them still are, including all the wild ones. The story goes on to tell how a band of pagans burst into a kitchen where a Chriotian servant wan scraping white carrots and demanded that she abjure her religion. When she refused, they stabbed her, her blood stained the carrots and ever since they have been orange-red in memory of the martyr."

In the fourteenth century the Menagier de Paris called carrots a basic necessity which could be stored throughout the winter and by their attractive color added cheer to the usually drab meals of Lent.

Attractive color, orange-red, red orange¾

Which oranges shall I buy, from which to squeeze my three theological gulps¾ the Valencias, brought to this country by the missionary padres, or the Washington navels, sent to this country by the missionary Presbyterian, who found them beside Brasil's Bahia de Todos Santos, the Bay of All the Saints, which reminds me, of course, of autumn and Sages piled-high pumpkins, good for pies and Jack-o-lanterns.

Halloweens All Hallows Eve; All Saints Eve, prelude to All Saints Day, when we should pray to be like those saintly patterns. All Saints day, followed by All Souls day, when we should pray for all souls in purgatory, at least if we are of that particular doctrinal persuasion.

By this time we are at the meat freezer, gazing at the Thanksgiving and Christmas Turkeys, which the adventures of Christopher Columbus, alias the Christ-bearing Dove has caused us to substitute for Europe's earlier Saint Martln's goose and Saint Anthony’s pig.

Tucked inconspicuously alongside, apparently misplaced, are several packages of sliced bacon. Gingerly I lift one. Ah, in medium sized letters ''beef, in large letters, "BACON", and in tiny figures "12 ounces". It is deliberately placed apart from the swine bacon at the other end of the case, so as not to confuse the Gentile trade. I pass on meditating over the psychology of yearning for the forbidden, which gives Jewish customers bacon made of beef, and Seven Day Adventists hamburgers made of nut meats, meditating also over twelve ounce pounds.

By now I am alongside the frozen fish, the halibut, or Holy Fish, and all the rest. I wonder what effect Friday, and vegetarianism, and religious holidays, and Lent, and changes of ecclesiastical fiats relating thereto, have upon the buying commitments, the employment fluctuations, and the ledger balances of supermarkets, including their restaurants’ menus.

Religious holidays were sternly forbidden in the heyday of Puritanism, which rewinds me to turn down the aisle of canned vegetables and put in my shopping cart three cane of Boston Baked Beans.

Puritan housewives had a holy aversion to housework on Sundays, so all day Saturday the molasses and salt pork flavored beans gently simmered at the back of the range or over the fireplace in the Puritan town of Boston, so inadvertently named for a forgotten Catholic saint, Saint Botolph.

Saint Botolph's town gave us Puritan Boston Baked Beans, once the mainstay of Sunday dinners. Who gave Mssrs. Underwood the original idea for Devilled Ham? I haven't the least idea, but from the seductive Satan on the can it must have been a very hot tip indeed. Devilled chicken also.

I have never been served Devilled Ham as a tempting up spread on Devil's Food cake¾ I wonder why; there see to be some sort of tribal affinity. It would of course be most inappropriate for Angelfood Cake unless you consider Satan a fallen angel, and the cake had been jarred when baking¾ then the conjunction would be theologically correct, fallen angel and fallen cake, but possibly gastronomically nourishing, even though some of my impish friends ~ picturesquely refer to it as The Last Supper. Rather than permit them to do that, let us flit quickly to the cereal section and let them find us pensively contemplating The First Breakfast.

Adam's Apple?

My own Adam's apple bob’s up and down as I contemplate Quaker Oats, which now comes ready-packaged with apples and cinnamon. Both oats and Quakers have greatly improved their public image since Roman Pliny first saw oats and called them . wheat with the measles; and colonial Americans first sawr Qualcars and shooed them out of their colonies.

Early oatmeal President Henry D. Seymour, searched the dictionary from kiver to kiver seeking a suitable name for his product (this was before Bill Umbach’s time); then he sought an encyclopedia¾ and found the Quakers.

The purity of their lives . their sterling honesty, their strength and manliness impressed him . . . and he reached the general conclusion that Quaker was the name to use. (L. E. Nelson, Trademarks Show Biblical Influence, p. 34) ,

His oatmeal successor, Henry Parsons Crowell, once remarked, "For over forty years I have given 65 percent of by income to God." Hornby Oats, H-O oats gave the University of Redlands a sub-shrine, Hornby Hall of Science.

A Competing cereal had a different problem'

Post called his corn flakes ELIJAH'S MANNA. The Package showed Elijah sitting on a rock in the wilderness, holding out a hand to a raven. The raven talked in every ad and shocked church members by such antics as leering at a Gibson-type glamour girl and saying, 'Well, I declare, If there isn't Hannah at breakfast on Elijah’s Manna.

Protests poured in, and then in England the government refused to register the trade mark, ELIJAH'S MANNA was renamed POST TOASTIES, (D. Barton, "Cereal Story,' Readers Digest, February, 1948.,,

After that it did extremely well indeed.

Pancakes have had a similar Improvement of public image. In England they had been so handy in using up all the grease in the house before the beginning of Lent that they roused Puritan ire and evoked such fulminating diatribes as

There is a thing called wheaten flour, which the sulphury necromantic cooks do mingle with Water, eggs, spice and other tragical magical enchantments, and then they put it little by little into a frying pan of boiling suet, where it makes a confused dismal hissing . , . until at last by the skill of the cook, it is transformed into the form of a flapjack, which . . . is called a pancake, which ominous incantation people do devour most greedily . . .(G. W. Douglas, American Book of Days, p. 95)

After reading this diatribe, which ends by asserting that eating pancakes makes people go crazy, I am somewhat comforted by turning to the last chapter of the Biblical book of Job:

So Jehovah blessed the latter end of Job Snore than his beginning: and he had fourteen thousand sheet,, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters. And he called the name of the first, Jemimah.

Jasima would have felt perfectly at home in Liberal, Kansas. The main street of Liberal is called Pancake Boulevard', There is a statue of a pancake on the library lawn, and there is a school holiday in honor of¾ you guessed it¾ pancakes!

Each year in preparation for Pancake Day the women of the town from toddlers of three to tottery grandmothers run through town flipping pancakes from skillets.

The beginning of the peculiar behavior dates from the year 1445 in Olney, England, where it was custamary on Shrove Tuesday, the day before the beginning of Lent and abstinence from fats, to do two things: go to church to be shriven of your sins, and cook pancakes to use up all the fats in the house.

That year one housewife got flustered when the bells of the church of Sts. Peter and Paul began chiming for the shriving service and dashed off for the cleansing of her soul with skillet and sizzling pancakes still In her hand.

In 1950 Liberal, Kansas, challenged Olney, England, to a reenactment of the event as an annual international event. Since then Olney has won eleven years, Liberal thirteen, The distance, 415 yards (three winding blocks); the time, 61.2 seconds, this year.., with the Kansas contestant winning the hundred dollar prize, as well as a kiss from the British Consul of Kansas City, who spoke the traditional words, "The peace of the Lord always be with you," and presented her with an autographed copy of the Book of Common Prayer, signed by the vicar of the church of Sts. Peter and Paul.

The Olney loser got precisely the same treatment, administered by the vicar in person instead of by deputy, excepting that there was no one hundred dollars.

Who payeth the price deponent knoweth not; the legal guardians of Aunt Jemima really should.

I shun warily the spice aisle and the eggshelves because we would be detained interminably there, and pause but briefly at the coffee counter.

Then I attended a Passover feast, my hosts gave me a Hebrew-English booklet that I might follow the ceremonial. It was an advertising booklet, the cover proclaiming "Maxwell House Coffee, Certified Kosher by Rabbi Johns of New York."

Coffee has ever had an aroma of religion. No sooner was it found in Moslem lands than it engendered scalding theological debate. Was it intoxicating, and so forbidden? Or had Allah sent it special delivery by Archangel Michael to Mohammed himself to cure his embarrassing habit of going to sleep during Mosque services?

Christians hammered at Pope Clement VIII to ban it. God, they said, had forbidden Moslems wine because that was sanctified by Christ and used in communion, and had given the infidels this hellish black drink, which a Christian would peril his soul by sipping.

Before ruling, Clement perilled his soul. "Why' this Satan's drink," he said, "is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall fool Satan by baptizing it, and making it a truly Christian beverage."

Chase and Sanborn once advertised, "Henry Hard Beecher never appeared at his best unless fortified with a cup of good coffee."

John Wesley regaled his neophyte Methodist preachers on Sunday mornings, not with coffee but from a gallon teapot especially made for him by his friend, master-potter Josiah Wedgewood; of this I have a quart replica for use in the Book of Life building we are now erecting at California Baptist College.

Coffee and sinkers! I quote:

"Instead of pancakes to use up pre-Lenten fats, doughnuts were often substituted, especially since they originally were a sort of ‘soul-cake’ given to children 'in exchange for their prayers; their roundness was to symbolize eternity. In like manner,

Pretzels were originally given by priests to good children who learned all their prayers. The design represents folded arms in the attitude of prayer. (E. Folting, "Something to Wear On" This Week, Aug 27, 1939.

In other parts of Christendom the shape is regarded as that of the cords which bound the wrists of Jesus at his trial, and subsequent scourging.

Since I have passed all humane limits for a paper, I must omit all mention of hot cross buns and other forms of daily breads. As I hurry past the crackers my eye catches a familiar flattened orb and cross.

The "Uneeda" symbol is an adaptation of a Venetian printer's mark, borrowed from ecclesiastical ornaments. In the printer's mark the oval is a circle, to represent the world. The upright line, with the two upper lines, making a cross, represents man’s redemption.

(Clowery Chapman, Trademarks, p. 122)

Headed for the check-out stand, I pass the Mazda light bulbs, named for that Persian Ahura-azda, God of Light, from whose worship the Magi made pilgrimage to the until-then unrecognized shrine over which hovered the star,

I pay for my Boston beans with coins on which is imprinted, "In God we trust.'

As I exit by way of the garden shop I pass the weed killers and read, "Do not use on St. Augustine grass.. I trust that all hearers or readers of this paper will likewise treat tenderly the author thereof. He confesses to only two faults therein¾ the things he has put in and the things he has left out.

Having by pressure of time been hustled all too hastily, as is the common fate of pilgrims, through the Shrine of the Magi, alias Wisemen, alias Sage's, and having acquired his holy relic, not St. Botolph’s bones, but St. Botolph's beans, our hero hies himself happily homeward, of course by way of Church Street. Hereafter he may proudly flaunt on his lapel a Blue Chip stamp, Mary’s blue.

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