Memorial tablet

“ The premature death of a young man of such brilliant promise and achievement was everywhere recognized as an irreparable loss to science. His friends and scientific admirers in many countries united to erect a memorial tablet in the physical laboratory of the university of Manchester. ”

“ The following inscription appears on the right hand panel:—"This memorial is erected by those who admired him as a strong man, loved him as a friend, hold his services in grateful memory, and who pray that his zeal for missions and his devotion to the Church may inspire all who shall ever worship within these walls." The tablet is placed on the wall of the church near the vestry door, where Dr. Lockhart used often to stand before the service, watching the people enter. ”

“ The tablet measures 50 inches by 30 inches.
MEMORIAL TABLET TO THE LATE SIR CHARLES LILLEY
It may be added that the lettering of the plate was designed by Mr. R. S. Dods, architect, and the engraving was done in Brisbane by Messrs. Randle Bros., the well-known engravers, of Elizabeth Street. [Pg 101]
A Puzzle in Book-keeping.
277. A firm appointed an agent to do business on their account, and gave him £32 17s. in cash for expenses, &c., and also supplied him with a stock of goods, the value wholesale being £57 14s. ”

“ William Cullen Bryant, who was an early friend of the inventor, then presented the statue to the city in an eloquent address, from which I shall quote the following words:—
"It may be said, I know, that the civilized world is already full of memorials which speak the merit of our friend and the grandeur and utility of his invention. Every telegraphic station is such a memorial. Every message sent from one of these stations to another may be counted among the honors paid to his name. Every telegraphic wire strung from post to post, as it hums in the wind, murmurs his eulogy. ”

“ Each bronze tablet was to show the name, rank, company and regiment of the soldier or officer so immortalized. This was known as the Founders’ Roll and became very popular and lucrative. In setting forth the purpose of the tablets an announcement was published with the following eloquent preamble by Rogers Winter:
As old as human nature is the yearning to memorialize the buried dead, to perpetuate the tradition of illustrious heroes, but never has mankind in all the centuries succeeded in erecting an{191} imperishable monument. ”

“ It is not till the three years’ mourning for a father has expired that his tablet is removed to the ancestral temple which rich men have near their houses. During the period of mourning it is kept in a vacant room, usually in the women’s apartments. A poor man puts it in a box on one side of his room, and when he worships his other ancestors, strips of paper with their names upon them are pasted on the mud wall. I have slept in rooms in which the tablet lay smothered in dust on one of the crossbeams. Common people only worship for their ancestors of three generations. ”

“ In the Shockhoe Hill Cemetery of Richmond, there is to be seen a bronze tablet, erected to the noble woman who worked tirelessly and without fitting reward for a cause which she believed to be righteous. ”

“ As a rule the tablet bears two names—those of husband and wife—so that each human soul is not necessarily supposed to have a tablet to itself. Just as the bodies of husband and wife share a single grave, so do their spirits (according to the theory accepted in Weihaiwei) share a single tablet, and the prayers and sacrifices that are offered to the one are intended in equal measure for the other. ”

“ Then the finger of the chief mourner is pricked for blood, with which the officiating scholar mixes his red ink. The pencil, having been dipped in this blood and ink, is breathed on by the scholar. The idea is to get the life, virtue and ability of the son and the officiating scholar into the tablet, as in writing a Heaven and Earth tablet. (See under Family Altar) .
Next, a dot of red is put over the date of birth and another over the date of death. Then a red stroke is made through the character 神 shên on the inner tablet 穿內神 ch'uan nei shên, and a red dot is put on the 主 chu. ”

“ It consists of a piece of wood or stone, which is meant to represent the dead. As I told you, one of the spirits of a dead man is supposed to enter the tablet, and the more this is worshipped the happier the spirit is supposed to be. ”

“ What a wonderful faculty is memory!--the most mysterious and inexplicable in the great riddle of life; that plastic tablet on which the Almighty registers with unerring fidelity the records of being, making it the depository of all our words, thoughts, and deeds--this faithful witness against us for good or evil; at the great assize that hereafter must determine our eternal fate, when conscience, at his dread command, shall open up this book of life! ”

“ The portable camera obscura, represented by the diagram, has often yielded much pleasure in the domestic circle, while the larger ones, which are publicly exhibited, are highly interesting. No person, perhaps, has witnessed the neatness of outline, the precision of form, the truth of colouring, and the sweet gradations of tint, thus apparent, without regretting that an imagery so exquisite and faithful to nature could not be made to fix itself permanently on the tablet of the machine. ”

“ A tribute is paid to his strictness and impartiality in the execution of his duties as a justice of the peace, and to his “mildness of Temper and benignity of mind” in private life. The tablet is 134surmounted by a mourning female figure, and fixed on an oval slab of black marble.
A little to the west along the aisle is a tablet of black marble, with white marble cornice and base, bearing an inscription to the memory of other members of the same family, viz., Robert Barnfather, who died on 23rd October, 1741, aged 54, and his wife Mary, who died on 6th December, 1754, aged 67. ”

“ In sending copies of Tablets, kindly see in so far as possible that together with each is given: (1) Full name of recipient (2) present address, mentioning street number, city or town, and state, (3) on or about date translation, (4) name of translator, (5) clearly state whether or not permission to publish all or only a portion of same is granted. Should there be any doubt as to whether or not a copy of any certain Tablet is already in the archives, you may be assured in knowing that every Tablet received has been acknowledged on a special printed form, signed by the Librarian. ”

“ Meanwhile I had opened the tablet; it was bound in plain red leather, with a silver clasp; it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and on that sheet were inscribed, within a double pentacle, words in old monkish Latin, which are literally to be translated thus:
On all that it can reach within these walls, sentient or inanimate, living or dead, as moves the needle, so works my will! Accursed be the house, and restless the dwellers therein.
We found no more. Mr. J—— burned the tablet and its anathema. ”

“ Above this is a [Pg 88] large altar, supporting two candlesticks with candles, and above that again an ebony stand on which rests a polished black marble tablet inscribed with the name of the deceased. Behind that, in a recess in the wall, with elaborate fretwork doors, is his life-sized portrait in Chinese style. The floor is covered with plain matting. In the tablet the third soul of the deceased is supposed to dwell. ”

“ The mind has a tablet whereon Memory begins to engrave occurrences even in our earliest days, and which in old age is full of her handy-work, so that there is no room for any more inscriptions. Hence old people recollect occurrences long past better than those of more recent date; and though an old person can faithfully recount the exploits of his schoolfellows, he will scarcely recollect what he himself was doing the day before yesterday. ”

“ The tablets record the long family titles, and the offices and honors, perhaps the numberless virtues of the dead. They read like chapters of heraldry more than like epitaphs. It is a relief to get into the outer alleys, and see how poverty and simple feeling express what should be the same thing. ”

“ That something is nothing more nor less than a puzzle, a plaything made to amuse some young savage, or perhaps an older one, as we know they are easily amused.
This tablet, of which figures 1 and 2 show the obverse and reverse, is made of slate with the usual countersunk perforations common to all perforated tablets, and is marked on its edge with twenty-four tally or record marks. These have become nearly obliterated by time and weather. ”

“ It was evident that, unless through an unexpected renewal of strength, those dying fingers would never succeed in forming a legible word with the pencil they could barely hold. But they could make a sign of themselves and that little power I must seek to direct.
I hurried down to the kitchen and seized from the wall an ancient bone tablet that Peggy used for domestic memoranda. Scraping a little soot from the chimney I mixed it with water into a thick paste and spread a thin layer of the latter over the surface of the tablet. ”

“ The instances of earth memories given here are trivial in themselves, and they are chosen, not because they are in any way wonderful, but rather because they are like things many people see, and so they may more readily follow my argument. The fact that Earth holds such memories is itself important, for once we discover this imperishable tablet, we are led to speculate whether in the future a training in seership might not lead to a revolution in human knowledge. ”

“ When he of the luminous arm steps from the cabinet into the dark room no part of him is visible save the arm. He picks the strings of the instrument with the illuminated hand and fingers the keyboard with the other. He makes a sound of writing on the tablet and tears off a leaf which he conceals, and, drawing a long black stocking over the luminous arm, places in the pocket of the sitter a communication that has been written upstairs in a good light. ”

“ Meanwhile, however, a few strips of screen-tracery were ill-advisedly worked up into a cornice round the brim of the present pulpit, a situation for which, [257] as anybody can see, they are in no wise suited. The restoration of the screen itself was contemplated as far back as 1877, but thirty years were destined to elapse before it could be realised. The project had long been dear to the heart of Mr. F. Walker Cox, though he did not live to see it fulfilled; and so, when he died in 1905, it was decided to restore the rood-screen as a suitable memorial to him. ”

“ An unbaked tablet which has survived 5,000 years under rubbish may crumble to dust in five years after it has been dug up and exposed to air. The general law is that value tends to preserve, and it has been remarked that all the oldest codices which have survived in free environment are sumptuous copies. ”

“ On my return from the east, I published some of the discoveries I had made, and I now found, on joining the fragments of the Deluge or Izdubar series, that they formed exactly twelve tablets. The fact that these legends covered twelve tablets led to the impression that they were a form of the solar myth, that is, that they symbolized the passage of the sun through the heavens, each tablet representing a separate sign of the zodiac. ”

“ This was an object which answered perfectly to the definition of a War Memorial: a useless work dedicated to God and carved with knops. One lich-gate, it was true, already existed. But nothing would be easier than to make a second entrance into the churchyard; and a second entrance would need a second gate. Other suggestions had been made. Stained-glass windows, a monument of marble. Both these were admirable, especially the latter. It was high time that the War Memorial was erected. It might soon be too late. At any moment, like a thief in the night, God might come. ”

“ The upper part of each manuscript is occupied by a series of pictural tablets; under them are vertical columns of distinct hieroglyphics, or, in the epistolographic manuscripts, pages of the text, which are commonly divided [Pg 25] into paragraphs, with a tablet at the head of each; the first words being constantly written with red ink, made of a kind of ochre, as the black is of a carbonaceous substance. ”

“ Tablets. In architecture a general term for small projecting mouldings or strings, mostly horizontal. The tablet at the top, under the battlement, is called a cornice, and that at the bottom a basement, under which is generally a thicker wall. The tablet running round doors and windows is called a dripstone, and if ornamented a canopy. ”

“ In the patent in suit such independent means are dispensed with. The stylus is made to engage with the grooves in the record tablet, is vibrated laterally by its undulations, and guided or propelled at the same time with its diaphragm attachment across the face of the tablet, the successive portions of the groove reproducing the sound waves, which are transmitted to the air. ”

“ For it must be remembered, whether we look at this valley of dead gods or this little temple outside Peking, that when a memorial is put up it is not expected to last for ever, and no provision is made or expected for its upkeep. If it last a year, well and good, so was the man to whom it was put up, valued, and if it last a hundred years—if five hundred years after it was dedicated there still remains one stone standing upon the other, how fragrant the memory of that man must have been. ”