SIGNS.
Reading edition
A Scotch Innkeeper, who had determined on adopting the sign of Flodden Well, was much puzzled for a suitable inscription. At length he waited on Sir Walter Scott, and asked his aid, observing, that "as he had written so much about it in Marmion, he might know something that would do for an inscription." The poet immediately replied, "Why, man, I think ye cannot do better than take a verse from the poem itself." The innkeeper expressed his willingness to do this, when Sir Walter said to him, "Well, then, you have nothing to do, but just to leave out one letter from the line
'Drink, weary traveller—drink and pray;'
and say instead
'Drink, weary traveller—drink and pay!'"
Dean Swift's barber one day told him that he had taken a public-house. "And what's your sign?" said the dean. "Oh, the pole and bason; and if your worship would just write me a few lines to put upon it, by way of motto, I have no doubt but it would draw me plenty of customers." The dean took out his pencil, and wrote the following couplet, which long graced the barber's sign:
"Rove not from pole to pole, but step in here, Where nought excels the shaving, but the beer."