"GUNS 'N STRIPES"

The appropriated icon used to tile the background is an emblem connected with the Third Degree, according to the Webb lectures, to remind us by the quick passage of its sands of the transitory nature of human life. The image is a Masonic symbol of comparatively modern date, but the use of the hourglass as an emblem of the passage of time is older than our oldest known rituals. Thus, in a speech before Parliament, in 1627, it is said: "We may dan dandle and play with the hour-glass that is in our power, but the hour will not stay for us; and an opportunity once lost cannot be regained." We are told in Notes and Queries that in the early part of the eighteenth century it was a custom to inter an hour-glass with the dead, as an emblem of the sand of life being run out.