Page:A Desk Book on the Etiquette of Social Stationary.djvu/17



ONOGRAMS play a most important part in the ethics of stationery. Motifs, emblems and symbols once used so universally for distinction of class and individual, have in the evolution of time and race dwindled into general disuse. These are not the days of emblazoned walls and iron-wrought hangings. The armored knight who bore his color and his crest aloft for recognition is a shadowed memory put away with the fashion of king since the year '76. Still, we Americans enjoy a touch of distinction which, lost to us through democracy, becomes the cult of individualism, the seal of ownership, the mark of belonging. This fondness takes form in name marking in the cipher motif and the graceful monogram.

A striking monogram, combining the first letters of the full name or the first and last