Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin.

  • Catlin, George, 1796-1872.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    those in the midst of the luxuries of their own comfort- able homes, will privately thank me in their own hearts, for hints they will have got from the foregoing pages. The Proverb, as old and unchangeable as their hills, amongst the North American Indians, £ My son, if you would be' wise, open first your Eyes, your Ears next, and last of all, your Mouth, that your words may be words of wisdom, and give no advantage to thine adversary,’ might be adopted with good effect in Civil- ized life ; and he who would strictly adhere to it, would be sure to reap its benefits in his waking hours ; and would soon find the habit running into his hours of rest, into which he would calmly enter; dismissing the nervous anxieties of the day, as he firmly closed his teeth and his lips, only to be opened after his eyes and his ears, in the morning ; and the rest of such sleep would bear him daily and hourly proof of its value. And if I were to endeavour to bequeath to pos- terity the most important Motto which human language can convey, it should be in three ivords— Shut—your—mouth. In the social transactions of life, this might have its beneficial results, as the most friendly, cautionary advice, or be received as the grossest of insults ; but where I would paint and engrave it, in every Nursery}