For example, a 'stipulation' or agreement is so called, as
many affirm, from 'stipula,' a straw; and tells of a Roman custom, that
when two persons would make a mutual engagement with one another,
[Footnote: See on this disputed point, and on the relation between the
Latin 'stipulatio' and the old German custom not altogether dissimilar,
J. Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsalterthuemer_, pp. 121, sqq. [This account of
the derivation of 'stipulatio' is generally given up now; for Greek
cognates of the word see Curtius, _Greek Etymology_, No. 224.]] they
would break a straw between them. We all know what fact of English
history is laid up in 'curfew,' or 'couvre-feu.' The 'limner,' or
'illuminer,' for so we find the word in Fuller, throws us back on a
time when the _illumination_ of manuscripts was a leading occupation of
the painter. By 'lumber,' we are reminded that Lombards were the first
pawnbrokers, even as they were the first bankers, in England: a
'lumber'-room being a 'lombard'-room, or a room where the pawnbroker
stored his pledges. [Footnote: See my _Select Glossary_, s. v. Lumber.]
Nor need I do more than remind you that in our common phrase of
'_signing_ our name,' we preserve a record of a time when such first
rudiments of education as the power of writing, were the portion of so
few, that it was not as now an exception, but the custom, of most
persons to make their mark or 'sign'; great barons and kings themselves
not being ashamed to set this _sign_ or cross to the weightiest
documents.
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