Polonius

• 9" tall by 7.5" wide
• 224 pages, counting both sides of each leaf
• Bound with handmade paper (cream jute)

This is a soft-to-the-touch leather that I call "soft rust".  It's yummy--but don't eat it!

The etching on the front is a famous quote from the Shakespearean tragedy, Hamlet Prince of Denmark.  When Polonius was instructing his son Laertes before he went off to college in France (Act I, Scene III), he gave him a lot more advice than what is stamped into the metal etching.  "This Above All: To Thine Own Self Be True."

Here's the full advise from wise Polonius:
“Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”