No appropriate photo of the Founder of this web page has been provided for display here but he has suggested that the right column image of Sagittarius Secretarius, or Secretary Bird, be provided instead, the Secretary Bird being the unofficial logo of the Worshipful Company of Scriveners of the City of London. Observers of this page may know that the Secretary Bird, (which the Founder claims to have been in a former life) has hanging from the back of the neck and nape, loosely and in pairs, a series of black elongated feathers, capable of erection and dilation in periods of excitement, which appear to be quill pens stuck behind the ear in the fashion of early scriveners, thus giving rise to the appellation of Secretary Bird. As a foe of snakes it is held in high esteem and seems to possess a strange partiality for their destruction, and successfully attacks the most venomous species. It is sometimes referred to as Serpentarius Secretarius for this reason, although it is now commonly referred to as Sagittarius because of its resemblance to an archer about to discharge an arrow as it lopes along.
The Founder adds that he was pleased to be able to establish through the assistance of the definition of "scrivener" in Funk & Wagnalls New International Dictionary that Sagittarius is an ancestor of his in a previous life, since that definition lends support to his claim to be a scrivener instead of a lawyer -- which would have left him descended from a dung beetle...better bird than turd, as he says.
scriv'en-er, [Eng. or Archaic.] (1) A person whose occupation is writing; especially, one who draws deeds, contracts, and other instruments.
A votary of the desk -- a notched and cropt scrivener -- one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick people are said to do, through a quill. Lamb Essays of Elia, Oxford p.11 [W.L. & CO.]
He does not approve, however, of the dictionary reference from Lamb, which he reports was really meant to apply to lawyers and is found in the same essay in which Lamb says that "Lawyers were children once," a quotation from that essay which is found on the plinth of a statue of a small boy in the Middle Temple Gardens -- hidden in the bushes and fortunately off limits to the general public.
The term scrivener has, alas, fallen out of general use, most likely because of Melville's tale of Bartleby who was misidentified by him as a Scrivener (in truth he was more accurately a copyist, a now defunct profession) and whose wholly inappropriate and disconcerting approach to life was only to respond that he would prefer not to.
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