A ring has often been used as a mark, token, or reward of distinction or great service. Originally for valor in battle, these rings are now used to mark distinction in many fields. In Germany for generations, the greatest actor has worn the Ifflandring, which he takes from his hand to bestow upon the performer of the next generation whom he deems his most worthy successor. Another noted ring is the Mozart Ring, awarded to those who meritoriously continue the composer’s tradition. There are today but three wearers of the Mozart Ring: Bruno Walter, Herbert von Karajan, and Carl Boehm. _Posies and Lovers’ Rings_ The prettiest rings are those that have been used in courtship. Before the brilliant solitaire, the large diamond that marks the formal engagement, all sorts of posy rings, as they were called, were popular gifts for centuries. An English book of 1624 bears the title “Love’s Garland, or Posies for rings, handkerchiefs, and gloves, and such pretty tokens as lovers send their loves.” This was in the main a collection of little rhyming remarks or pithy sayings, to be engraved on rings, or on the inside of ring bands when the ring itself was decorated with stones in the form of flowers or lovers’ knots. A favorite was the Latin motto _Amor vincit omnia_, (Love conquers all), which Chaucer in _The Canterbury Tales_ put on a bracelet of the Prioress. But simple English phrases abounded on these rings. “I am yours” is blunt enough to serve. “My love is true To none but you” might make a suspicious maiden (but what shy maid in love would question so?) wonder to how many the donor had already shown love that was false. More to be trusted, perhaps, is the pious soul that sent the motto: “In God and thee My joy shall be.” A wit (or a gambler) might complacently have inscribed “I cannot show The love I O.” A less wary but more learned fellow might proclaim, inside the ring: “Let reason rule affection.” The practice of having rings engraved with such posies was so common that in Shakespeare’s _As You Like It_ the melancholy Jacques taunts Orlando: “You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths’ wives, and conned them out of rings?” I quote Shakespeare not because he is the most given to such references, but because he is the best known of the many writers in whose works they abound: jewels in jeweled phrases. In other forms than posies, rings carry the language of love. They may, of course, in engraved letters or letters shaped of stones, give the initials or the name of the beloved. Or letters may record a significant event in the course of the courtship, as when a cryptically boastful Frenchman set a ring with the letters LACD, which pronounced in French sound “Elle a cédé”—“She has yielded!”