Good Better Best

The above article was published in The Straits Times on Saturday 3 June 2010. The caption 'Good, better, best, never let it rest' evoked my memories of the old days when I was in secondary school in the early 50s. During those days, signing of autograph book was a fad among students. I have a few autograph books for different groups of friends but only the one below survives to this day. It is now in pieces but I still treasure it even with some torn pages. Each page had a photo of my friend. Over the years, the glue gave way and the photos were detached and dropped from the pages.

The verses in the newspapers are not complete. I remembered a friend wrote in my autograph book as follows:

Good, better, best
Never let it rest
When your good is better
Do your better best

I did not know the original author who wrote them. But many students used them to write in autograph books. Other popular verses are:

Drink hot coffee
Drink hot tea
Burn your lips and remember me

True friendship strengthens
and nver will die
But grows more constant
as the years pass by

Below are pictures of my only surviving autograph book since the early 50s. The autograph book is so old and worn out that when I turned over the pages to scan, some pages got torn. Those who signed my autograph book are more than 70 years old now and I think majority are grand parents like me.

Updated on 03.10.2013
Additional autographs written by friends with their photos attached. Circles of Friends and a Brick Wall of Friends were at the end of the book where they wrote their addresses. Do you notice that all my friends here are girls. As I mentioned above I had a few autograph books. This one is specially for all my girl friends in Singapore and Malaysia.