CHAPTER XXI.—“SO CAREFUL OF THE TYPE.”
Why the chapter is a short one—Straw essential to brick-making—A suggestion regarding the king in “Hamlet”—The Irish attendant—The overland route—“Susanna and the editors”—“The violets of his wrath”—The clergyman’s favourite poem—A horticultural feat—A tulip transformed—The entertainment of an interment—The autotype of Russia—A remarkable conflagration and a still more remarkable dance—Paradise and the other place—Why the concert was a success—The land of Goschcn—A sporting item—A detective story—The flora and fauna—The Moors dictum—Absit omen!
IF this chapter is a short one, it is so for the best of reasons: it is meant to record some blunders of printers and others which impressed themselves upon me. It would obviously be impossible to make a chapter of the average length out of such a record. The really humorous faults in the setting up of anything I have ever written have been very few. In the printing of the original edition of my novel Daireen one of the most notable occurred in a first proof. Every chapter of this book is headed with a few lines from Hamlet, and one of these headings is from the well-known scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
Gull.—The King, sir——
Hamlet.—Ay, sir, what of him?
Gull.—Is in his retirement marvellous distempered.
Hamlet.—With drink, sir?
Gull.—No, my lord, rather with choler.