“The lubber fiend outstretched the chimney near,
Or sad Ulysses on the larboard Steer.”
Ulysses steered to the larboard to shun Charybdis, but the compositor makes him get upon the back of the bullock, the left one in the drove! After all, however, he only interprets the text literally. “Steer,” as a substantive, has no other meaning than bullock. The substantive of the verb “to steer” is steerage. “He that hath the steerage of my course,” says Shakspeare. The compositor evidently understood that Ulysses rode an ox; he would hardly else have spelt Steer with a capital S.
The following paragraphs, intended to have been printed separately, in a Paris evening paper, were by some blunder so arranged that they read consecutively:—
Doctor X. has been appointed head physician to the Hospital de la Charite. Orders have been issued by the authorities for the immediate extension of the Cemetery of Mont Parnasse. The works are being executed with the utmost dispatch.
The old story of Dr. Mudge furnishes one of the most curious cases of typographical accident on record. The Doctor had been presented with a gold-headed cane, and the same week a patent pig-killing and sausage-making machine had been tried at a factory in the place of which he was pastor. The writer of a report of the presentation, and a description of the machine, for the local paper, is thus made to “mix things miscellaneously:”—
“The inconsiderate Caxtonian who made up the forms of the paper, got the two locals mixed up in a frightful manner; and when we went to press, something like this was the appalling result: Several of the Rev. Dr. Mudge’s friends called upon him yesterday, and after a brief conversation, the unsuspicious pig was seized by the hind legs, and slid along a beam until he reached the hot water tank. His friends explained the object of their visit, and presented him with a very handsome gold-headed butcher, who grabbed him by the tail, swung him round, slit his throat from ear to ear, and in less than a minute the carcass was in the water. Thereupon he came forward, and said that there were times when the feelings overpowered one; and for that reason he would not attempt to do more than thank those around him for the manner in which such a huge animal was cut into fragments was simply astonishing. The Doctor concluded his remarks when the machine seized him, and in less time than it takes to write it, the pig was cut into fragments and worked up into delicious sausages. The occasion will long be remembered by the Doctor’s friends as one of the most delightful of their lives. The best pieces can be procured for tenpence a pound; and we are sure that those who have sat so long under his ministry will rejoice that he has been treated so handsomely.”
SLIPS OF THE TELEGRAPH.
The Prior of the Dominican Monastery of Voreppe, in France, recently received the following telegram:—“Father Ligier is dead (est mort); we shall arrive by train to-morrow, at three.—Laboree.” The ecclesiastic, being convinced that the deceased, who was highly esteemed in the locality, had selected it for his last resting-place, made every preparation. A grave was dug, a hearse provided, and with the monks, a sorrowing crowd waited at the station for the train. It arrived, and, to the astonishment of every one, the supposed defunct alighted, well and hearty. The matter was soon explained. The reverend father, returning from a visit to Rome, where he had been accompanied by the priest Laboree, stopped to visit some monks at Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, and requested his companion to telegraph the return to his monastery. The message sent was: “Father Ligier and I (et moi) will arrive,” &c. The clerks inadvertently changed the et moi into est mort, with what result has already been told.
A firm in Cincinnati telegraphed to a correspondent in Cleveland, as follows:—“Cranberries rising. Send immediately one hundred barrels per Simmons.” Mr. Simmons was the agent of the Cincinnati house. The telegraph ran the last two words together, and shortly after, the firm were astonished to find delivered at their store one hundred barrels of persimmons.