AT FAULT.
It is rather a serious matter that our public companies, and especially our railway companies, are doing their best to degrade our language. I am not going to be squeamish and object strongly to the use of the word Metropolitan, though I think it indefensible. Still, it is too bad of them to persist in using the word bye-laws for by-laws—so establishing solidly a shocking error. The word bye has no existence in England except as short for be with you, in the phrase Good-bye. The so called by-laws are simple laws by the other laws, and have nothing to do with any form of salutation. In a bill of the Great Western Railway I find the announcement that tickets obtained in London on any day from December 20th to 24th will be available for use on either of those days—this either meaning the five days from the 20th December to the 24th inclusive. Either of five! After this I am not surprised that, in a contribution of my own to a daily paper, the editor gravely altered the
phrase the last-named, applied to one of three people, to latter. In a railway advertisement I read a day or two ago, “From whence.” Now, what is the good of such fine words as whence and thence if they are thus to be ill-used? Surely the railway companies might have some one capable of seeing that their grammar has some pretence to correctness.
—Gentleman’s Magazine.
A WIDOW’S CLAIM FOR COMPENSATION.
Some time ago a railway collision on one of the roads leading out of New York killed, among others, a passenger living in an interior town. His remains were sent home, and a few days after the funeral the attorney of the road called upon the widow to effect a settlement. She placed her figures at twenty thousand dollars. “Oh! that sum is unreasonable,” replied the attorney. “Your husband was nearly fifty years old.” “Yes, sir.” “And lame?” “Yes.” “And his general health was poor?” “Quite poor.” “And he probably would not have lived over five years?” “Probably not, sir.” “Then it seems to me that two or three thousand dollars would be a fair compensation.” “Two or three thousand!” she echoed. “Why, sir, I courted that man for ten years, run after him for ten more, and then had to chase him down with a shotgun to get him before a preacher! Do you suppose that I’m going to settle for the bare cost of shoe leather and ammunition?”
THE LADY AND HER LAP-DOG.
The following scene occurred at the high-level Crystal Palace line:—“A newspaper correspondent was amused at the indignation of a lady against the porters who interfered to prevent her taking her dog into the carriage. The lady argued that Parliament had compelled the companies to find separate carriages for smokers, and they ought to be further compelled to have a separate carriage for ladies with lap-dogs, and it was perfectly scandalous that they should be separated, and a valuable dog, worth perhaps thirty or forty guineas, should be put into a dog compartment.
I have some of the B stock of the railway, upon which not a penny has ever been paid, and I could not help comparing my experience of this particular line of railway with that of my fellow-traveller, and wondering what sort of a train that would be which would provide accommodation for all the wants and wishes of railway travellers.”