The handwriting of Horace Greely, the great editor, was remarkable for its illegibility. Very few people could read what he wrote, and sometimes it puzzled Mr. Greely himself. He wrote a hurried note one day, addressed it to the editor of one of the other great New York papers, and sent it by a messenger boy. The boy duly delivered it, but the man couldn’t make it out, and sent it back. When the boy handed his own note to Mr. Greely, he, supposing it to be a reply to his own communication, and being unable to read it, looked it over carefully and said: “Why, what does the old fool mean?” “Yes,” said the boy, “that’s just what the other man said!”
In addition to writing a poor hand Mr. Greely was very absent-minded. Leaving his office in a great hurry one day to go an errand downtown, he wrote on a card, “Back in 20 minutes,” pinned it on the outside of his office door and rushed out. Having changed his mind, he came back in five minutes and, seeing the notice on the door, took a seat nearby, and actually waited twenty minutes for himself to come back!
LEFT-HANDED COMPLIMENTS
A good-looking young minister was driving to the county town of B—— in a buggy. On the way he overtook a very comely young woman going the same direction afoot. He courteously stopped and suggested that he give her a lift, an offer which she gladly accepted, riding beside him several miles to her destination at a country farm-house. On descending from the vehicle she thanked him for his kindness, and he very politely said, “Don’t mention it—don’t mention it.” And she said, “No, I won’t. I won’t tell. I’m as much ashamed of it as you are!”
When he was within two miles of the town he overtook a young lawyer who was returning afoot from a visit to a country client, and took him aboard, and the two had some sharp passages as they rode along. Now, it chanced that a man was to be hanged for murder the next day in the town, and the carpenters were busy erecting the gallows in the yard of the jail. When the two came to the hill which overlooks the town of B——, they could plainly see the top of the gallows above the wall of the jail. Pointing then to the jail the minister said:
“If the gallows had its due, where would you be?”
“I’d be riding into town alone, I reckon,” was the answer.
A REST AND A CHANGE
“My friend Dickinson,” said the colonel, “is a very witty fellow. He made a very witty reply lately. He had been sent down to a certain celebrated seaside resort by his physician for a rest and a change, and it was understood that he was to spend at least a month there, but at the end of a week he turned up again in his home town, and when people asked him why he had come back so soon, his reply was:
“Well, you see, the doctor sent me down there for a rest and a change, and I went down and tried it; but by the end of a week I found that the waiters at the hotel were getting all the change, and the man that kept the hotel got all the rest, and so I just had to come home to recopperate, you know.”