The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-03-17

therefore always put in; but why the rule
of wrong should be so unexceptionally
adopted, as often under circumstances of ex-
treme difficulty to cause the pronunciation of
the unhappy consonant whore it does not
exist and the omission of it where it does, is
a mystery that has cost me years of fruitless
investigation, and gives me almost eadhache
to think Of. The favorite cockneyism of the
Weller school, the substitution of D for to and
20 for o, has become comparatively extinct, 80
ceases to trouble me-
Will any one account to me for phe-
nomenon of daily, l may almost say hourly,
occurrence, viz, the manner in which ia
animate objects get themselves out of the
way the moment there is demand for their
services This applies to everything; the
very pen with which 1 wrote the foregoing
passage has SUE pT0pTEo nl0tu got from my
study-table into the next room, and is found
upon my dressing glass, near which l have
not been since nine this morning If 1 am
going from home for few days, my clothes
all seem to be aware of the intention, and
hide themselves in places where they never
were before; my papers-usually most regu-
lar in arrangement-of sudden beceme
topsy-turvy; Love-dltty gets into an Essay
on chemistry, and q Christmas tale into
the British Constitution. For the faculty
of iumbling themselves together in mex
tricable confusion, however, on these
occasions, and at the shortest moment, COM
mend me to the keys-they beat all. The
scissors you have just laid down may indeed
be found in book you have not opened for
months; the razor you shaved with this morn
ing, in drawer locked up last summer; and
your gloves and card-case have seized the
opportunity of getting into the deepest cor
ner of portmanteau you don't intend open
ing till your journeys end days he nee. But
all these are nothing to the keys; there
they are, a bunch stuck together in
manner that defes all attempts
at extrication; the large keys have got into
the small one; the small ones, webs, pipes,
rings, and all spontaneously intermingled
with a complexity of ENHANCEMENT that
hours of perseverance would not have en-
abled one to achieve. 1 would like, too, to
be informed what it is that takes possession
of my pens. l am most particular about
them; yet / constantly find their nibs in
one of two conditions-either the form of
letter V split-ups to the feathers; or as
sharp, and, for the purposes of writing, as
useful, as a skewer.
Why, again, do two left-hand gloves al
ways find their way into the pocket of my
evening-coat, and in the effort to accommo-
date myself to circumstances, cause me to
appear as though had paralysis in the right /?
The alternative to this disaster is the fate by
which l meet a rural friend of warm
by the hand, bursting my glove up the
back, whilst the button hits the opposite
wall. 1 stop not to inquire why all your
| swell friends meet you when you don't want
them, and never when you do. This is
simply the contrariety of human nature. But
should like to know why an individual
| be it man or woman-with whom for ages
l may not have correspondent, invariably
is seized with a fit of writing to me at the
same moment as 1 break silence to him or
! her, our two letters crossing each other
! with an exactness no pains could insure !?
Has any one, / would ask, ever yet taken
up what he thought was the poker, that he
| did not find it was the shovel? or was pair
of bellows or tongs ever yet found in any inn
or lodging house When was that enormous
stock of hair-cloth sofas and chairs con-
structed, which abound in every one of the
| said inns or lodgings? and why are the
cushions invariably loose, and their pad
ding composed of shingle? Who grew
the worsted flowers that flourish there and
what fish ever inhabited those brown shells
now devoted to carvings? Why is No. 1919
the only room ever vacant at any hotel when
1 arrive en- gGTcOn, although there is not the
slightest evidence of there being any other
| traveller in the house? But why, 0 why,
do things and people all get astray that you
| do want and why are those always -eB eUi-
dence that you don't, and even they disap-
pear when at last their presence would for
once be desirable? And why don't things
happen-yes, happen-thats it (my belief
is, everything happens and life is passed in
chronic condition of toss-up)-why, I ask,
don't things happen just the reverse way of
what they do? And then another thing would
happen; and that is, that 1 shouldn't have
written this article; and you would have lost
a great opportunity of improving your mind
and enlarging your understanding Adieu.