The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1878-12-13
. DR0LL. RLUNDERS.

~ uica ihNIuOn OF one ietter III pidcc
OF another, newspaper, not long since,
reporting the danger that an express
Tram had run in consequence of a COW
getting upon the line, said, "As the
safest way, the engineer put on full
steam, dashed up against the COW, and
literally cut it into cdlpes!"
A Scotch newspaper, reporting the
speeches at Scott centenary meeting,
made one of the orators exclaim, with
more truth than accuracy:
Oh, Caledonia stern and Wild
Hetnurse for poetic child!
Never, perhaps, was the word "aus-
tere" more misconstrued than in the
instance of q clergyman in Lancashire
who got wholesome warning in regard
to pulpit articulation by discovering in
one house which he visited, the day after
preaching from Luke xix, 81. that the
servant had gone home with the impress
sion that his text had been, Il feared
thee, because thou art an oyster man! /"
Hampshire incumbent recently re-
ported in the Pail Mall Gazette some of
the plumbers he had heard made in the
marriage service by that class of persons
who have to pick up the words as best
they can from hearing them repeated by
others. He said that in his own parish
1t was quite the fashion for the man,
when giving the ring, to say to the
woman, with my body 1 thee wash up,
and with all my hurdle goods thee and
thou" He said the women were gen.
orally better up in this part of the serv-
ice than the men. One day, however, a
bride startled him by promising, in what
she supposed to be the language of the
Prayer-book, to take her husband, ito
ave and to old from this day fortnit
for betterer horse, for richerer power, iii
siggerness health, to love cherries and
to bay" What meaning this extraordi-
nary vow conveyed to her own mind the
incumbent said it bafiied him to con-
lecture.
The stories told of the blunders made
by Oxford and Cambridge undergrad
yates in the scripture examination are
almost Incredible One of these, when |
asked who was the first King OF Israel,
was SO fortunate as to stumble upon the |
name of Saul" He saw that he had
hit the mark, and, wishing to show the
examiners how intimate his knowledge |
of the scriptures was, added. confiden- |
TALLY, saul, also called Paul" An
other was asked to give the parable of |
the good Samaritan. He did so with |
tolerable accuracy till he came to the |
place where the Samaritan says to the I
inn-keeper: When come again | will |
repay thee" Here the unlucky exam
inee added: "This he said, knowing
that he should see his face no more"
A ludicrous story is told of a bailie
whose studies in natural history seem
to haye been rather limited. The fol-
lowing case came before him one day
A man who kept ferret, having to go
into the country, left the cage with the fer
ret in charge of neighbor till he should
return. The neighbor incautiously
opened the cage door, and the ferret
escaped. The owner was very angry,
and brought claim against his neigh
Dor for damages. The following was
the decision of the learned bailie: mae
doot," he said to the man who had been
left in charge, "ye was wrang to open
the cage door; but" he added, turning
to the other, :" We was wrang too. For
why did we no clip the brute's wings?"
BY the bad arrangement of clauses in
composition ludicrous plumbers are
sometimes made. A Wisconsin paper
announced tina. the Board of Education
had resolved to erect a building large
enough to accommodate 500 students
three stories high" In all English
paper an advertisement appeared, under
the heading of "To Let of "a house
for a family in good repair Punch
noted this, and conjectured that "a fam
lily in good repair must mean one in
which none of the members were
cracked. "The brooches would have
been sent before, but have been unwell,"
was note of apology sent to Dean Al
ford by his jeweler, and 1.-TWO sisters
want washing" was an advertisement
which appeared in the Manchester
Guardian.
An amusing style of blunder is the
bull" for which the Irish get most
credit 1t was an Irish editor that ex-
claimed, when speaking of the wrongs
of his country, Her cup of misery has
been OVERLOOKING, and is not yet full !"
1t was an Irish newspaper that said of
Robespierre that "he left no children
behind except a brother, who was killed
at the same time" Irish also was the
Cornet who, when writing home from
India praising the much-abused climate
as really one of the best under the sun,
added: "But a lot of young fellows
come out here, and they drink and they
eat, and they eat and they drink, and
they die, and then they write home to
their friends, saying it was the climate
that did It'll
Though not so numerous as those of
the Emerald isle, Scotland is not with
out its specimens of this kind of blum
der. Two operatives in one of the Dor
der towns were heard disputing about a
new cemetery, beside the elegant rail
ing of which they were standing. One |
sc tban, evidently dislikinO the conti- /