The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1893-04-28
QUEER LIrERARY BLuNDERs,

4
Common Mistakes which Are Made
by Grown People and Chflaren.
| There is a book just published called
Literary Blunders'' The writer, al
though no less a person than Prof.
Wheatley, might possibly have got
fresher illustrations; but some Of them
one does not remember to have heard
| over two or three times. And to do
the author justice, there are few new
ones. ...*
This book gives the story of many
interesting blunders, perpetuated on
account of the impossibilty of calling
in whole edition after it has once
been scattered. It also gives some Of
the common blunaers Of ignorance,
! like Mr.. Gladstone dumping against
Scylla or Charybidis' 1T has gener-
ally been supposed says the author
naively, that Scylla only was rock
This fine satire will probably be lost
upon an average reader, who may think
| that the learned professor did not know
| himself
One interesting perpetuated blunder,
into which most OF lis have probably
fallen without taking the trouble to-
look about us, is the use Of the word
animalculae' in the plural There is
| no such plural, as any Latin scholar
knows at once if he stops to think
Anlmalcula is the plural of animalcu-
| lum. and yet one fancies that it would
require some courage to use animal
| cula" in the plural in a mixed assem-
bly, without explaining. SO strongly has
this particular error taken root. The
best word to use is, of course, the En-
glish plural animalcules, but most peo-
| pie cling to the incorrect Latin with
great pertinacity.
The coming of the word knises, which
was originally only a misprint for
knives, is laughable, and shows how
much value is to be set upon far
fetched derivation.
School children's blunders, as seen in
| their published answers to examina-
| ton papers-how such publicity can be
reconciled with good faith. one hardly
sees-are such serious reflections on the
| teaching, that there are polite reasons
| why they should be kept dark. The
recurrence Of set phrases-like: "An
fish would die, and the earth be held
in an iron grip regardless Of connec-
ton, shows how little attention is paid
in some schools to the clinclling of the
J nail which might have been driven in
at the elbow, instead of at the brain.
The absolute jargOn in which dozens
of these papers are expressed SHOWS q
hopeless muddling, disgraceful to the
person who allowed such class to ex-
list for months 1t is easy enough to
see whether a child understands his
lesson or not, by making him express
it first in his own words. These Dlun-
cers are sadder than they are amusing,
although most people find them de-
1iciOusly humorous.
The mistakes in proper names I'LL
chapters and are interesting, names OF
inns in England notably, perverted
through ignorance OF spelling some
times of pronunciation. In our own
neighborhood there is b1under of this
sort. probably The town OF joliet,
named, as many suppose, from the
French priest of that name and Amer
canized, was. according to certain
Young woman's solemn observation,
christened for the heroine of one OF
Shakespeare's plays. And it's propln-
uuity to town named for nero o1
that very tragedy makes such suppo-
sition most likely. Joliet was near
enough to- Juliet. and il not that, why
fs Romeo SO nigh ?-ChicagO Tribune.