Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1894-05-04
THE LATEST SOCIETY FAD.
The Writing OF Anagram Letters-A
Puzzling Amusement.

FuZZlfnE Amnsemenf.
Man is born to trouble as the spark;
fly upward, but the society young man
is not generally supposed to be in.
cluded in this assertion, as it is under.
stood that, barring an occasional bad
quarter OF an hour in the strawberry
and ice cream season, lie is like young
bear, having all his sorrnws to come
At present, however, the life of the
average society young man is not al
together happy one. A new fad has
been taken up by the society young
ladies, which is causing many laborious
and sorrowful hours to the young
gentleman. 1t is the dreadful cana
gram letter." and now no young man
can make call on lady friend with
out danger of having this document
thrust upon him, to destroy his peace
of mind and set him fioundering
through unabridged dictionaries, to
the detriment OF his health and the
serious loss OF time. AS all are pro-
badly aware, an anagram" was
originally word made from the let
ters of another word written backward -,
but now, alas, IL means a word or words
made by transposing at pleasure the
letters of another word. which frequent
ly brings about some rather startling
results. The particular letter now
paralyzing the best young men of this
city is rigmarole OF no particular in
terest or meaning, except for the in
genious and brain.wrecking anagrams
it contains. In the office OF q promi-
nent legal firm, on Saturday, while
the bosses" were out attending the
convention. reporter found five clerks
and students and the young lady type
writer engaged in deadly struggle
with this terrible letter. Some had
" translated" a number Of the ana
grams, while others had been foored
and driven to the verge of insanity by
one. The person who had untangled
n particularly knotty one carefully
guarded his secret, and left the others
to grope in outer darkness with wall
ings and gnashing of the teeth.
In order that the matter may be un-
derstood, few of the anagrams are
given below. Imagine reading along
and coming to phrase iroartoo,'-
which makes no sense and is under.
scored to show that it is an anagram.
1t will probably take some time to fird
that this means oratorio." It will
also require patience to get astrono-
mer" out Of moonstarer," to find
that "great help" means telegraph" }"
and that "to love ruin" transposes
into revolution" ego nurse" into
l." surgeon" 1t will probably surprise
the victim to find that "sly wares" be-
comes lawyers" and that neat leg
turns to-" elegant" and that the phrase
"bestin prayer" means Presbyterian"
instead OF Methodist. These, however,
are the easy ones, and if something
harder is wanted, imagine the work Of
transposing "sin sat on a tin tub"
into the good old doctrine of transub.
sanitation" After that, try "Pliny
ate no tripe" and see how long it will
take to get "plenipotentiary" out OF
the improbable statement. BUTT will
not do to give the whole business
away to an unappreciative public, who
may try their skill on Simon Peter
in tears" which, it may be remarked,
completely broke up the crowd and
caused them all to shed tears of rage.
The first to recover his equanimity be-
gan to wrestle with the phrase Sheep
at Cairo" starting in with the letter
"a" in Webster's unabridged, with
the determination of going through to
"z," or finding a word that would fill
the case. Those who read this can 60
and do likewise, for they will never
discover the secret in any other way.