The Monmouth inquirer., 1898-03-17
PRINTERS ERRORS.

sciOuSly, is a fellow of infinite humor.
The writers and speakers upon whose
telling arguments or flights of fancy
the compositor exercises his wit may be
annoyed, but the general public has no
alloy in the enjoyment of these typo
graphical antics. Miss Fanny Fudge.
the youthful genius discovered by Tom
Moore, who used to contribute to the
Poets Corner Of the County Gazette.
complained bitterly to her cousin of the
havoc the printers made of her sense
and her rhymes. Though an angel
should write still It's devils must
print" she explained. Here is how
those devils served her:
''But week or two since in my Ode
to the Spring.
Which | meant TO have made most
beautiful thing,
Where l talked of the dewdrops from
freshly blown roses,
The nasty things made it from fresh
1y blown noses,
And once when to please my cross aunt
I had tried
To commemorate some saint of her
clique who'd just died
Having said he had tax n up in heav-
en- his position,
They made it, he'd tal1'n up to heavn
his physician.
The readers of the County Gazette.
no doubt, preferred the amended poem
to the original
The responsibility for these humors
of the composition-room rests some
times with the authors vile handwrit-
ing; but it is mainly due to the condi-
fions under which the compositor
works. A wooden frame Cor case, as
it is known in the trade) is divided by
Lodges into several receptacles or
boxes, for the various letters of the all
phabet and points OF punctuation IN
one box there are all AS, in another all
HIS. and in another all Y's. anu so on:
and from this case, picking up the lee-
ters one by one as required, the COM
positor turns the manuscript into type
Practice enables him to do this not only
with extreme rapidity but with re-
markable accuracy; but he has often
to deal with what he calls a foul case
that is, a case in which several of
the letters have got into the wrong
boxes-and as he thus unconseiously
picks up the wrong letter from the
right box we finds oats turned to eats.
poets to posts, arts to rats, jolly to fol-
iy, and songs to tongs
A theatrical critic in a notice of a
charming young actress whose treat
ment of Portia had afforded him much
pleasure, wrote Her love for Portia
made acting easy. That was right
enough. but what the types made him
say was her love for Porter etc A.
compositor who was better acquainted
with the geography of the West than
with Biblical lore set up the phrase.
From Alpha to Omega as from AL
Ton to Omaha" and possibly found him.
self compelled to start fer those places
next morning. In the earlier half OF
the present century it was announced
in London newspaper that Sir Rob-
ert Peel, with a party of fiends was
shooting peasants in Ireland, whereas
the Minister andSh friends were only
indulging in the comparatively harm-
Jess pastime of pheasant-shooting
Shortly after the battle Of Inkerman
one of the morning papers informed it's
readers that after a desperate strug-
gle the enemy was repulsed with great
laughter" The omission OF a single
letter has rarely, perhaps. played more
havoc with a subject which was GER
tainly no laughing matter.
1t must have been the very printers
devil himself who represented very
worthy advocate Of the cause of female
suffrage as exhorting her hearers to
maintain their tights. What the
bridesmaids at a recent wedding must
have thought when they read that they
had all worn handsome breeches. the
gift of the bridegroom. one can only
guess. But whatever their thoughts
may have been at seeing their pretty
brooches thus transformed, their Ian
guage at any rate cannot, we may as
sumo, have matched that Of the politi-
clan who read the following comment
on one of his speeches: *.Them asses
believed him. Possibly he was not
much consoled by being assured that
the reporter had merely wished to sig
Nifty that "the masses believed him. =
On another occasion a reporter wrote:
tAt these words the entire audience
rose and rent the air with their