Bisbee daily review., 1911-05-03
Blunders of
 Authors

inc scene is laid in Indianapolis. has a paragraph which reads: He left the house at midnight and, hur- rying to quay, boarded a European steamer At latest accounts ln- dianapolis vas not yet a seaport, but if congress continues with nv CT and harbor improvements that story may yet be true to fact.
 A story Of adventure. by an author whose books have sold very large ly, contained a hero who placed note to his sweetheart in. a bottle and dropped it In the ocean off the coast of Brazil. In the narrative that bottle is washed on the shore of the Mediterranean just twenty minutes later and lands at the feet of the young lady-4n question. There is a chance that the wireless com TIanies may adopt this bottle scheme aiId save time ip the transmission of messages.
 One author in describing par ticularly showy team of horses wrote They were richly caprison- ed with gold monographs on their corners" If he had remembered to put blankets on those horses before he rivetei on the initials it might have added to their comfort. In a detective story by the same author We find: When he saw the detect i've the eulprit's teeth chattered and he kept the table between them" The mouth that held those teeth with the table between them surely must have been capacious.
 But all the blunders are not. con fined to the more recent writers. for the ancient worthies were quite as fragrant sinners. Milton's line, Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa," is familiar to every one. but, as natter of facr. the Vallombrosa forests are all of pine trees, so that there are HO leaves, and pine need les do not fall in the autumn, but toward spring. Again in "Comus" he writes:
 And in the violet embroidered yale Where the lovelorn. nightingale Nightly to thee her sad song mourn
 eth we'll"
 Unfortunately for the poet, the male nightingale alone sings and the female is vOiceless.
 Another classic writer who allow ed his meter to get the better Of his senee was Pope, who wrote: When first young Marc. in his noble
 mind,
 work to outlast immortal Rome de
 signed.
 He had overlooked the fact that if Rome was immortal nothing could outlast 1t. But neither of these are any worse than the story Of Phar- aoh's daughter finding the infant Moses among the bulrushes on the bank of the Nile. As a matter of fact bulrlshes do not thrive in southern attitudes and there are none on she banks of the Nile.
 Tn his youthfulness and meager education may be found some excuse for Keats writing:
 eyes,
 He gazed at the Pacific.
 Almost every schooiboy today knows that Balboa discovered the Pacific and that Cortez was nowhere near it
 Even old Izaak Walton, who, be cause of his life spent in the open air. should have known better. also confounds the maie and female nightingale, and in his Complete Angler" writes: But the nightin- gale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet, loud music out of her instrumental throat"
 Dr. Samuel Warren, in that vol luminous three-ply novel, Ten Thousand a Year" made this re- markable assertion: The astonished Yahoo, smoking, as well as he could, a cigar with which he had filled all his pockets" That passage was shown to a critic, who is an inveter- ate smoker, and his comment was that 2 cigar of such dimensions must certainly have been Pennsyl- vania stogie.
 Sir Walter Scott, in his Heart Of Midlothian" moralizes thus: Our simple and unpretentious heroine had the merit of those peacemakers to whom 1t is promised as bene- diction that they shall inherit the earth" Possibly Sir Walter did not know his Testament as well as be night or he would have recalled that it is promised that not the peacemakers, but the meek shall inherit the earth"
 A case cf misquotation that has become chronic is revealed by passage in Habakkuk. The passage really reads: Write the vision ano make it plain that he may run thai readeth 1t. The vision was warn ing and the reader was to run ron danger, but Cooper miseuoted by saving: He that runs ma read.- sIgnifying that it is easily read in haste, and this version has sarvived.
 Another instance of rewriting a quotation into something Of entire lv divergent meaning is afforded Ds the passage from Buffers "Hndi bras" which really is. He that complies against his will is of the same opinion still" Many a writer has misquoted that into man convinced against his will Is