Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1878 — DROLL BLUNDERS. [ARTICLE]

DROLL BLUNDERS.

By the insertion of one letter in place of another, a newspaper, net long since, reporting the danger that an express train 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 calvesl” A Scotch newspaper, reporting the speeches at a Scott centenary meeting, made one of the orators exclaim, with more truth than accuracy: Oh, Caledonia! stem and wild, Wet-nurse for a poetic child! Never, perhaps, was the word “austere” more misconstrued than in the instance of a clergyman in Lancashire who got a wholesome warning in regard to pulpit articulation by discovering in one house which he visited, the day after preaching from Luke xix., 21, that the servant had gone home with the impression that his text had been, “I feared thee, because thou art an oyster man!” A Hampshire incumbent recently reported in the Pall Mall Gazette some of the blunders 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 it was quite the fashion for the man, when giving the ring, to say to the woman, “With my body I thee wash up, and with all my hurdle goods I thee and thou.” He said the women were generally better up in this part of the service 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,- “to ’ave and to ’old from this day fortni’t for betterer horse, for rieherer power, in siggerness health, to love cherries and to bay.” What meaning this extraordinary vow conveyed to her own mind the incunjfeent said it baffled him to conjecture. The stories told of the blunders made by Oxford and Cambridge under-grad-uates 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, confidentially, “ Saul, also called Paul.” Another 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 inn-keeper: “ When I come again I will repay thee.” Here the unlucky examinee 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 have been rather limited. The following case came before him one day: A man who kept a ferret, having to go into the country,left the cage with the ferret in charge of a neighbor till he should return. The neighbor incautiously opened the cage door, and the ferret escaped. The owner was very angry, and brought a claim against his neighbor for damages. The following was the decision of the learned bailie : “Nae 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, “ye was wrang too. For why did ye no clip the brute’s wings ? ” By the bad arrangement of clauses in composition ludicrous blunders are sometimes made. A Wisconsin paper announced that the Board of Education had “resolved to erect a building large enough to accommodate 500 students three stories high.” In an - 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 family 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 a note of apology sent to Dean Alford by his jeweler, and “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. It was an Irish editor that exclaimed, when speaking of the wrongs of his country, “Her cup of misery has been overflowing, and is not yet full!” It 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! ” Though not so numerous as those of the Emerald isle, Scotland is not without its specimens of this kind of blunder. Two operatives in one of the border towns were heard disputing about a new cemetery, beside the elegant railing of which they were standing. One of them, evidently disliking the continental fashion in which it was being laid out, said, in disgust: “ I’d rather dee than be buried in sic a place.” “ W-eel, it’s the verra reverse wr me,” said the other; “ for I’ll be buried naewhere else, if I’m spared.” A clergymanf walking oneday in the country, fell into thought. He was so accustomed to ride that when he found himself at a toll he stopped and shouted to the man, “ Here! what’s to pay?” “ Pay for what? ” asked the man. “ For my horse,” said the clergyman. “ What horse? There’s no horse, sir.” “Bless me! ” exclaimed the clergyman, looking down between his legs, “ I thought I was on horseback! ” Sydney Smith was not in general ab-sent-minded, but he says that once, when calling on a friend in London, and being asked by the servant, “ Who shall I say has called? ” he could not for the life of him recollect his own name, and stared in blank confusion at the man for some time before it cfme back to him. The first Lord Lyttleton was very absent. It is declared of him that, when he fell into the river by the upsetting of a boat at Hagley, “ he sank twice before he recollected that he could swim.” Some blunders arise from misapprehension. A Bishop of Oxford sent round to the church-wardens in his diocese a circular of inquiries, including the question, “Does your officiating clergyman preach the gospel, and is his conversation and carriage consistent therewith?” The church-warden of Wallingford replied: “He preaches the gospel, but does not keep a carriage.”

A doctor who had one day allowed himself to drink too much was sent- for to see a fashionable lady who was ailing. He sat down by the bed-side, took out his watch, and began to count her pulse as well as his obfuscated condition would permit. He counted: “One, two, three, four.” Still confused, he began again: “ One, two.” No; he could not do it. Thoroughly ashamed of himself, he shut up his watch, muttering, “Tipsy I decare—tipsy!” Staggering to his feet, he told the lady to keep her bed, and take some hot lemonade to throw her into a perspiration, and he would see her next day. In the morning he received the following note from the lady, marked “ Private: ” “Dear Doctor —You were right. I dare not deny it. But lam thoroughly ashamed of myself, and will be more careful for the future. Please accept the inclosed fee for your visit” (a £lO note), “ and do not, I entreat you, breathe a word about the state in which you found me.” The lady, in fact, had herself been drinking too much, and, catching the doctor’s murmuring words, thought they referred to her. He was too far gone to see what was the matter with his patient, and she too far to observe that the doctor was in the same condition.