Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1881 — Freaks of the Telegraph. [ARTICLE]

Freaks of the Telegraph.

Names are always a great stumblingblock to the clerks, and addresses are composed of names. Most of us have tricks of writing names in any but a distinct fashion; and, although the postoffice persistently reminds us, on the forms given us to write our telegrams on, that the writing should be plain, this advice, like most other advice, is but too often neglected. Hence many telegrams get altogether astray, sometimes to the not slight discomfiture of those into whose hands they fall, and who, unwitting that any error has been made, forthwith act upon them. It is related that a woman residing in some small street in Manchester once received what appeared to be a summons from her husband to come up to him in London. Very much alarmed, she at once started. On her way she got in conversation with another woman who was in the same carriage, and who she found was also going to see her husband, who was in London ill. This womau had been expecting to receive a telegram from her husband, and, not hearing, had grown anxious, and had finally set off without the telegram. Further parley revealed the fact that their names were the same; that their husbands’ names were the same ; that they both lived in the same quarter in Manchester; and it finally transpired that the telegram which had been delivered to the first woman was the very one which the second had been waiting for—the error in delivery having been caused by some such mistake as “ Hamilton street ” for “Henrietta street” a mistake very likely attributable to want of distinctness in the writing. Another curious case of coincidence of which we have heard was that of a telegram addressed, “John Stillingwise, Brookdean, nr. Mirkby Lonsdale,’’from Robert Stillingwise, his brother, begging him to come at once to him at a hotel which he indicated, in Leeds. The address “ Brookdean ” was in some way altered, and the telegram was delivered to another John Stillingwise living somewhere in the neighborhood of Kirkby Lonsdale. This unfortunate man, who had not iieard from his brother Robert for some twenty years, at once started off. in stormy, wintry weather, reached Leeds in the evening, and was told by the landlord that he could not see his brother that night, as he was very far from well, and had gone to bed. The next morning he was ushered into Robert Stillingwise’s room, expecting to see his long-lost brother, when, to his extreme astonishment and disgust, he found himself confronted by an utter stranger ! Hlackivood's Magazine.