SLIPS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 888, 6 August 1910, Page 9

SLIPS.

One of tho most "attractive articles 111 the new volume of "Printers' l'ie" is ono in which Mr. Do Morgan defends himself from some of the more captious of his critics. It is gossipy, witty, and Morganesque/' and in one of his paragraphs lie , tolls us how it came about that in "Somehow Good" tliero appears the phraao "at Ontario," as if Ontario wero a town and not a whole province. ; Writing at random at first, he had determined to-locate Fe.nwicK while in Canada at Toronto, but finding, later, that tlie choiQ?, was unsuitable, lie sent iv message ,to his printer to search for all the occurrences of tho word '"Toronto" and substitute "Ontario."' Now there appeared tho expression "at Toronto," and the printer merely changed it into, "at Ontario." That is the whole story,, and the case is parallel , with that of Shakespeare, who, while revising . both parts of. "Henry 'and substituting everywhere for "Sir John-Oldcastle," "Sir John Falstaff," oiuittud in the First Part to alter the phrase in which Prince Henry addresses him as "my old lad of the Castle.'-' Such slips are of the nature of vestigial remnants. In the same book, however, Mr. De Morgan may find other slips of a different sort. One is . that by which he unintentionally represents a nurse who has known his heroine only as Mrs.' Fenwick addressing/her as. Mrs. Nightingale. Tho reason is. obvious. Although married only twice, and both times to tho same man, tlie heroine in the course of her career had had five olianges of namo. She was, to begin with, Miss Rosalind' Graythorpe; by her marriage in India she became Mrs. Rosalind I'alliser; after her desertion she called herself Mrs. Rosalind Graythorpe until her stepfather, on. leaving her his fortune, stipulated that she take his name, whereupon she became Mrs. Rosalind Nightingale: finally, by her marriage with Fenwick she became Mrs. Rosalind .Fenwick. Mr. De Morgan delights in complicating matters ,in this way for his readers, but it is' no wonder that, once in a way* he should get confused himself, and forget which one of lier names she was wearing at some particular time.