SCRAWLING.

Evening Star, Issue 3559, 20 July 1874, Page 3

SCRAWLING.

Those alone whose business lies within the walls of a printing office can fully appreciate the difficulty with which they have to contend in deciphering the apologies for penmanship which are frequently placed before them in the shape of letters. There are some communications which no person in the world except a practissed compositor could read. Copy, which to an ordinary mortal’s vision resembles sheets

°f paper upon which a few dozen spiders bathed in ink have run a zigzag race, is turned into glorious print by the ingenuity and perseverance of the compositor. Among literary men of the present century, the handwriting of Horace Greely, the late editor of the ‘ New York Tribune,’ was considered the most difficult to decipher and many are the amusing stories told of the mistakes which have been made in his copy in consequence of some words having been unintelligible to the compositor. A writer in Chambers s Journal’ gives a narrative of some of the blunders which have

been made with Greely’s copy. Here are a few. When, in exposing some congressional malpractices, Gfreely wrote, 11 rUe ’ and pity ’tis, ’tis true,” the familiar quotation appeared in the un-Shaksperean guise, “Tis two, ’tis fifty,and fifty’tis’tis five!” Aleaderupon William 11. Seward came forth headed Richard the Third. ” When he alluded to certain electors as “ freeman in buckram, ’ the printer turned them into “ three men in a back room.” These, under the circumstances, excusable delinquencies were capped by the printer of the ‘ New York Tribune’ bulletins. Having received a notice in the well-known but ever unintelligible hieroglyphics, intended to inform the public that they must seek “ Entrance in Spruce street,” after some hours’ hard study and cogitation, the puzzled man of the brush in sheer desperation dashed off in large letters “ Editors on a Spree,’ and posted the extraordinary announcement on the front door of the i Tribune ’ office.