AN AMAZING TANGLE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2025, 20 August 1880, Page 2

AN AMAZING TANGLE.

“ Wanted, three competent men to fill vacancies on the editorial staff of the Oil City * Daily Derrick.' ” The sad circumstances which called cut the above advertisement are as follows :—ln yesterday’s editorial column appeared a notice that a man named Shores had married his step daughter, who was also his cousin, being an uncle’s daughter by his (Shore’s) deceased wife’s former marriage. The city editor very thoughtlessly asked, “What relation would the children by this marriage, and their children, sustain to the parents ?” The whole force attempted to solve the problem, with terrible results. “In the first place,” said the city editor, “ the children would be their father’s and mother’s second cousins ; and their grandfather would be their grand uncle by their father’s side,, while their grandmother would bo their grand aunt, and also stepmother, as well as their father’s wife. Hence they’d be their own children gracious: twice nothing or nothing and two to carry.” And then he tried to stab himself with a copy-book. The night editor said—“ As he married his wife’s daughter, the mother is sister to her own children, and her husband must be their brother-in-law; and if he’s their brother-in-law, being also a cousin to his wife, her children are his second cousins, and he must be cousin to her husband, so he’s his own cousin, and being his own cousin, he must have been also his cousins, and his uncles, and his aunts—and so do his cousins and his uncles and his aunts—and so do his cousins and hie ” And right hero it became necessary to fasten the night editor into his chair, where ho sits wildly repeating, “ and so do hia uncles and his cousins and his aunts,” a hopeless idiot. Then the editor attacked it, and in two minutes he made the children their own mothers-in-law, and one of them he declared was her own grandmother, after which he was delivered up to the police for safe keeping. The problem was taken up by the “ comps,” and Jin half an hour every man was sitting with stating eyes, figuring with his finger on the back of his hand, and swearing Chores had married his great grandmother without a license, while the devil jumped out of the window under the impression he was his own ancestor.—“ Old City Derrick.”