RECREATIONS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 141, 10 November 1871, Page 3

RECREATIONS.

No. IV.—A CHAPTER OF BLUNDERS AND MISTAKES. (Continued from our last.) BLUNDERS IN COMPOSITION. Odd blunders have sometimes been made in composition by the Disarrangement of clauses, as when boys' dragons or kites were described as " light frames covered with paper, and sent into the air by boys with tails ©n them." The tombstone at La Point, which bears the brief inscription : —'" John Philips, accidentally tnot- as :i mark o< afivction by his brother " —must be another slip of the same kind, unless brotherly affection at L:i Point has an unusual way of exprcspin* itself. A Cleveland paper, describing a republican demonstration in that city, said:—"The procession Willi vei-y lino, and nearly two miles long, as was also the prayer of Dr. Perry, the chaplain." The same journal, in its notice of a forthcoming meeting, said, with probably more truth than it designed—" A great variety of speeches may be expected, too tedious to mention." A Wisconsin paper announced, about the same time, that the Board of Education had " resolved to erect a building large enough to accommodate five hundred students three storeys high.' The building would have to be large, indeed, to accommodate students of such unusual height. Similar to this was the advertisement which appeared in an English paper, under the heading of " To Let": — u A house for a family in goo < repair." 'Punch,' in quoting this advertisement, conjectured that a family in good repair must mean one Li which none of the members were cracked.

The brief and touching advertisement—" Two sisters want washing," which appeared in the ' Manchester Guardian,' is not open to the objection of being ungraminatical, but it is certainly ambiguous, and is apt to excite the thought how many people want washing besides the two sisters. Blunders of this sort are apt to be made even by good writers when wilting carelessly. We find Swift, in describing a piece of plate, saying—" I could perceive that it was scoured with half an eye." Scoured with half an eye! One feels inclined to ask " Whose ?" as Sydney Smith did when recommended to take a walk on an empty stomach. In read ng an interesting article on old newspapers, in ' Frazer's Magazine/ I could not help smiling over the following sentence, which, though saved to some extent by the " who," reads very comically—" Opposite me," says the writer, " there was seated at a table a thick-set man, eating a lobster who* was a Parliamentary reporter."

In India, the signboards put up by native merchants to attract British customers would furnish an endless list of similar blunders. " Ihman Bucks & Co., Merchant and JSodawater," is the superscription over one shop in Allahabad. Over another there glares the following alarming announcement:—•

Mooka. Siva & Co., Meechants. Customers, sending orders, will be promptly executed. If Mooka, Sing, and Co., are prepared to stand by their grammar, customers will surely think twice before letting their orders go. One would scarcely expect anything like this amongst ourselves; yet I remember reading in the Boyal Exchange and in the Glasgow papers the following curious telegram, dat?d May 13, 1864 : —" The captain and crew of the ship Avon, of Boston, U.S., were landed at Plymouth yesterday, having been burnt on the 20fch March by the Confedrate steamer Florida." After one of Mr. Glaisber's balloon ascents, the newspaper correspondent of the region where the ajronaut and his friends came down, reported that " after partaking of a hearty breakfast r the balloon was brought into the town amidst the cheers and congratulations of the major part of the population." (To be continued.)