A DISTRESSING BLUNDER.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 28 July 1917, Page 5

A DISTRESSING BLUNDER.

I SOMEBODY MUST EXPLAIN. j Mr. A, C. Nicholls, of this town, and his two sons, have recently had some | rather distressing, if not uncanny experiences. A string of misfortunes and misunderstandings commenced with a j telegram dispatched from Auckland on the 2Tth hist., and asking whether a letter had been received that had been posted a day or two previously. The telegram also stated that Mr. Nicholas daughter ’s health was about the same and that Mrs. Nicholls was unable to see her. It may-Tbe mentioned that the child had been taken to the Auckland hospital suffering with diptheria. Mr, Nicholls replied to the wire stating that it was unintelligible and that no letter had come to hand. Mr. Nicholls anxiously went to clear his letter-box several times during the day; then at night he, in desperation enquired at the Post Office counter, explaining the circumstances, A search was made in the office and the missing letter was found, but not in the Post Office box where it should have been some ten or eleven hours previously. This letter fully explained the child’s condition. Next day a wire came stating there was no improvement. Another telegram also came on the morning of 25th July, advising ■that the child was about the same. Later a telegram that had been dispatched from Auckland at 2.35 p.m. was received which read “ Eileen * just sank. Rose homo.’ ’ Mr. Nicholls and his two sons at once prepared to proceed to Auckland by the first Express He came to the office of this journal and handed the usual death notice to be advertised. On the following morning this journal was agreeably astounded to receive an urgent telegram from Mr. Nicholls, then f in Auckland* stating that the notice was not to be published, the child was alive and rapidly improving. Someone had blundered; it was all an uncanny mistake on somebody’s part.

It appears that on reaching 'Auckland Mr. Nicholls and his two sons went to where Mrs. Nicholls w T as living, being in Auckland to benefit her own health. He found that Mrs. Nicholls had ho knowledge of her little girl’s death, but she concluded that the hospital people had left the sad news to be broken by her own people, and little further was thought of it. Mr. Nicholls and his song set about preparing for th e funeral, and were within a few yards of where the coffin was to be ordered when the intuition came to one of the young men to ring up the hospital. He was urged that it was waste of time as they could all go to the hospital when the coffin was aranged for, but he persisted, and when lie returned to the pavement with the great nows the scene that followed is best imagined. They first carried the glad tidings to Mrs. Nicholls and then all proceeded to the hospital and would not' leave until their little one was help up at the diptheria ward window where they could exchange greetings with the one that was dead but hi alive again.

From the hospital the telegraph office was visited and a copy of h e telegram obtained that had caused the deep heartburnings. It was then seen that a hideous blunder somewhere in transit was th e cause. The copy of the telegram as dispatched reads:, “Eileen just same Rose home.” When it reached Mr. Nicholls in Taihape it read:—• “Eileen just Sank Rose home.” The above particulars are given so that the very many intimate friends of Mr. Nicholls may know precisely how his aArful experiences Avcre brought abqut.