A PROBLEM TO SOLVE.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3659, 17 September 1880, Page 2

A PROBLEM TO SOLVE.

" Wanted three competent men to fill vacancies on the editorial staff of the Oil City Daily Derrick. The sad eiimunstances which called out the above adrer* tisement are as follows:—In yesterday's editorial column appeared a notice that a man named Shores had married his stepdaughter, who wa.s also his cousin, being an uncle's daughter by his (Shores') 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 at* tempted 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 on their father's side, and their grandmother would be their grand aunt and also stepmother, as well as their father's wife, Hence they'd be their children! Twice nothing or nothing and two to carry!" And then he tried to stab himself with a copy hook. 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 brotherin law, being also a cousin to his wife, her children Are his second cousins, and be must.be cousin to her husband, so he's his own cousin, and being his own cousin he must hare been also his cousins, and his uncles and his aunts—and so do his cousins, and his uncles and his aunts —and ao do his cousins and his—" And right here it became necessary to fasten the night editor into his ohair, -where he sits wildly repeating, "and so do his uncles and his oousins and his aunts I " a helpless idiot. Then the editor attacked it, and in two minutes he made the children their own mother-in-law, and one of them he declared was her own grand* mother; after which he was delivered up to the police for safe keeping. The problem was taken up by the "comps.," and in half an hour every man was sitt|te with starring eyes, figuring with Jns fingers on the back of his hand, and swearing Shores had married his great grandmother without a license; while the devil jumped out the window-under the impression he was his own ancestor.—Oil City Derrick.