TELEGRAPHIC ECCENTRICITIES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 2059, 4 August 1885, Page 2

TELEGRAPHIC ECCENTRICITIES.

Reviewing a book recently published by Mr Hyde on postal and telegraphic work,,., a London paper remarks The author, by explaining the modus operandi, shows what astounding pervorsions of a sender's meaning may be. made in his message, without assuming that the operator is either stupid or wicked. It was, no doubt, annoying to the friends of a pleasure party to receive by wire the intelligence that they had arrived 1 all tight,' but a glance at the Morse Code explains how easily a t was substituted for an rin the last word. A word will occasionally drop out of a message by one "of the several forms of accidents, and a terrible mistake may thereby occur, The message, 'Alfred doing well; enjoyed egg to-day,' came to hand in this form,' Alfred dying; enjoyed GG to-day.' In this message 'well'had disappeared, and it is allowable to suppose that the receiving oporator had amended the word 'doing' in order to make, as ho conceived, something like sense. Wo suppose telegraphists will tamper with their' copy' sometimes as well as compositors. Mr Hyde winds up his list of tele- • graphic eccentricities by the story of one perpetrated in America. A merchant of St. Louis, while absent at New York, received a telegram stating that his wife was ill, He immediately wired to the family doctor to ask the nature of her illness, and received the following reply; — 1 No danger; your wife has had a child. If we can keep her from having another to-night she will do well." Here also there was'but a mistake of a letter, for "child" read "chill" and all is plain. This, adds the Waipawa lilail, to an extent, explains the mysterious messages of which we in Waipawa are the happy recipients, Thus, then we informed the astonished world recently that a skeleton had been found in Wellington harbour, they should l\aye understood that the " body of Scanlon" was what the Mora?, instalment really lqeant to imply.