Only a Letter.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 17, 2 March 1917, Page 2

Only a Letter.

A printer once made a prospectus for a gold-mine speak the truth by accident, for it read : “Issue of one hundred thousand snares at one pound leach. " The writer meant “shares,” of course, but it was truer as it stood.

An Irish paper some time ago in the course of a very laudatory article on Mr. John Redmond, the highly respected leader of the Nationalists, described him as “The greatest thief Ireland had known since O’Connell.’’ The compositor had lifted a “t” for a “c,” that was all. But oh, the difference !

In the days before the Liberal and Tory truce, when party recrimination was rife, the Conservative organ of a big provincial paper; got a nasty strangle-hold on the chances of the Liberal candidate at the bye-election, and all through a single letter of the alphabet !

The Liberal paper was describing a Tory meeting, and in the course of the article it said ; “The .arrival of the candidate on the platform was greeted by the great uplifted snouts of the entire audience, the ladies making themselves particularly prominent.”

Now, to talk about the “prominent snouts” of ladies, even though they be political foes, is very unmannerly, and the Conservative paper refused to believe the statement that the letter “n” ought to have been "h.” It preferred to rub the “snout” of its opponent in the mud. But probably the climax is reached in the case of the Archbishop who was - credited with saying “he had been on the drink for a month,” when he pnlv said “brink.”