HAPPY HOWLERS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLV, Issue 11930, 28 October 1919, Page 7

HAPPY HOWLERS.

BY A COLLECTOR OF THEM. The really good schoolboy “howler” is a thing of beauty and a boy for ever. The undue precocity revealed by many howlers has bred the suspicion that they are manufactured by children of a larger growth, but a surprisingly great majority of the choicest specimens are genuine. One soon learns to detect the flavour of the unadulterated. Who would question the juvenility of the statement that “Thibet is situated at the northwest corner of importance?'’ On the other hand, itjwould probably be unwise to trace the writer who informs us that “The three highest mountains in Scotland are Ben Nevis, Ben Lomond, and Ben Jouson. ” Not that anyone cares a proverbial brass farthing. It is wisest to ac cept wit at its face value and be thankful for small sunbeams. Much of the satisfaction we derive from howlers lies in the knowledge that they are written with the deadly seriousness of small students, as witness the following effort of a Parliamentarian in embryo: “Political economy ;is the science which teaches ns to get the greatest benefit with, the least possible amount of honest labour.”

Mrs Malaprop herself could not compete successfully with the muddle-headed attitude of .the youthful essayist. . Unconscious and scathing wit suddenly flashes from the midst of a dull “composition exercise.” “John o’ London himself would be the first to appreciate the dictum “Amatory verses are those composed by amateurs. ’ ’ He was indeed a minor prophet in more ways than one who wrote some time before the outbreak of the war, “Possibly the time is fast approaching when all gold will take the form of £1 notes as in Scotland,” and it may have been the same boy who at a, later date announced, “The courage of the Turks is explained by the fact that a man with several wives is more willing to face death than if he had only one,” This is worthy to be ranked with many of the equally far-fetched theories which have been put forward seriously for our enlightenment upon war problems! As a rule, howlers are delightful merely because of the general chaos and absurdity, and the following .are good examples of this class: — “In the United States people are put to death by elocution.” “Hydrogen is colourless, odourless, and insolvent.” “Henry VIII. was succeeded on the throne by his grandmother, the beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, sometimes khownas The Lady of the Lake or the Lay of the Last Minstrel. ”

“Kangaroos are pouched animals which when there is danger put their 3 7 oung into their opossums. ” As might be expected, the wisdom of the housewife creeps into the howlers perpetrated by little girls. “A pipe is a wooden thing a man sticks in his mouth to keep him from wearying. ’ ’

A definition hard to beat. Again, we can almost catch the tone of her exasperated parent from the daughter who missed the sarcasm of the advice, “To keep milk from turning sour you should leave it in the cow. ’’ Which is the best howler ever produced? In the somewhat extensive collection from which a selection has been given, there is an easy first. . By a miracle of spelling, a whole sermon, with a solemn warning and a sound moral, is delivered in a gem of nine words: “A graven image is an idle maid with hands.”