A USEFUL MISTAKE.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 September 1929, Page 24 (Supplement)

A USEFUL MISTAKE.

It is very seldom that a mistake turns 'out to be useful. Even thia particular mistake would have remained a blunder had it not been turned to good account. It all happened in a paper mill. Here . paper of every kind was made in quantities, and a certain workman had to Bee that all the ingredients were used at the right time and in the right place. You might so.y that he mixed the pudding. Well, one day this workman must have been thinking of something else, for he left’out a very important ingredient when making the paper. The mill worked all the same, the paper ■went through the various processes, and came out utterly spoilt. The workman had forgotten to put in the sizing which would have given it a finished, surface, find the mill-owner v rung his hands pver a great heap-of ruined material. Evervono came ami looked at the fepoilt stuff, and one man took a sheet and tried to write on it, but all the paper did was to drink up the ink. That gave the man a bright idea. He wrote upon a sheet of good paper, and, instead of sprinkling sand upon it to dry it according to the custom of those days, lie dabbed a sheet of spoilt paper upon it* mid it drank up the superfluous ink and dried the writing perfectly. That is bow blotting paper was discovered*- —through a mistake. Wasn’t it (1 good tiling somebody had the sense to piako the best of it? THE COLD SHOULDER. z When you "give the cold shoulder’’ to someone, it is simply a matter of treatinn- that person very coldly and making Unknown to him that you do not wish to have anything to do with him. But the original "cold shoulder” was actually a cold shoulder of mutton —or Txthcr’tlio remains of one. This not very hospitable dish was placed before tin unwelcome stranger who stayed to dinner in olden days; thus he was jjileritly informed that his room was pre- . faired to his cc."'y'."' i ■