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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 2
[trade dispatches]
By a recent German law the word « Margarine » must appear in large letters on every packet of the artificial substitute for butter. A clever lithographer has made a good thing out of this. He has prepared labels in which the word is displayed beneath the fancy portrait of a lady. Dealers in the sham use these labels in preference to any other, as the public buy the compound under the idea that « Margarine » is the name of the lady instead of the grease!
An improbable paragraph is in circulation to the effect that Mrs Margaret Fox Kane, widow of the Arctic explorer, and one of the « Fox sisters » of Rochester, N.Y., with whom the first manifestations of modern spiritism originated, has declared that the whole system has been nothing but imposture from first to last. The assertion rests on the authority of an « interviewer. » We would not have noticed it had the further statement not been made that Horace Greeley, the great journalist, and one of the most upright of men, was a party to the fraud. Most of our contemporaries, in quoting the item, have dropped this part, which, to anyone who knows anything of Mr Greeley's character, is manifestly false. We have no doubt that the whole story is equally untrue.
A recent telegraphic puzzle in MS. concluded with the words, « Instructions have been given to search A. S. Russell. » The keen-eyed editor cogitated awhile, and a happy thought struck him. He changed the concluding words to « Sir Chas. Russell, » and his interpretation turned out to be correct.— « Boiled wine » for « barbed wire » was a recent blunder in a tariff telegram. Boiled wine—which had to be reduced with water to make it potable—is now out of fashion, but was well known to the ancients, and must have been unfermented.— Mr Booth, a Yankee orator, originated a bold mixed metaphor in an address delivered near Sydney. « Let the Russian Bear put his paw upon the fair land of Australia, then the British Lion, the American Eagle, and the Australian Kangaroo would rise up as one man, and drive him ignominiously to his lair. » The applause that greeted this brilliant flight of imagination lasted five minutes.—In a weekly chess columu, a correspondent is told, « You embraced yourself by endeavoring to retain the Pawn, otherwise it would have been difficult for your opponent to have matched you. » For « embraced » read « embarrassed, ») and for « matched, » « mated, » and the item becomes intelligible.—A Wanganui paper notifies that in future the Customs will levy Id per lb on « leather board and compo. used as a substitute for butter. ».—A South Island contemporary predicts that the result of the Parnell inquiry will be « to bring out the naked unembellished innocence of Parnell and his friends. » This is only outdone by the noted Bengali strictures on Lieut.-Governor Sir George Campbell, in an Anglo-native paper: « But though he flaunted himself, clothed in gaudy tinsel, it was not for ever and a day, for the House of Commons have torn off every rag and tatter, and exposed his cui bono in all its naked hideousness. » —The Marlborough Press published an official announcement that Mr A. G. Fell, « being the holy candidate for the office of Mayor, » had been duly elected. Mr [unclear: Fed] has had to put up with a good deal of mild banter on the score of his qualification.— A Napier paper, reporting a concert, states (that one of the singers gave « Alas! those Chinese » very nicely.—Another Napier paper accuses a rival of evolving an item « out of his infernal consciousness. » —A contemporary announces the discovery of a « new motive powder. » —A Dunedin paper published the following cable message: « Mr H. J. Trotter is dead. Take in. » Instead of « taking in » the explanatory paragraph, the comp had set up the private instruction, leaving the puzzled readers to infer that the item was a « take-in » or hoax.— According to an advertisement in an American paper relating to a town contract, a condition is— « The contractor to expire on the 30th April, 1889. » -It is when the intelligent comp has to make a correction that he comes out at his best. A contemporary says: « Owing to an error in the report of the concert last Friday evening, Mr A.'s song read 'The boy at the Door' instead of 'The boy at the Noor.' »