Comical Blunders
Disinfecting a Telegram
The Milan journal, Pungolo, relates that a Turin merchant, who had correspondents in the French Department of Bouches du Rhône, received at his private house, at Pinerolo, a telegram from Marseilles. Upon reading it he discovered, to his great annoyance, that it must have been sent off some twenty-four hours before it was delivered to him. He called upon the telegraph clerk to account for the delay, and the honest man at once confessed that the despatch had indeed lain for a day and a night in his office. He went on to gravely explain that, as it had come from a place where cholera was known to be raging, he had felt himself bound, in compliance with the regulations of the Italian sanitary authorities, to disinfect it by exposing it to the fumes of burning sulphur!