Printers’ Mistakes — 320
During the Mexican war, one newspaper hurriedly announced an important item of news from Mexico, that General Pillow and thirty-seven of his men had been lost in a bottle. Some other paper informed the public not long ago “that a man in a brown surtout was yesterday brought before the police court, on a charge of having stolen a small ox from a lady’s workbag. The stolen property was found in his waistcoat pocket.” “A rat” says another paper, “descending the river, came in contact with a steamboat, and so serious was the injury done to the boat that great exertions were necessary to save it.” An English paper once stated that the Russian General Raekinoffkowsky “was found dead with a long word in his mouth.” It was, perhaps, the same paper that, in giving a description of a battle between the Poles and the Russians, said that “the conflict was dreadful, and the enemy was repulsed with great laughter.” Again: “A gentleman was yesterday brought up to answer the charge of having eaten a stage driver for demanding more than his fare. At the late Fourth of July dinner, in the town of Charlestown, none of the poultry were eatable except the owls.”