I found him the next day running his finger down the letter Z, in the index to the Handy Atlas, with a puzzled look upon his face. I knew then that he had received a letter from the editor, advising him to look out Zenana in the Atlas before writing anything further about so ticklish a region.
I also knew a sub-editor who fancied that the pibroch was a musical instrument widely circulated in the Highlands.
But who can blame a humble provincial journalist for making an odd blunder occasionally, when a leading London newspaper, in announcing the death, some years ago, of Captain Wallace, son of Sir Richard Wallace, stated that the sad event had occurred while he was "playing at bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne"? It might reasonably have been expected, I think, that the sub-editor of the foreign news should know of the existence of the historic mansion Bagatelle, which the Marquis of Hertford left to Sir Richard Wallace with the store of art treasures that it contained.
What excuse, one may also ask, can be made for the Dublin Professor who referred in print "to those populous districts of Hindostan, watered by the Ganges and the Deccan"?
In alluding to Frankenstein as the monster, and not merely the maker of the monster, the mistakes made by provincial journalists of the old school may certainly also be condoned, when we find the same ridiculous hallucination maintained by one of the most highly representative of modern journalists, as-well as by the editor of a weekly paper of large circulation, who enshrined it in the preface to a book for which he was responsible. In this case the writer could not have been pressed for time. But the marvel is, not that so many errors are run into by provincial journalists, but that so few can be laid to their charge. With telegrams pouring in by private wire, as well as by the P.A. and C.N., to say nothing of Baron Reuter's and Messrs, Dalziel's special services; with the foreman printer, too, appearing like a silent spectre and departing like one that is not silent, leaving the impression behind him that no newspaper, except that composed by a hated rival, can possibly be produced the next morning;--with all these drags upon the chariot wheels of composition, how can it be reasonably expected that an editor or a sub-editor will become Academic in his erudition? When, however, it is discovered the next day by some tenth-rate curate, who probably gets a free copy of the paper, that the quotation "_O tempora! O mores!_" is attributed to Virgil instead of Cicero, in a leading article a column in length, written upon a speech of seven columns, the writer is at once referred to as an ignorant boor, and an invitation is given to all that curate's friends to point the finger of scorn at the journalist.