Abbreviated Verse

A man hired by John Smith and Co.
Loudly declared that he’d tho.
Men that he saw
Dumping dirt near his store;
The drivers, therefore, didn’t do.

There is an old cook in N.Y.
Who insists you should always st.p.
Full vainly he’s tried
To eat some that was fried,
But he says he would rather ch.c.

The sermon our pastor Rt. Rev.
Began may have had a rt. clev.,
But his talk, though consistent,
Kept the end so far distant
That we left, since we felt he mt. nev.

— Anonymous

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Misc

  • The telephone number 266-8687 spells both AMOUNTS and CONTOUR.
  • 38856 = (38 – 85) × 6
  • CARTHORSE is an anagram of ORCHESTRA.
  • The French for paper clip is trombone.
  • “The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.” — Samuel Butler
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In Memoriam

But no more horrible specimen of this sort of blunder was ever committed than one which is credited to a Massachusetts paper. At the close of an extended and highly eulogistic obituary notice of a deceased lawyer, the reporter desired to say that ‘the body was taken to Hull for interment, where repose the remains of other members of the family.’ By mistake the letter e was substituted for the u in Hull, changing the sense of the sentence to such a degree that no extra copies of that issue of the paper were ordered by the family of the dead lawyer.

— William Shepard Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892

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