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The Mistakes We Make 
 
 A Practical Manual of Corrections 
 
 IN 
 
 HISTORY, LANGUAGE, AND FACT, FOR READERS 
 AND WRITERS 
 
 COMPILED AND EDITED 
 
 NATHAN HASKELL DOLE 
 
 e^ 
 
 NEW YORK : 46 East 14TH Street 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COxMPANY 
 
 BOSTON; 100 Purchase Street 
 

 Copyright, 1S9S 
 By Thomas Y. Crowell & Company 
 
 \d^<<J^, 
 
EDITOE'S NOTE. 
 
 Solomon says, " Faithful are the wounds of a 
 friend." This manual tries to take the place of a 
 friend, good-natured and yet critical. The cap- 
 tious, carping criticism that finds fault in a self- 
 ish, egotistical, pharisaical, and condescending 
 spirit does little good. Nor does it advantage a 
 man to have his faults pointed out in the presence 
 of others. This little book is the counsellor for 
 the closet. We all make mistakes of every kind. 
 The old pessimistic philoso2)hy says the greatest 
 mistake is living. But since we are here in this 
 world it is our duty to improve ourselves, and 
 when our faults are brought to our notice, to 
 amend them. There is not one man, woman, or 
 child in this wide country that does not occasionally 
 perpetrate some of the blunders in fact, gram- 
 mar, style, here held up to comment. Undoubtedly 
 hundreds more might have been added to advan- 
 tage. But the editor's scoop-net was not large 
 enough, and it is to be doubted if a single book 
 would hold them all. They have been gathered 
 from all sources : the basis of the book is a little 
 
11 EDITOR S NOTE. 
 
 English treatise bearing the same title and edited 
 by C. E. Clarke. 
 
 But this material has been largely transposed 
 and rewritten. " Notes and Queries," that omnium 
 gatherum of facts and fancies, has been ransacked, 
 and many other periodicals and books — notably 
 Wilhelm Edel von Janko's " Fabeln und Geschichte" 
 — have been put under contribution. 
 
 There is nothing original about the book or its 
 contents. Such volumes have been made before. 
 There is a French work in fifteen volumes, con- 
 taining a vast quantity of historical mistakes recti- 
 fied at great length. In the eleventh century the 
 Isarned 'Ali ibn Muhammad ibn 'Othmar, called 
 Al Hariri, or the Silken, wrote a book entitled 
 " The Pearl," or '« The Pearl of the Diver," in 
 which he pointed out a multitude of errors com- 
 monly made by the educated people of his day. 
 Very likely among the lost works of Solomon there 
 was one of the same kind. ProjDhets have arisen 
 from time to time throughout the ages. 
 
 It is to be hoped that no errors will be found in 
 a book which aims to correct errors. Yet many 
 may cry, " Physician, heal thyself." The editor 
 can only say that he has endeavored to stick to 
 accuracy, but if others discover slips that he lias 
 made he will be glad to have them pointed out. 
 Nathan Haskell Dole. 
 
 Boston, Aus. 25, 1898. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Things called by Wrong Names . 1 
 
 II. Mistakes we makb about Places . li 
 
 III. Mistakes we make about Plants . 27 
 
 IV. Mistakes we make about Animals . 34 
 V. Birds and Insects 44 
 
 VI. Common Mistakes of Many Kinds . 59 
 VII. Words, Phrases, and Things that 
 
 are misunderstood .... 84 
 VIII. Mistakes we make in Connection 
 
 WITH Ancient History ... 90 
 IX. The Mistakes we make in Religious 
 
 History 100 
 
 X. Mistakes in English History . . 113 
 XI. Curious Blunders in General His- 
 tory ....... 149 
 
 XII. Blunders made by Famous Authors 
 
 AND Others 1G4 
 
 XIII. Misquotations and other Literary 
 
 Stumbling-blocks .... 181 
 
 XIV. Mistaken Derivations .... 204 
 XV. Mistakes in Speaking and Writing . 226 
 
 XVI. Terms Misapplied 240 
 
 Index 271 
 
THE MISTAKES WE MAKE, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THINGS CALLED BY WRONG NAMES. 
 
 Tradition, carelessness, and ignorance are re- 
 sponsible for many instances of wrong names 
 applied to well-known objects. The conservatism 
 that contents itself with the " well enough " permits 
 the error to be perpetuated, even though advance 
 in knowledge may have shown the fallacy. 
 
 Bunker Hill Monument. — Thus we still 
 celebrate the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the monu- 
 ment that dominates Charlestown is called Bunker 
 Hill monument. The battle took place on Breed^s 
 Hill. 
 
 Cleopatra's Needle. — The so-called "Cleo- 
 patra^s Needle " was not originally set up by Cleo- 
 patra, or in her honor. The Needle, which is now 
 on the Thames embankment in London, was first 
 erected by Thothmes, B.C. 1600, in front of the 
 temple of the Sun-god at On or Heliopolis. When 
 Rameses H., B.C. 1333, ruled the Nile Valley, he 
 added his name to his predecessor's. Cleopatra had 
 
I THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 the monolith taken with others from its original 
 position and reerected in Alexandria, in order to 
 adorn her palace at Laodicea. 
 
 Pompey's Pillar. — "Pompey's Pillar" has 
 no historical connection with that personage. Ac- 
 cording to the inscription it was erected by Publius, 
 Prefect of Egypt, A.D. 926, in honor of the Emperor 
 Diocletian. Professor Mahafiy claims that it Avas 
 erected two centuries before Christ by one of the 
 Ptolemies, and that, from being a four-sided 
 obelisk, it was made round by order of the Em- 
 peror, and topped with a capital on which was 
 placed his statue. 
 
 Job's Stone. — The belief in the existence 
 of the " Stone of Job" must be given up. Near 
 the village of Saijdeh, situated on the road leading 
 from Damascus to Mizerebi, in a district which, ac- 
 cording to tradition, was the birthplace of Job, is a 
 hill known as the " Hill of Job." Near this hill is 
 a stone on which the patriarch is said to have rested. 
 This stone was, until recently, surrounded by a 
 Moslem shrine which has fallen into decay, exjjos- 
 ing the stone to view. It commemorates a visit of 
 Rameses, the Pharaoh of the oppression. On the 
 top of the stone is a tablet containing a representa- 
 tion of the winged disc of the sun, under which, in 
 the usual Egyptian style, is the figure of the monarch 
 giving ottering to the Goddess Maat. Over the 
 head of the king is his hieroglyphic name: " i?a- 
 usar-ma-setep-en-Ra'''' — "The Sun, powerful by 
 
THINGS CALLED BY WROXG NAMES. 3 
 
 truth, approved by the Snn," which was the throne 
 name of Rameses II. 
 
 So the tomb of Abel fifteen miles north of 
 Damascus derived its name from the ancient cit}' of 
 Abila and never held the body of the first man 
 murdered. 
 
 The Egyptian Sphinx. — Strict accuracy would 
 not permit the stone-hewed statue of the goddess 
 Armachis in the Valley of the Nile to be called 
 " the Sphinx." The Greeks having their legend of 
 a winged woman with the body of a monster found 
 a fanciful resemblance to her in this piece of ancient 
 sculpture and called it the Sphinx. 
 
 The Reservoir of 1001 Columns. — This reser- 
 voir has not a drop of water in it, and is little more 
 than a musty cellar with a few i^illars dotted here 
 and there. It was built by Constantine about the 
 year 330, and had only 212 columns. The Orientals 
 are fond of special numbers standing for an indefi- 
 nite one. " Forty " and " 1001 " are good examples, 
 as in the story of Ali Baba in the "Thousand 
 Nisrhts and One Night." 
 
 Kensington. — Kensington Palace is not in 
 Kensington at all, but in the Westminster parish 
 of St. Margaret. Westminster vestry draws £220 a 
 year in rates from the Palace. Almost the whole 
 of Kensington Gardens is in Westminster, and what 
 does not belong to Westminster is within the paro- 
 chial area of Paddington. 
 
 Palaces that are not Palaces. — Often the 
 
4 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 name " palace," though sanctioned by the usage of 
 the present century, is historically an error. Not 
 every house occupied by a bishop becomes, ipso 
 facto, a palace. " The term palace is, . strictly 
 speaking, applicable only to the residence of a 
 bishop in his cathedral city. We may properly 
 speak of the palace at Wells, Chichester, Hereford, 
 Lincoln, and the other places where the bishop 
 lives under the shadow of his cathedral, but the 
 name is misapplied to bishops' houses such as 
 Fulham and Lambeth. They were manor houses 
 and nothing more, and the prelates occupying 
 them dated their letters ' from my manor house 
 at Lambeth or Fulham,' etc., as the case might 
 be." 
 
 Lambeth Palace, though occupied by the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, is not in its own diocese, but 
 is in the diocese of Westminster. For more than a 
 hundred and sixty years it was officially styled 
 " Lambeth House." Previously Archbishop Laud, 
 when he resided there, bestowed on it the title of 
 Lambeth Manor. The residence of the Archbishop 
 of York is sometimes called "the palace," but it 
 was, and is, simply a manor house. 
 
 Westminster Abbey. — That venerable corner- 
 stone of English history, "Westminster Abbey," 
 has never been an abbey. It is the "church" of 
 the Abbey of Westminster. The " Abbey," tliat is, 
 the monastery, disappeared in the reign of Henry 
 VHL The legal title, since 1560, when Queen 
 
THINGS CALLED BY WRONG NAMES. O 
 
 Elizabeth replaced the Abbot by a Dean, is the 
 *' Collegiate Church of St. Peter, ^ in Westminster." 
 
 The *' White " Tower.— From a Latin document 
 of the year 1241 it appears that the great Norman 
 keep, originally called Ci^sar's Tower, the centre 
 of the Tower of London, was called the " White " 
 Tower from the coat of whitewash with which it 
 was covered. Frowning, formidable, this " White" 
 Tower rises with its four jDinnacles above all the 
 other sombre battlements of London's ancient cita- 
 del. Its walls are dark and gloomy, and behind 
 them some of the blackest deeds in England's his- 
 tory have been done. And yet it is called ♦' White." 
 
 Jack straw's Castle. — On Hampstead Heath 
 once existed a fortress known as Jack Straw's 
 Castle. It was not a castle. It was a hole formed 
 in the hillside on the site of the inn of the same 
 name.. Jack, who was one of the leaders in the 
 Wat Tyler Insurrection, is said to have lived in it. 
 
 The "Apostles' Creed." — The ''Apostles' 
 Creed" is not of apostolic origin. " The tradition 
 which [that] ascribes it to the Apostles them- 
 selves," says the Encyclopasdia Britannica, *' has 
 no authority, and does not reach beyond the 
 fifth century, if it can be carried so far. The def- 
 inite source of the legend is supposed to be two 
 sermons spuriously attributed to St. Augustine, and 
 found in the appendix to his works." It is found 
 
 1 Edward the Confessor's Church. 
 
b THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 in the works of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (374- 
 397), but is supposed to have been included since 
 his death. 
 
 •'Nihilists" are Really "Radicals."— The 
 term "Nihilist" was first used in Turgeniefs 
 "Fathers and Sons," where young Bazarof, asked 
 what his creed was, replied: "I am a Nihilist — 
 I believe in nothing." It was afterwards applied 
 to those who advocated the abolition of all forms 
 of government and the violent removal of rulers. 
 Of course there are some even now to whom this 
 signification would be appropriate, but they do 
 not constitute the ruling majority of the Russian 
 revolutionary party. The program given by 
 Stepniak is thus set forth : Liberty in religious 
 belief, freedom of the press and in public meet- 
 ing, and government on the representative system. 
 Surely this is not nihil. The program is not even 
 republican in character. Stepniak says: "We all 
 understand quite well that in contemporar}' Russia 
 political liberty can be obtained only in the form of 
 constitutional monarchy." 
 
 Wopkingmen are not '* Proletarians." — 
 According to the historical tradition, the sixth 
 Roman king, Servius Tullius, divided the whole 
 people into five classes, by means of a census 
 or register of tlie inhabitants and their jjrop- 
 erty, thus determining the tax {tribulum) which 
 each citizen was to pay, the kind of military ser- 
 vice he was to perform, and the position he would 
 
THINGS CALLED BY WRONG NAMES. 7 
 
 hold in the popular assembly. Each classis or array 
 was divided into centuries. Those persons whose 
 property did not amount to the minimum held by 
 the members of the fifth classis (at least 10,000 cop- 
 per asses, or about $150) formed a separate cen- 
 tury consisting of three subdivisions, in the second 
 of which were the proletarii or " begetters of chil- 
 dren," their sole value consisting in the possibility 
 of their furnishing oflfspring for the State. These 
 had not less than 375 asses, they paid no taxes, and 
 in time of danger might be armed at i^ublic expense. 
 The word soon became a term of contempt, as of 
 one suj^ported at the cost of the community, hence 
 a pauper. The word " proletarian " or " proletaire " 
 has of late years been unfortunately applied in the 
 writings of Henry George and others to designate 
 certain members of the working classes, wage 
 earners, or day laborers. But it is absurd to call 
 working men by such a title. 
 
 Don't call an Australian Black a *' Native." — 
 The descendants of the earlier settlers of Australia 
 object to any one calling the black inhabitants 
 "natives." The title in their opinion belongs only 
 to them, and when applied to the " blacks" implies 
 an insult. They claim that only the terms " abo- 
 rigines" or " bushmen " should be used to signify 
 the original inhabitants. 
 
 Lucifer is not Satan. — Lucifer as a popular 
 name for Satan undoubtedly derives from Isaiah 
 XIV., 12, which in the King James version reads: 
 
8 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 " How art thou fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son 
 of the mor7iing ! ''"' In the revised version the word 
 Lucifer, which literally means " light-bringer," is 
 rendered " day star," It is applied by Isaiah figu- 
 ratively to a king of Babylon, but from this passage, 
 and its resemblance to the account of the fallen 
 archangel in the Talmud and in Milton's "Paradise 
 Lost," the name was by the early church fathers also 
 given to Satan. Milton nowhere calls Satan Lucifer, 
 and the name in early times was borne by one of 
 the popes, and also by a bishop of Cagliari in Sar- 
 dinia, a separatist defender of the Nicene creed — 
 the founder of the sect of Luciferians. 
 
 Why ♦♦ Cabby" is a "Jehu." — The popular 
 name for a London cabby is a "Jehu;" but as 
 the original Jehu was a king of Israel, noted 
 for his furious driving, this is a sarcastic appel- 
 lation, what the rhetoricians call a luciis a non 
 lucendo. 
 
 "Lord" Bacon a Misnomep. — Francis Bacon 
 became Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St. 
 Albans in 1621, but the popular designation of him 
 as "Lord" Bacon is incorrect. 
 
 " Bones " of Contention. — Many ignorant 
 families, especially of foreign extraction, miscall 
 their own names. Thus at one time the Des Isles 
 pronounced their name " Desizzle." The L'Hom- 
 medieu family was called " the Lummydoos." The 
 celebrated preacher and leather seller for whom 
 the Parliament (of 1653) was deservedly named — 
 
THINGS CALLED BY WRONG NAMES. \) 
 
 ♦* Praise-God Barebones " — always subscribed him- 
 self Prayse Barbon. 
 
 Sunstroke not Chargeable to the Sun. — The 
 common term '♦ sunstroke," the eifect of great heat, 
 is a misnomer. " Heat apoplexy" would be more 
 accurate, but not so convenient. Many persons 
 suppose that it is caused only by direct exposure 
 to the sun's rays. This is not so, for patients are 
 frequently found in houses and barracks and tents, 
 and at night as well as by day; and, wiiether 
 in sun or shade, are generally those whose health 
 is debilitated by dissipation, disease, and over- 
 fatigue. Exposure to intense sun-rays is to be less 
 feared in dry climates than in countries where the 
 temperature is much lower, but the atmosphere is 
 moist and perspiration is consequently retarded. 
 People suffer more from a temperature of 87° Fahr. 
 at Brussels, where the air is laden with moisture, 
 than of 122° Fahr. at Cairo, where the air is 
 extremely dry. General Greely says: "The in- 
 habitants of the eastern coast of the United States 
 hear with amazement of temperatures from 118° 
 to 128° Fahr. being tolerated without harm in the 
 dry region of Arizona and South Colorado, and 
 that the ordinary avocations [sic] of farm and 
 factory are pursued without inconvenience." This 
 is due to the cooling effect of rapid evaporation 
 from the surface of the body, and hence the sun's 
 malignancy is unknown. 
 
 Stars do not "Fall" or " Shoot." — " Falling 
 
10 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 stars ''or " shooting stars " are not stars at all, but 
 meteors. Stars are immense bodies, in many 
 cases larger than our sun, and revolving at such 
 enormous distances from us that their positions 
 remain relatively fixed. Meteors are small bodies 
 
 — the vast majority weighing less than a pound each 
 
 — which in j^assing through our protecting atmos- 
 phere are subjected to such intense friction that 
 they are reduced to dust. Only in rare cases do 
 they reach the earth. 
 
 Gothic Apehiteeture not invented by the 
 Goths. — Gothic architecture, that is to say the 
 ecclesiastical architecture characterized by pointed 
 arches, is not in any way associated with the Goths. 
 The Italian renaissance writers applied the term 
 Goth or Gothic in contempt to that medieeval style 
 of building prevalent in certain parts of Europe, 
 just as they applied it to anything else that they 
 considered ugly or in bad taste. In the literature 
 of a hundred years ago articles of native manu- 
 facture brought to England from New Zealand and 
 elsewhere were frequently called Gothic. 
 
 Venetian Glass. — Much of so-called Venetian 
 glass is not made in Venice, but in Murano. The 
 word "Venetian" may perhaps be considered as 
 derived from the province of Veneto, of which 
 Venice is the capital, but of which Murano was 
 the ancient seat. 
 
 Dresden China in Dresden. — The Royal Dres- 
 den china is not made at Dresden, but at a gov- 
 
THINGS CALLED BY WRONG NAMES. 11 
 
 ernment factory at Meissen thirteen miles farther 
 down the Elbe; but by a fair exchange Meissen 
 ware is manufactured at Dresden. 
 
 Dutch Clocks. — Dutch clocks are all ''made in 
 Germany/' chiefly at Freyburg, in the Black Forest. 
 Dutch is only our way of mispronouncing Deutsch, 
 by which the Germans call their own language. 
 
 " Chamois " Leather a Sham. — Our German 
 silver (which, by the way, is not of German origin, 
 but has been known in China for centuries) we 
 clean with leather which is called chamois or 
 " chammy skin." This leather is not derived from 
 the chamois, — which, if we may believe the re- 
 doubtable Tartarin of Tarascon, is an all but extinct 
 quadruped, — but is the flesh side of sheepskin, 
 reduced to an even thickness with pumice stone, 
 and soaked in lime water and a solution of sul- 
 phuric acid. After being fulled with wooden ham- 
 mers, fish oil is poured over it. This process is 
 several times repeated, and after careful washing 
 in a solution of potash, it is wrung, dried, made 
 supple by stretching, and finally polished by roll- 
 ing. The word itself may be derived from the 
 Swedish samsk or the Romany chamische, mean- 
 ing leather. Others derive it from the Dutch sam, 
 soft. 
 
 Camel's-hair, Moleskin, and Catgut. — Camel- 
 hair paint-brushes are all made from the hair of 
 the squirrel, and mole-skin is a strong cotton 
 fabric of fustian, having a soft, smooth surface. 
 
12 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 The little strip that fastens the fish-hook to a line 
 is really silk. The manufacture is carried on in 
 Spain. When the silkworms are about to spin, 
 they are thrown into tubs of vinegar and left there 
 some time. When SLiflftciently pickled they are 
 carefully opened by women and children, who take 
 out the glutinous unspun silk and draw it into 
 strands about two feet long. These are left to dry, 
 and the particles of the worm are rubbed off. After 
 the wrinkled ends — about half of the strand — are 
 cut off, they are tied up into bunches with colored 
 wool and sent to all parts, of the world. We call it 
 catgut. The " catgut '' used for stringed instru- 
 ments is made from the intestines of sheep. 
 
 Frauds in the Larder. — So-called "soluble" 
 cocoas are really only miscible ; orange "marma- 
 lade, " according to the purists, has nothing of the 
 nature of real marmalade about it excej^t its 
 color, and should simply be called orange jam, for 
 they say real marmalade is made from the quince, 
 called by the Portuguese marmelo, and when made 
 into jam, marmelada ; the word is derived from the 
 Greek 77ieH, honey, and mdon, an apple. 
 
 Cream of tartar has no cream in it ; black lead is 
 not lead at all, but is a compound of carbon and iron, 
 another form of soot, or charcoal, or diamond, 
 whichever is preferred ; for these, including black 
 lead, are all chemically the same substance, though 
 in different forms. The ordinary "quart" bottle 
 will only hold one pint and a third instead of two 
 
THINGS CALLED BY WRONG NAMKS. 13 
 
 pints. The scaling " wax" with which it is sealed 
 does not contain a particle of wax, but is com- 
 pounded from shellac and Venice turpentine. 
 
 Country Dances. — This dance denotes no ref- 
 erence to the country. It is properly a "contra" 
 dance, from the French contredanse. De Quincey 
 argues in favor of retaining the corruj)tion, since it 
 has taken root in the language. 
 
 Cork Legs. — There is no trace of cork about 
 a cork leg, apart from the name. The name arises 
 from the fact that nearly all the great manufactur- 
 ers of such articles were established in Cork street, 
 Piccadilly. Nevertheless the latest dictionaries 
 declare that cork is frequently used in the manu- 
 facture of artificial limbs. Papier mache is the sub- 
 stance now chiefly used, at least in America, for 
 that purpose. 
 
14 TUE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT PLACES. 
 
 lee in Iceland. — One would conclude, from 
 the name only, that Iceland is a land of ice. It is 
 no more so than Greenland is a land of verdure. 
 On the contrary, it is a land of abundant meadows, 
 sustaining great flocks of horned sheep and herds 
 of cattle and ponies, and producing potatoes, cab- 
 bages, and turnips. Extremes of temperature are 
 unknown in Iceland. There are glaciers, but they 
 form no icebergs, and the sea around the island is 
 never frozen. Owing to the Gulf stream the climate 
 is mild in winter and balmy in summer, yet is just 
 insufficiently favorable for the maturing of corn 
 and fruit. 
 
 Cold Winters. —Yakutsk is not the coldest 
 town on earth ; this distinction belongs to Vercho- 
 yansk in the same locality, which, according to the 
 report of the Geological Society of St. Petersburg, 
 holds the record of minus 67° centigrade. The 
 reading of the thermometer gives a very exagger- 
 ated impression of the severity of low temperatures. 
 The author of " Twenty Years on the Saskatche- 
 wan," writing from Edmonton (Alberta in Canada), 
 says : "I have known the temperature so mild that 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT PLACES. 15 
 
 the birds have been singing most of the time, and 
 very little extra clothes have been worn ; and again 
 for weeks together the glass has been between 36o 
 and 50° below zero. Yet our cold winters have 
 been the healthiest and the succeeding summers 
 generally the most fruitful.^'' 
 
 The Roof of the World. — The name Pamir is 
 Russian and means " On [top of] the world." But 
 the highest land is now believed to be the Chang 
 plateau, lying north of and running nearly parallel 
 to the head -waters of the Western Brahmapootra, 
 or Sango. This might well be called " The Roof 
 of the World." 
 
 Fuji-yama. — The beautiful snow-capped peak 
 of Central Japan, Fuji, so often pictured in Kake- 
 monos and pi mis, is frequently seen under the form 
 Fuji-yama or Fuji-san. Either affix means 'moun- 
 tain. It is therefore tautological to say " the re- 
 markable mountain of Fuji-yama." There are 
 many " yamas" in Japan, there is only one Fuji in 
 the world ; and that name is also given out of com- 
 pliment to Japan's famous warship. 
 
 Mistakes about other Mountains. — It is a com- 
 mon impression that Mount Blanc is in Switzerland. 
 It is wholly within the French frontier province of 
 Haute Savoie. Mount St. Elias is not the highest 
 mountain in North America ; there are two if not 
 three peaks in the Mt. St. Elias region of Alaska 
 known to be higher than St. Elias. The highest is 
 about 19,500 feet. A peak about 1,500 feet higher 
 
16 
 
 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 is named after Sir William " Logan," founder of the 
 Canadian Geological Survey. Both of these moun- 
 tains are in British territory, as has been confirmed 
 since 1887 by the Canada- Alaska Boundary Survey. 
 The usual statement that Mount Ararat was the 
 place on which Noah's ark rested has no foundation 
 in the Hebrew text, which reads : " On the moun- 
 tains of Ararat." Ararat was the ancient name of 
 a district in Eastern Armenia, and has been used for 
 all Armenia. 
 
 In this connection it may be interesting to give 
 the greatest altitudes in each State in the Union. 
 
 GREATEST ALTITUDES IN EACH STATE. 
 
 FROM THE RECORDS OF THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGI- 
 CAL SURVEY. 
 
 State or 
 Territory. 
 
 Name of Place. 
 
 Height. 
 
 Alabama . 
 Alaska . . . 
 Arizona . . 
 Arkansas . 
 California 
 
 Colorado [Blanca Peak 
 
 Connecticut. . . Bear Mt 
 
 Delaware ! Dupont 
 
 I), of Columbia' Tenley 
 
 Florida I Highland . . . 
 
 Georgia jEnota Mt 
 
 Idaho Mead Peak ^ 
 
 Cheauha Mt. (Talladega Co.) 
 
 (Not named) 
 
 San Francisco Mt 
 
 Magazine Mt 
 
 Mt. Whitney 
 
 2,407 
 
 1!>,500 
 
 12,79-t 
 
 2,800 
 
 14,898 
 
 14,464 
 
 2,355 
 
 282 
 
 400 
 
 210 
 
 4,798 
 
 10,541 
 
 1 Salmon River mountains, known to be much higher, but the 
 
 elevation is not definitely known. 
 
lytlSTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT PLACES. 17 
 
 State or 
 Territory. 
 
 Illinois 
 
 Indian Terrify. 
 
 Indiana 
 
 Iowa 
 
 Kansas 
 
 Kentucky 
 
 Louisiana 
 
 Maine 
 
 Maryland 
 
 Massachusetts . 
 
 Michigan 
 
 Minnesota . . . . 
 Mississippi. . . . 
 
 Missouri 
 
 Montana 
 
 Nebraska 
 
 Nevada ,. 
 
 N. Hampshire. 
 New Jersey . . . 
 New Mexico . . 
 New York . . . . 
 North Carolina. 
 North Dakota. 
 
 Ohio 
 
 Oklahoma 
 
 Oregon 
 
 Pennsylvania . 
 Rhode Island . 
 South Carolina. 
 South Dakota. 
 Tennessee . . . . 
 
 Texas 
 
 Utah 
 
 Vermont 
 
 Virginia 
 
 Name of Place. 
 
 Warren 
 
 Wichita Mts 
 
 Haley 
 
 Ocheyedan 
 
 Kanarado 
 
 Big Black Mt. (Harlan Co. ) . . . 
 
 Mansfield .^^ 
 
 Katahdin Mt. (Kataadn) 
 
 Great Backbone Mt 
 
 Mt. Greylock 
 
 Porcupine Mt 
 
 Woodstock 
 
 Pontotic Ridge 
 
 Cedar Gap 
 
 Mt. Douglas 
 
 White River Summit 
 
 Wheeler Peak 
 
 Mount Washington 
 
 Kittatinny Mountain 
 
 Cerro Blanco 
 
 Mt. Marcy (Adirondack) 
 
 Mt. Mitchell 
 
 Sentinel Butte 
 
 Ontario 
 
 Goodwin 
 
 Mt. Hood 
 
 Negro Mt 
 
 Durfee Hill 
 
 Rocky Mt. (Pickens Co.) 
 
 Harney Peak 
 
 Mt. Leconte 
 
 North Franklin Mt 
 
 Mt. Emmons 
 
 Mt. Mansfield 
 
 Mt. Rogers (Grayson Co.) 
 
 Height. 
 
 1,009 
 2,500 
 1,140 
 1,554 
 3,900 
 4,100 
 321 
 5,200 
 3,400 
 5,535 
 2,023 
 1,826 
 566 
 1,675 
 
 11,300 
 4,876 
 
 13,036 
 6,286 
 1,630 
 
 14,269 
 5,379 
 6,703 
 2,707 
 1,376 
 2,536 
 
 11,225 
 2,826 
 805 
 3,600 
 7,368 
 6,612 
 7,069 
 
 13,694 
 4,430 
 5,719 
 
18 
 
 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 State or 
 Territory. 
 
 Washington. . . 
 West Virginia, 
 Wisconsin . . . , 
 Wyoming 
 
 Name of Place. 
 
 Mt. Eainier 
 
 Spruce Mt. (Pendleton Co.) 
 
 Summit Lake 
 
 Fremont Peak 
 
 Height. 
 
 14,444 
 4,860 
 1,732 
 
 13.790 
 
 Untep den Linden. — An 1897 geography de- 
 scribes the most famous thorouglifare in Berlin, 
 Unter den Linden (under the lime-trees), as '* a 
 wide, open drive, with six parallel rows of shady 
 lime-trees runnino^ alono^." The truth is, the lime- 
 trees are so few, and so insignificant, that the name 
 now signifies nothing. 
 
 Scottish *' Shires " are Misnomers. — In most 
 newspapers that portion of Scotland properly 
 called Sutherland is misnamed Sutherlandshire. 
 One may as well write Northumberlandshire or 
 Cornwallshire. Shire is essentially Anglo-Saxon, 
 and ought to distinguish exclusively a Saxon occu- 
 pation of certain parts of England, not of Scot- 
 land, where the Saxons never went. To this 
 loose v/ay of using shire the allotropic condition of 
 ''■ Argyleshire" is due. The first part of the word, 
 meaning " the land of the Gael," shows it to be a 
 memorial of Irish colonizations, but the affix makes 
 it the land of the Saxon. 
 
 Such names as Devonshire and jNIerionethshire 
 are not entitled to the retention of shire, for the 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT PLACES. 19 
 
 Saxons never occupied any considerable portion of 
 the first, or penetrated the second. 
 
 Jutland. — Many take it for granted, because 
 of the suggestive spelling, that this Danish penin- 
 sula is so named on account of its jutting out into 
 the sea. There is no connection between these 
 words, not properly even in the sound, for the sig- 
 nification is that this land formerly belonged to the 
 Jutes, and the correct pronunciation is FooMand. 
 
 Holland. — More than one school geography 
 states that the word Holland means " hollow 
 land." Skeat's etymological dictionary gives the 
 same derivation, adding that it means " low- 
 lying." Littre derives it from hohl and land, with 
 the same signification. The same authority men- 
 tions the theory that it comes from holt, meaning 
 wood; thence an island on which Dortrecht is situ- 
 ated, and by extension the whole land ; again, it 
 may come from Helium or Helle, the ancient 
 name of one of the mouths of the Meuse, Hol- 
 land for Hel-land. 
 
 Oxford and the Bosporos. — This word is 
 compounded from bous, a bullock, cow, or ox, and 
 poros, a passage. This suggests the fallacious 
 etymological derivation of the English Oxford — 
 the ford of the oxen, which is from the Keltic nisga, 
 water, and/orcZ. The Greek myth that lo, changed 
 into a white cow by Zeus, was chased over the 
 world by a gad-fly sent by the jealous Here caused 
 several straits to be named Bosporos. The best 
 
20 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 known are the Thracian, the Kinimerian, and the 
 Indian. 
 
 Mopea. — The name given in modern geography 
 to the ancient Peloponnesus (Southern Greece) is 
 derived from the Shivonic more, the *' sea," and not 
 from a word which indicates its fancied resemblance 
 to a mulbeny leaf, as taught in hundreds of schools 
 every day. The Morea is more deeply indented by 
 the sea than any other European country. The 
 same root is found in the word Pomerania, which 
 means "on the sea." 
 
 Gaul. — This word did not in ancient times 
 designate merely the country now called France; 
 historical class-books lead one to suppose that it 
 did. As, at the present time, Britain includes 
 Scotland and Wales as well as England, so Gaul in 
 Roman times included Belgium and Switzerland as 
 well as France. "All Gaul is divided into three 
 parts," says Csesar in the first sentence of his 
 " Commentaries." 
 
 Babylon and Babel. — Popular etymology de- 
 duces the meaning of these names from the Hebrew 
 " confusion," after the explanation of Gen. xi., 9. 
 Webster's Dictionary says Babel is " for balbel, 
 from balal, to mix, confound ; " but it adds that " it is 
 more probably a contraction from beth and bel, the 
 house of Belus, equivalent to Baal," but the word 
 in the cuneiform inscriptions is Ca-dimirra, the 
 Semitic translation of which is bab-ili or bab-El, 
 " Gate of God." 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT PLACES. 21 
 
 Calvary. — The Gospels do not confirm the 
 assertion that the place of our Lord's crucifixion 
 bore the specific name of Mount Calvary. The 
 word "Calvary" in Luke xxiii., 33, is from the 
 Latin word calvarium, which means a skull, and 
 is the same in significance as the Hebrew gugo 
 leth ; possibly, therefore, a bald hill (Latin calvtis, 
 bald). 
 
 Baffin Bay is not a Bay. — Of names ''writ in 
 water" none could be more inaiopropriate than 
 Baffin Bay, which not even in shai3e is a bay, but 
 is an immense inland sea, much larger than the 
 Mediterranean Sea, and having nearly six times 
 the area of the Black Sea. 
 
 Hudson Bay. — Hudson "Bay," which is 
 scarcely smaller than Baffin "Bay," should also 
 be called a sea. "Hudson's Bay" is the way it 
 is spelt in literature, yet on any map the spelling 
 is always Hudson Bay. 
 
 Nelson River. — The great Nelson Elver is not 
 named after the naval hero, but after another British 
 sailor of the same name, the master of one of Sir 
 T. Button's ships, who died and was buried there in 
 1612. 
 
 Bering Strait. — The strait generally called 
 Behring should be Bering Strait. The South Ken- 
 sington Natural History Museum specimens from 
 this region are all labelled "Bering," after the 
 Danish navigator, Bering, who proved that Asia 
 and America are separated. He died on Bering 
 
22 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Island, in the Bering Sea. It is thus oflScially 
 recognized by the United States Government. 
 
 There were Thipty-nine Cinque Ports. — 
 Cinque is French for " five," and originally there 
 were only five ports forming a confederacy that 
 maintained a royal navy on outpost duty. But 
 shortly after the Conquest two others were added 
 in Kent and Sussex. From time to time thirty-two 
 other ports joined the association, making in all 
 thirty-nine, but the name "Cinque" was still 
 retained. 
 
 Korea. — Corea is more accurately spelt with a 
 "K" — Korea. Such is the official spelling origi- 
 nally promulgated by the Royal Geographical Soci- 
 ety. The kingdom was originally called in Chinese 
 *' Korai," which is an abbreviation of Ko-Korai, its 
 founder, who obtained the mastery about the sixth 
 centur3^ But for hundreds of years, ever since the 
 complete overthrow of this kingdom by thefoimders 
 of the present one, that name has been discarded. 
 It would be fiir better to have adopted the native 
 name Cho-sen, not, however, with any implication 
 that they are the chosen people. 
 
 The Blarney Stone. —It is said that in 1825 
 Sir Walter Scott, while on a tour through the South 
 of Ireland, kissed the Blarney Stone, as thousands 
 of tourists imagine they do eveiy year. 
 
 The wonder-working stone — a block bearing 
 the name of the founder of Blarney Castle, and 
 the date of 1146 — is built into the south angle of 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT PLACES. 23 
 
 the keep, twenty feet below the top, and outside. 
 Since access to it is well-nigh impossible, a substi- 
 tute within the battlements is imposed on the credu- 
 lous. But for visitors who insist on leaning over 
 the edge, supported by the heels, there is yet 
 another real stone, dated 1703. 
 
 A Desert that is Fertile. —The Kalahari 
 "desert" is not the waste of sand and stone that 
 a typical desert should be. According to Mr. J. T. 
 Bent, author of " The Ruined Cities of Mashona- 
 land," it is *♦ a vast undulating expanse of country 
 covered with timber — the mimosa or camel-thorn, 
 the mapani-bush, and others which reach the water 
 with their roots, though there are no ostensible 
 water sources above the ground. Wild animals 
 rapidly becoming extinct elsewhere abound there- 
 in." We read further on that the wild tribes 
 exhibit great skill in finding the water when the 
 season is dry, "by suction through a reed inserted 
 in the ground, the results being spat into a gourd 
 and handed to the thirsty traveller to drink." 
 Many other so-called deserts abound in wild shrubs 
 or grass, and require only systematic irrigation to 
 become veritable gardens. 
 
 Sodom and Gomorrah. — Scientific researches 
 tell us that the traditionary sites of the cities of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, covered by the Dead Sea, 
 are geologically impossible. 
 
 Arabia Felix. — That part of Arabia called 
 Felix, or the Happy, was called by the Arabs 
 
24 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Yemen, meaiiino^ the land to the ri^ht of Mecca. 
 The Latin writers took it in the sense of dexter, 
 fortunate ; hence Felix, happy. 
 
 Antwerp. —The heraldic cognizance of Ant- 
 werp is said to be two hands referring to the popu- 
 lar derivation of the city's name : from handt iver- 
 pcn, hand throwing, referring to the manufactured 
 legend that a giant named Antigonus cut off the 
 right hands of travellers that could not pay toll, 
 and threw them into the river Skeld. The name 
 comes really from aan and werf: " at the wharf." 
 
 Belgrade. — The name of this town is not 
 French as some have supposed, but is Slavonic, from 
 bicli, white, and gorod or grad, town. It therefore 
 means the white town. But the name white as 
 applied to the Tsar of Russia is a literal translation 
 of the Mongol town Tchagan Khan, which in turn is 
 from the Chinese character Hwang, which means 
 self-ruler, autocrat; but by a slight mistake in 
 making the character, the symbol for self became 
 the symbol for ivhiie. 
 
 Cambridge not the Bridge on the Cam. — It is 
 generally supposed that the name Cambridge is the 
 bridge on the Cam. It is really a contraction of 
 Cambo-rit-um, its ancient name, which means *' the 
 ford of the Cam rhyd or crooked river. 
 
 Red Sea. — The Hebrew for this inland sea is 
 Yam Suph, sea of bulrushes. The name Red 
 may refer to the color of the neighboring inhabi- 
 tants. 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT PLACES. 25 
 
 Gates Misunderstood. — The English name 
 Aldgate should properly be Algate, meaning free to 
 all. Cripplegate also is wrongly understood as re- 
 ferring to a gate frequented by beggars. It was 
 a covered way leading to the barbican. It is odd 
 that Billingsgate, which commemorates the Anglo- 
 Saxon term " family of the Gods," should come to 
 mean the rough language of the slums. Grub- 
 street is not named because of its eating-houses, but 
 perhaps because a grube, or ditch, may have once 
 been there. 
 
 Marylebone. — This familiar church is not so 
 called from Marie la Bonne as some have supposed, 
 but from Mary le Bourne, meaning the chapel of 
 St. Mary on the bourne or brook. It was the same 
 brook that is perpetuated in Tyburn. 
 
 Mt. Pilatus not Named after Pilate. — The 
 beautiful mountain near Lucerne did not derive its 
 name from Pontius Pilate having drowned himself 
 in the lake near its top. Pilatus should be Pileatus, 
 the cloud-cajyped. In the same way Chai5eau Dieu 
 near the Bay of Fundy became Shepody Mountain. 
 Neither does Monte Rosa, as Wordsworth says, take 
 its name "from roseate hues far kenned at morn 
 and even." It comes from the Iveltic ros, a peak. 
 
 Gramerey Park. — The name of this quiet 
 oasis in New York is not French as some suppose, 
 but is derived from the Dutch De Kromme Zee, 
 "the crooked pond," which once occupied its site. 
 
 What a City really Is. — The term city in the 
 
26 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 United Kingdom is generally applied to a town 
 which is incorporated, and which is, or was, the 
 seat of a bishop or the capital of his See ; yet it 
 does not necessarily follow that it must contain a 
 cathedral. 
 
 St. Peter's at Rome. — St. Peter's at Rome is 
 generally supposed to be the chief church of that 
 city, but St. John Lateran is the cathedral of Rome, 
 the Metropolitan Church of .its bishops, and, as the 
 inscription on its statue-laden facade asserts, 
 "Mother and head of all churches in the city and 
 the world." 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT PLANTS. 27 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT PLANTS. 
 
 Botanical Misnomeps. — The *' African " mari- 
 gold is a native of Mexico ; the tuberose has noth- 
 ing of the rose about it, being simply a tuberous 
 plant, and the name is a corruption of the Latin 
 tiiberosa, knobby; " French^' beans originally came 
 from India ; toadstools have nothing whatever to do 
 with toads, the name being either a mistaken appli- 
 cation or humorous perversion of the German tod 
 and stuhl, meaning death-stool, in reference to the 
 poisonous nature of these fungi; and the *' Jerusa- 
 lem" artichoke (Helianihus tuberosus) is a native 
 of Peru. Introduced by the Italians, it was at first 
 called girasole articiocco, which Englishmen quickly 
 pronounced in the usual way. A girasole is a 
 sunflower, which the artichoke closely resembles. 
 The word artichoke comes from the Arabic alkhar- 
 shicf. 
 
 Coffee ** Berry." — The coffee "berry" is not 
 a berry, but a seed. The fruit of the coffee tree is 
 a berry which has the shape and color of a ripe 
 cherry, and it would puzzle most persons to dis- 
 tinguish a heap of real coffee berries from the 
 edible fruit. Each berry contains two seeds, lying 
 
28 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 with the flat sides together, and these, after having 
 been removed from the double husk, are prepared 
 for market. 
 
 Bpiar Pipes. — Briar pipes are not made from 
 the wood of the briar, but from tlie hruyere, or 
 white Mediterranean heather root. 
 
 Riee Paper. — The rice plant contributes noth- 
 ing but the name to the manufacture of ''rice" 
 cigarette-papers. " Rice " j^aper is made only from 
 perfectly new trimmings of linen, and comes 
 mostly from English and French mills in Constan- 
 tinople, Fumen (in Austria), and France. Chinese 
 rice paper is made from thin slices of the pith of 
 a tree cane that grows about five feet high. A 
 sharp knife pares the pith into cylinders of uni- 
 form thickness, which are then unrolled and 
 j)];essed out into so-called **rice" paper. 
 
 Egyptian Cigarettes and Tobacco. — Since 
 1890 the cultivation of the tobacco plant in Eg3'i3t 
 has been prohibited. The Cairenes are justly cele- 
 brated for workmanship and the curing of the leaf, 
 but the tobacco they import comes entirely from 
 Turkey. 
 
 Deer Forests are without Trees. — A deer 
 "forest'' may be without a tree or even a shrub. 
 The origin of the word can be traced through the 
 Italian /ores^a or old French /ores^ to the Low Latin 
 forestum, and it is connected with the classical Latin 
 foras (out doors), from foris a door, from which we 
 get our word "foreign," meaning "external." A 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT PLANTS. 29 
 
 forest is, in fact, a piece of land placed out of cul- 
 tivation ; to afforest a tract is to place it so, and to 
 disafforest is to declare that it may again be culti- 
 vated. It was for hunting deer that the tracts of 
 land were so placed ; and because these frequently 
 contained a large number of trees, a mistaken 
 notion grew up that the words "forest" and 
 " woods " were synonymous. 
 
 Why Trees Split. — The splitting of forest trees 
 by frost is ascribed to the same cause as the burst- 
 ing of water-pipes ; namely, the expansion of the 
 saj) turning into ice. This is not the case. The 
 sjDlitting is due to the contraction of the wood by 
 frost, similar, but in a less degree, to what happens 
 when the wood is dried. When the thaw comes 
 the trees expand to their original dimensions. 
 "After a number of years' measurements," accord- 
 ing to the London "Chronicle," " Mr. Clayton, of 
 Bradford, finds that the difference between the 
 girths in October, just before the frost, and Febru- 
 ary, when the thermometer was below freezing, 
 ranges for different trees from two-sixteenths to six- 
 sixteenths of an inch." 
 
 The Movement of Sap. — There is no truth in 
 the belief that " sap goes down in the winter and up 
 in the spring." As a matter of fact, the water in trees 
 increases from the time the leaves wither, and all 
 through the winter until early spring. The branches 
 in winter are almost saturated with water. The 
 sap does not "go up" until the warm weather 
 
30 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 evaporates the stored-up moisture through the 
 already expanded foliage. 
 
 The Banyan. — A remarkably persistent error 
 is that banyan branches spread 
 
 " so broad and long that in the ground 
 The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow 
 About the mother tree." 
 
 When Milton wrote these words about this wonder- 
 ful fig-tree he had, of coiu'se, read Pliny's account, 
 and then copied his error about the bended twigs 
 taking root. Tales to the same etfect were plenti- 
 fully supplied in London before Milton's time, by 
 servants of the Honorable East Indian Company 
 returning to tell of the strange things they had 
 seen. The facts are these : as the Ficus hengalensis 
 spreads over such a great area and is in leaf dur- 
 ing the hottest season, the consequent evaporation 
 would soon exhaust it unless it were replenished 
 by other means than the main column ; the roots 
 sent down for this purpose do not defeat their own 
 aim, as is so commonly taught, and become parent 
 trees, but are supports for the tree's enormously 
 long branches, and crutches to itself in its old age. 
 Rosewood Trees. — There is a mistaken im- 
 pression that rosewood takes its name from its 
 color. Rosewood is not red or yellow, but almost 
 black. Its name comes from the fact that when 
 first cut it exhales a perfume similar to that of 
 the rose ; and although the dried rosewood of com- 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT PLANTS. 31 
 
 merce retains no trace of this early perfume, the 
 name lingers. 
 
 Mummy Wheat. — There is no foundation for 
 the belief that wheat 2,000 years old will come to 
 life. The stories of wheat found inside sarcophagi 
 and mummy cases germinating after thousands of 
 years have been proved unauthentic times out of 
 number by Hooker, Carruthers, Flinders-Petrie, 
 Newberry, and every other botanist and antiquary 
 of any eminence, and likewise by committees of 
 the British Association and the United States De- 
 partment of Agriculture. Wheat seldom j^reserves 
 its vitality beyond the eighth or ninth year. In 
 the "Standard" lately appeared a letter from Mr. 
 Newberry, who says that out of the seeds of thirty 
 species of plants found by him in similar situations 
 not one sprouted. His latest failure was with 
 three peach-stones — probably of Roman date — 
 disinterred from a tomb at Beni Hasan, in Upper 
 Egypt. The fact is the seeds, like the mummies, 
 have been oxidized to the centre. At the South 
 Kensington Health Exhibition there was shown a 
 model of the Roman baths uncovered at Bath, and 
 in the centre stood a large seed-pan filled with 
 ferns, with a label attached stating that they were 
 grown from seeds (spores) obtained from fern 
 leaves during the excavations, and found so many 
 feet under the Roman ruins, where they had lain 
 so many hundreds of years — and the public be- 
 lieved it ! 
 
32 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Ppimposes and other Flowers. — Primroses 
 when planted upside down sometimes come up and 
 display a different color. This is not the effect of 
 eccentric planting, for flowers of a different color 
 often appear on the wayside primrose when it is 
 transferred to a garden in the ordinary way. The 
 same change may be observed in the color of other 
 flowers, and depends on several causes ; the nature 
 of the soil is one. A well-known instance is that 
 of the hydrangea, the color of whose flower is 
 changed from pink to blue by a specially prepared 
 soil, or in some districts by the natural soil of the 
 garden. One carnation plant will produce blooms 
 of several different colors. 
 
 The Aloe. — A gardeners' fable makes the aloe 
 live a century before it flowers. In the Scilly 
 Islands aloes that arrive at maturity and die before 
 a fifth of this time may be seen any day. Indeed, 
 in some places they flower and then die even in the 
 tenth year. 
 
 The Lotus. — The lotus, the sacred plant of the 
 Egyptians, symbolizing the northern part of their 
 country as the papyrus did the southern, did not 
 grow in the Nile. It was cultivated in ponds and 
 tanks, and in the sacred lakes attached to the 
 temples. The only places where it is still found 
 are some pools, principally in the Delta. The 
 annual rise and fall of the water render its ex- 
 istence in the stream itself all but impossible. 
 
 Gutta-percha. — The gum called gutta-percha 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT PLANTS. 33 
 
 is not from the Latin gutta, a drop, but is a bastard 
 spelling of the Malayan name gotah pertcha ; that 
 is, '' gum of Sumatra," whence it was originally 
 obtained. 
 
 Hawthorn. —Hawthorn is not a thorn that 
 bears haws, but one that grows in the haw or hedge. 
 
 Hollyhocks a Sort of Hoax. —The hollyhock 
 has nothing to do etymologically with either the 
 holly or the oak. Hock is old English for mallow, 
 and when the flower was introduced from the Holy 
 Land itwas given its name, the Holi-hoc ; it is some- 
 times called rose-mallow, or the outre-mer rose. 
 It is a native of China. 
 
 Wormwood not a Wood for Worms.— Profes- 
 sor Skeat shows that wormwood is not, as was for- 
 merly supposed, compounded of two Anglo-Saxon 
 words meaning to keep off maggots, but is wer- 
 mod, meaning mind-preserver. 
 
 Gooseberries not for Geese. — The delicious 
 fruit, so prized in Scotland, but elsewhere some- 
 what despised on account of its name, has no asso- 
 ciation with the goose ! Its name may be from the 
 goss or gorse, a prickly plant ; but more likely from 
 gooseberry, groiseberry, allied with the middle high 
 German grus, curling, crisped. 
 
34 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT ANIMALS. 
 
 " Mad Dog" ! " — A rabid dog never foams at the 
 month. A fit, usually brought on by over-exertion 
 in running, will sometimes produce this effect ; the 
 remedy should be cold water to the animal's head. 
 The name * ' hydrophobia " means the fear of water, 
 and the belief that mad dogs dread water having 
 become general, the sight of a dog eagerly lapping 
 water and even plunging into it leads people to 
 exclaim, " He drinks! There is no danger." Yet 
 burning thirst is one of the characteristics of rabies 
 in its early stages. 
 
 Dog-days and Rabies. — "Dog-days" have no 
 more to do with rabies than the moon has to do with 
 lunacy. Dogs are liable to attacks in every month 
 of the year, but the fewest cases occur in July 
 and August. The records of the veterinary schools 
 of Alfort, Toulouse, Paris, London, and Lyons 
 show that a majority of cases occur in the wettest 
 months. In April, November, and December the 
 recorded cases are double and triple those in June, 
 July, and August. In hot countries the disease is 
 rare, and in some even unknown. 
 
 The Bloodhound. — The bloodhound is not nat- 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT ANIMALS. 35 
 
 turally cruel. He is trained to scent blood. His 
 mission is to track, not to injure. Fugitives are 
 rarely, if ever, torn or injured b}' him when he 
 brings them to bay. 
 
 The Bull-dog not so Ugly as he is Ugly. — The 
 bull-dog is a living contradiction to the assertion 
 that character can be told by the face. He is not 
 savage, stupid, or treacherous. There is no authen- 
 tic instance of one attacking a man unprovoked. 
 His ugliness lies in his phiz and not in his temper, 
 and it arises from the fact that the lower canine 
 teeth are in front of the upper canine teeth. 
 
 Cat's Eyes are not Phosphorescent. —A cat's 
 eyes do not shine in the dark ; that is to say, in the 
 total absence of light. A body must be luminous 
 to shine in darkness, and no creature possesses 
 light-giving eyes. Pussy's eyes appear to be bright 
 in the dark because the widely distended pupil 
 catches what light there is, thus collecting rays which 
 are invisible to us ; so her eyes seem to shine with 
 a light of their own. 
 
 The King of Beasts a Coward, — The lion has 
 been accredited with immense strength, courage, 
 and almost nobility of character. African travel- 
 lers, such as Livingstone, Baker, and Selous, show 
 that these attributes are fictitious. The so-called 
 king of beasts is a cowardly, skulking brute, which 
 would much rather run away than fight, unless it 
 can take its enemy unaware, or is rendered des- 
 perate by hunger. Its nature is to be sleepy all day. 
 
36 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 and to dislike exertion in broad daylight, especially 
 after a night's gorging on an antelope. 
 
 The lion has also a worldwide fame for the pos- 
 session of a cavernous mouth. 
 
 " Van Amburgh is the man 
 Who goes to all the shows ; 
 He puts his head in the lion's mouth 
 And tells you what he knows." 
 
 Thus runs the poem, but no lion or tiger ever had 
 a mouth big enough to admit the human head. 
 
 In strength it is inferior to other members of its 
 family. Its forepaws have only sixty-nine per 
 cent, and its hind legs only sixty-five per cent. 
 respectively of the muscular power possessed by 
 those of the tiger. 
 
 Bison.— "Buffalo Bill" and his companions 
 are said to have killed 4,280 " buffaloes " in eighteen 
 months, that the laborers on the Kansas Pacific 
 Railway might be provided with meat. But from a 
 naturalist's stan'dpoint, they did nothing of the 
 kind: all their "buffaloes" were bison. The true 
 buffalo is found only in the Old World ; it is domes- 
 ticated generally in India and Southern Asia, whence 
 it was introduced into Egypt and Southern Europe. 
 In the wild state it inhabits the Indian jungles. The 
 wild and fiercer Cape buffalo is an analogous spe- 
 cies. 
 
 The name Aurochs (Latin Urus) is sometimes 
 incorrectly applied to the bison. The Aurochs was 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT ANIMALS. 37 
 
 a gigantic prehistoric animal from which it is com- 
 monly believed that the wild Chillingham cattle, 
 though much inferior in size, are descended, prob- 
 ably after domestication and interbreeding. A few 
 specimens of the Aurochs are still preserved in 
 Lithuania and the Caucasus. A few specimens of 
 the American bison are also to be found in the 
 Yellowstone Park and in one or two private pre- 
 serves. 
 
 How a Bull charges. — In almost every draw- 
 ing in which a cow, bison, or buffalo is seen charg- 
 ing a man, the animal is represented with its horns 
 lowered, however far away it may be from the 
 intended victim. This horned animals never do 
 until they are at close quarters, for were they to do 
 so their sight would not aid them, and their enemy 
 would probably escape. 
 
 The Ship of the Desert. — The camel is usually 
 cited as the most notable example of ability to 
 endure thirst. Sir C. Rivers Wilson says that none 
 of the camels that had been without water from six 
 to seven days on the march to Abu Klea survived, 
 and that to keep them in good condition it is neces- 
 sary to water them at least every second day. 
 There is no truth in the statement that the camel 
 carries a water reservoir in its stomach, or that the 
 Bedouins, if they are near death from thirst, kill 
 the camel and drink the water stored in the stom- 
 ach. In the desert these fables are unknown. 
 
 Mice and Marmots. — If one wants a type of 
 
38 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 abstinence from water the common mouse may be 
 chosen. They have been known to live in a warm 
 room for three and a half months without having 
 any drink, and, while eating heartily of dry maize 
 and grass seeds, to seem quite equal to prolonging 
 their water-fast for a month or two more. The 
 seals in Bering Sea go without food or water for 
 three or four months, subsisting on their own fat ; 
 and bears, while hibernating, of course neither eat 
 nor drink. It was at one time supposed that the 
 prairie dog in the Western deserts went long with- 
 out water, but it has been recently discovered that 
 the intelligent little creatures dig wells so deep that 
 they reach water level. The prairie dog, though it 
 barks, is not a dog, but a rodent ; belonging to the 
 same family as the woodchuck. 
 
 It may be well here to add that the " shrew- 
 mouse " is not a mouse or akin to a mouse. Its name 
 comes from the Anglo-Saxon scredwa from the verb 
 scearfa, to gnaw. Neither does it in biting cattle 
 cause an 3^ peculiar malady. In the same iconoclas- 
 tic spirit we may dispel any lingering notion that a 
 guinea-pig is a pig, or that it comes from Guinea. 
 It is a rodent, and its home is South America. 
 
 The Monkey and the Stick. — Why is the 
 ourang-outang represented pictorially with a stick ? 
 What would he do with it in the thick undergrowth 
 of his troj^ical home, and where would he put it 
 while climbing the branches overhead ? The ourang 
 cannot stand upright or turn round without the 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT ANIMALS. 39 
 
 free support of both arms, and he seldom descends 
 to the ground, but ^Dasses from tree to tree, often at 
 great altitudes, walking along the larger limb of 
 one till he reaches the boughs of the next, from 
 which he swings to another, and so jDroceeds, mile 
 after mile, over a continuous interwoven highway. 
 
 Coneys are not Rabbits. —The coney of Script- 
 ure is not our " bunny." Preachers are sometimes 
 guilty of confounding the two. The animal men- 
 tioned in Psalm civ. is supposed to be the daman, 
 the Syrian hyrax, a small-hoofed mammal with 
 rhinoceros-like molars. Its cousins at the Cape 
 are miscalled rock-badgers. 
 
 The Sloth not Slothful. — The "sloth" is an 
 expert climber, full of life, and traverses the 
 branches of forest trees at a speed which is anything 
 but slothful. He does not descend to the ground, 
 for his long limbs and curved claw^s are not adapted 
 for standing. The sloth on the ground will not take 
 more than thirty steps a day, and will not go a mile 
 in a month. His native name is Ai. He used to be 
 considered imperfect and deformed. 
 
 Names that are Fup-f etched. —Ermine is the 
 symbol of justice, and its whiteness makes it a 
 choice fur for maidens to w^ear ; but the " ermine" is 
 merely the reddish-brown stoat in its winter dress. 
 Like so many animals which inhabit northern lati- 
 tudes, the stoat changes in the winter to an almost 
 complete white ; the tail alone remains black. 
 
 The polar bear, we are continually told, " is 
 
40 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 always white like the snow." But as he grows old 
 he grows brown, and the whale fishers nickname 
 him " Old Brownie." 
 
 Frauds in Fur. — Many furs bearing high- 
 sounding names are really derived from humble 
 creatures. Mink goes under the name of American 
 sable. Skunk is "black martin " till it gets out; 
 then its odor tells its origin. The muskrat or 
 " musquash " masquerades as brook otter. The 
 coney, subjected to an electric process to remove its 
 long hairs, becomes a French seal ; and so peoi^le 
 deceive themselves. 
 
 The Beaver. — The beaver, it is asserted, always 
 cuts the tree so that it may fall toward the water. 
 Trees growing near the water lean toward a stream 
 or pond, and the heaviest branches grow over 
 where light and space are greatest; the larger 
 number of those cut bj^the beavers would naturally 
 fall in that direction ; moreover the animals coming 
 up out of the water would first gnaw on that side. 
 
 Beavers do not use their tails as a trowel, but only 
 to propel them through the water and to slap down 
 the mud and soft earth. The beaver selects the 
 trees above his dam ; and when the water is swift 
 builds it diagonally. He carries his building 
 materials between his forepaws and chin, arranges 
 them with his forepaws, and slaps with his flat tail. 
 They do not drive in piles. 
 
 Sealskin that is not Sealskin.— The commonly 
 known " sealskin" is not furnished by the true seal, 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT ANIMALS. 41 
 
 whose skin is almost useless except when used as 
 an ornamental mat or stiff rug. It is the sea-lions 
 and bears, the eared seals, Otaria, whose skins are 
 so highly valued because so soft and warm. The 
 skins on the living animals have not, as is often sup- 
 posed, the same downy appearance as they have 
 when they are ready for clothing, being covered 
 with long, coarse, deep-rooted hairs, which drop 
 out when dressed by the furrier, and leave the soft, 
 woolly hair uninjured. 
 
 Seals ape not flayed Alive. — A diatribe headed 
 *' Fashion and Sealskin " in an evening paper says : 
 ♦' Surely fifty or a hundred guineas could not pos- 
 sibly be better spent than purchasing every now 
 and then a skin that has been torn from the living 
 animal', most suitable apparel for the 'gentle' 
 sex ! " Says another serious writer of fiction in one 
 of the weeklies: "The sealskin jacket represents 
 some half-dozen dams who have been skinned 
 alive, while their little ones have been left to starve 
 in all the slow agonies of starvation." The cruelty 
 exists in the writer's imagination. Mother seals, 
 technically called cows, are not slaughtered, but 
 only the "bachelors" which are about four years 
 old and have no little ones. What really takes place 
 happens hourly in every slaughter-house in the 
 world. After the skins of cattle are removed, the 
 flesh quivers for some time. The reports of the 
 United States Fish Commission describe the pro- 
 cess : "At a given signal down comes the club. 
 
42 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 and the seal is stunned and motionless ; their skulls, 
 being very thin, are easily fractured. This opera- 
 tion being over, the men seize the prostrate seals 
 by the hind flippers, and range them in rows. Then 
 each sealer takes his knife and drives it into the 
 heart, and any slight movement of the animal 
 soon ceases. Then follows the skinning.'" 
 
 It would be a dangerous operation for one man, 
 and much too expensive to employ several, to flay a 
 live seal, often eight feet in length, and with teeth 
 surpassing those of the largest dog. 
 
 Whales do not spout Water. — The whale is 
 not a fish ; it difi'ers from its fishy neighbors in 
 breathing, as man does, by lungs ; in having warm 
 blood and no scales ; in having a four-chambered 
 heart (fishes have two chambers) ; and particu- 
 larly in the fact that its young are born alive 
 and nourished with milk. Nor do they spout water 
 as they are always represented doing in pictures, 
 wherein the column always takes the form of a glo- 
 rious fountain. They breathe out the heated air of 
 the lungs, and as they begin to do so just before 
 they approach the surface, the eff'ort results in the 
 water just above the nostrils on the top of the head 
 being carried up into the air in the form of a jet; 
 while the heated breath being condensed by sudden 
 exposure to the outer cold appears in the form of 
 fine spray or vapor. The whale's nostrils are 
 guarded by valvular structures Avhich close when 
 under water, and prevent it from penetrating. 
 
MISTAKES WE MAKE ABOUT ANIMALS. 43 
 
 Flying-fish and Squirrels. — Flying-fish have 
 no wings, but long extended fins, used simply to 
 sustain them like a parachute. Some persons 
 imagine that they flap these to lengthen their leaps 
 through the air. This is wrong. Their fins are 
 motionless from the time they leap from the sea 
 till they drop into it again. The leaping of the 
 flying-squirrel, which has the skin of the sides very 
 much extended between the fore and hind legs, is 
 analogous. 
 
 Small Fry. —The sardine, whitebait, and mor- 
 ris are not distinct species. The sardine develops 
 into pilchard, the whitebait is the young of the 
 herring and the sprat, and the mysterious morris, 
 only the conger in another stage of life. 
 
 Are Zebras Untamable? — The striped zebra, 
 which makes such a picturesque part of a circus, is 
 generally supposed to be untamable. But Baron 
 Walter Rothschild, of London, after long experi- 
 ments succeeded in getting together a team of four, 
 which he drives without trouble. 
 
44 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 BIRDS AND INSECTS. 
 
 Birds with Wrong Names. — The phiral of 
 mouse is mice. Analogy misled our English an- 
 cestors to imagine that the singular of grice (th'e 
 distinctively gray bird) must be grouse! Bryant 
 thus speaks, in *' The Old Man's Counsel," of the 
 different names by which the grouse is known in 
 this country : 
 
 ** I listened, and from midst the depth of woods 
 
 Heard the love-signal of the groixse, that wears 
 
 A sable ruff around his mottled neck ; 
 
 Partridge they call him by our Northern streams, 
 
 And pheasant by the Delaware. He beat 
 
 'Gainst his barred sides his speckled wings, and made 
 
 A sound like distant thunder." 
 
 In the same way 'the melodious bobolink of our 
 Northern pastures, when it emigrates to the South, 
 grows fat, and is highly estimated by epicures 
 under the name of the reed-bird. Still farther 
 South he is known as the rice-bird, and in Jamaica 
 as the butter-bird. This contains a moral. The 
 poet who gi'ows fat and prosperous loses his song 
 and is doomed. 
 
BIRDS AND INSECTS. 45 
 
 The bird called in England the yellow "ham- 
 mer " is the yellow-bimting ; but it should properly 
 be the yellow-ammer, like the German ammer, a 
 bunting. In some parts of tlie United States the 
 name is applied to the flicker or golden-winged 
 woodpecker. The hedge-sparrow is not a real 
 sparrow. Its correct name is hedge accentor, and 
 it is closely related to the robins and redstarts. Dr. 
 Bowdler-Sharpe, in his " Natural History Museum," 
 says, "In all other resjDects, except that of the 
 similarity of coloring of the upper surface, it is 
 quite diflferent from the sparrow, and as regards 
 voice, nesting habits, color of eggs, etc., it has 
 nothing in common with the latter bird." The 
 so-called muscovy duck has no claim on Russia; 
 it is only the musk duck with a longer name. 
 NuttalPs " Ornithology" says : " The term muscovy 
 is wholly misapplied, since it is an exclusive native 
 of the warmer and tropical parts of America and 
 its islands." The night-jar is often called the 
 *' goat-sucker," from the notion formerly in vogue 
 and not even yet quite extinct, that he had the 
 habit of sucking the teats of wild goats, cows, 
 and sheep. At evening he hovers close by the 
 udders of cattle and goats as they lie stretched 
 in the meadows ; but he is not milking them — : 
 he comes as a friend. The night-jar snaps up 
 the flies that annoy the animals, while the cattle 
 never whisk their tails so long as the bird attends 
 them. 
 
46 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 The Sparrow of the Bible.— 
 
 "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?" — Matt, x., 
 29. 
 
 " I am as a sparrow alone upon the house-top." — Psalm 
 Cii., 7. 
 
 The bird here mentioned is not the common 
 English sjiarrow, which is unknown in the Holy- 
 Land, though tree-sparrows are abundant. The 
 psalmist probably alluded to a species of thrush 
 frequently seen perched on the villagers' houses in 
 Judea. It is a bird usually alone, and rarely more 
 than a pair are seen together. In the forty allu- 
 sions in the Old Testament all but two are rendered 
 indiiferently " bird " or "fowl." 
 
 Birds lose their Way. — Many imagine that 
 the annual arrival of our migratory birds is because 
 they " know their way by inherited impulse ; " that 
 they come and go "with certainty." If they read 
 Dixon's "The Migration of Birds," they will find 
 that birds blunder and lose their way ; that they 
 gradually learn the various landmarks on the 
 road ; that they almost inv^ariably lose their way in 
 darkness or fog; that, in fact, "the mysterious 
 sense of direction " is a myth. It is now the 
 theory that birds go in waves. Our robins, for 
 instance, may migrate to Florida ; while those from 
 Labrador or farther north winter here, giving rise 
 to the notion that some of our robins stay with us 
 all the year round. 
 
 Do Birds die of Cold? — It was reported in the 
 
BIRDS AND INSECTS. 47 
 
 newspapers that after the great frost that destroyed 
 so many orange plantations in the South in 1895 the 
 coast was lined with the bodies of bluebirds and 
 other birds that had perished of the cold. On Feb. 
 16, 1895, the London " Echo " said : " Vast numbers 
 of song birds have fallen a prey to the cold.'''' But 
 a writer in the February number of the *' Cornhill" 
 says: "I have never known a bird in this country 
 or in North America during the terribly severe 
 winter of 1875-76 die of cold, but I have seen 
 hundreds and thousands of birds dying and dead of 
 starvation. . . . No wind direct from the North 
 pole, over trackless and snow-mantled Greenland 
 or Iceland, ever ruffled the equanimity of a pigeon 
 on the farthest point of Scotland if it were not 
 pinched for food and water. 
 
 '* I have watched my pigeons during biting hurri- 
 canes, perched on the highest ridge of their house, 
 preening their feathers, and literally cooing in the 
 blast with delight. Nor do pigeons, like human 
 beino^s, g^row more sensitive to cold as thev advance 
 in years'. 
 
 " Birds, I believe, never absolutely die of cold. 
 I question if they ever feel it as man does, and I 
 attribute their invulnerability to the closeness and 
 warmth of their feathery covering, the peculiar 
 texture of the skin of their feet and legs, the fatty 
 plumpness of their flesh, the warmth and richness 
 of their blood, and other purely physiological char- 
 acteristics." 
 
48 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Mr. Thomson, the head keeper of the Zoological 
 Society's Gardens, is reported as saying that no 
 birds have died from cold alone at the Zoo, even 
 dm'ing the terribly severe winter of '94 and '95, and 
 he instances the fact that many birds, as the ivory 
 gull, spend not only the summer, but the entire 
 winter, within the arctic circle. 
 
 How Birds sleep. — Most children believe that 
 birds sleep with their heads under their wings. The 
 well-known nursery rhyme says : 
 
 " The north wind doth blow, 
 
 And we shall have snow ; 
 What will the robin do then, poor thing ? 
 
 He'll go to the barn 
 
 And keep himself warm. 
 And put his head under his wing, poor thing." 
 
 R. H. Dana says, in "Two Years before the 
 Mast": 
 
 " One of the finest sights that I have ever seen 
 was an albatross asleep upon the water, during a 
 calm off Cape Horn, when a heavy sea was run- 
 ning. There being no breeze, the surface of the 
 water was unbroken, but a long heavy swell was 
 running, and we saw the fellow, all white, directly 
 ahead of us, asleep upon the waves, with his head 
 under his wing." 
 
 Literature is full of allusions to birds sleeping in 
 that way, and illustrations in many books give the 
 same impression. Indeed, a casual glance at a 
 
BIRDS AND INSECTS. 49 
 
 sleeping bird appears to confirm it, but no bird in 
 tlie world sleeps in that way. ]\Iost birds turn 
 their heads round and lay them along their backs, 
 nestling them well down into their feathers, so that 
 they are almost, if not quite, concealed. The truth 
 of this assertion is confirmed by the famous author- 
 ity on bird structure. Dr. Bowdler Sharpe, and also 
 the late Mr. Clarence Bartlett, by whom the habits 
 of hundreds of birds have been personally noted, 
 night and day, at the London Zoo. 
 
 The Eagle. —This bird does not fly downward 
 beak first ; it never does this except in pictures : 
 it always comes down feet first. Mackerel gulls 
 and other divers plunge head first into the water, 
 making scarcely any splash. 
 
 The Ibis that is not Sacred. — The scarlet ibis 
 is not the sacred ibis. The bird that the Egyptians 
 worshipped is black and white. 
 
 The Owl's Toes. — Illustrations in most non- 
 technical books treating of owls always show three 
 toes directed forward ; but the owl perches with 
 only two toes visible, except occasionally when on 
 a wide surface, and then the fourth toe, which is 
 reversible, may be brought half-way toward the 
 front if the bird so will. 
 
 The Nightingale. — It is a delusion to suppose 
 that the song of this bird is heard only by night, 
 for though it usually sings after sunset, it may be 
 sometimes heard in full song throughout the day. 
 One variety of nightingale sings in the day only. 
 
50 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Truly the name, from nihtegaJe, indicates a bird 
 that sings by night. Another common mistake is 
 that he modestly shuns the haunts of men. He is 
 often heard singing unabashed within a few yards 
 of a noisy road, and with people watching him. 
 
 The Turkey not fpom Turkey. — Johnson's 
 Dictionary defines turkey as '* a large domestic 
 fowl supposed to be brought from Turkey."' 
 
 The Spaniards found them in immense flocks, 
 and introduced them into Europe after the conquest 
 of Mexico in 1518. It is supposed that the Portu- 
 guese, who called them peru, not pavo, a peacock, 
 imported them from Spain to Bombay, whence they 
 came to Italy and were called in Italian and French 
 " Indian fowl." And it is believed that they were 
 introduced into England and Germany from Con- 
 stantinople. Shakespeare and Bacon both mention 
 the turkey-cock. 
 
 Ostriches and their Feathers. — It is often 
 asserted that the removal of feathers from the 
 ostrich is a painful operation, because they are 
 pulled out. This is not true. The universal prac- 
 tice during the last twenty years is to cut the 
 feather about two inches above the socket. The 
 stumps are then allowed to remain in the bird for 
 two months, by which time they become loose and 
 are painlessly withdrawn. The story that the 
 ostrich hides its head in the sand when pursued, 
 thinking that no one can see it as it cannot see 
 itself, has no basis in fact. 
 
BIRDS AND INSECTS. 51 
 
 The Flamingo. — The " Boys' Own Natural 
 History," by Wood, published in 1897, says: " The 
 nest of the flamingo is a tall, conical structure of 
 mud. . . . When the bird sits on the nest her 
 feet rest on the ground, or hang into the water." 
 It is generally depicted sitting a cheval, with one 
 long: \qo- hano-ino; down each side of a high cone- 
 shaped nest. But in real life its nest is nothing 
 more than a low pile of weeds and leaves cemented 
 with marl in shallow water, and the bird sits on its 
 eggs like any other bird, and manages to fold 
 its legs under itself. The name is derived from its 
 color, not because it is the Flemish bird, as some 
 suppose. 
 
 Hawks and Blackbirds. — Farmers kill hawks 
 and blackbirds as marauders. The Department of 
 Agriculture has shown conclusively that out of 
 seventy-three species of hawks and owls in the 
 United States only Ave were injurious to vegetation. 
 They feed mainly on mice and noxious insects. 
 
 The chicken-hawk or red-tailed hawk rarely car- 
 ries off" a chicken. For every chicken it destroys 
 it is estimated to eat fifty mice, and from a thousand 
 to two thousand grasshoppers. Yet the legislatures 
 of our States often off'er bounties for hawk scalps, 
 and thus directly pay for the destruction of other 
 birds no less valuable. By the way, the common 
 contemptuous expression "he does not know a 
 hawk from a handsaw " (see "Hamlet" II., 2) is 
 shown by Mr. Skeat to be a curious misappropri- 
 
52 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 ation of terms : handsaw should be hernshaw, a 
 young heron. But the word hawker has nothing 
 to do with hawks ; it comes from the old English 
 huck, to peddle ; huckster. 
 
 Moths. — The idea that moths eat holes iu our 
 curtains and clothes is wrong. They eat nothing, 
 and the mischief attributed to them is done after 
 they are dead, their death happening as soon as 
 they have laid their eggs. And they are not averse 
 to laying them in camphor or lavender bags, cedar 
 closets, or where the ill-smelling moth ball pervades 
 the air. To the maggots from these eggs should be 
 attached the blame for the actual devastation. 
 
 The Lady-bird. — The lady-bird is not a bird, 
 but a beetle. The dictionary states that it feeds on 
 plant lice. This is a mistake. Its grub, which 
 makes its appearance some four or five weeks after 
 the lady-bird has settled on a plant, does all the 
 feeding. It resembles a tiny crocodile both in vo- 
 racity and shape, and will suck dry hundreds of 
 " blight" spots in a few hours. 
 
 The House-fly. — The house-fly has no suckers 
 in its feet, as some imagine, but is j^rovided wath 
 moist, hairy pads which can stick to any smooth sur- 
 face. For rough surfaces each foot is provided 
 with a pair of hooks. 
 
 Blunders about Bees. — In Shakespeare's sec- 
 ond play of "Henry IV.," IV., 4, the king says: 
 " Like the bee . . . our thighs packed with wax, 
 our mouths with honey." But bees carry their wax 
 
BIRDS AND INSECTS. 53 
 
 in their *' tails" and honey in their stomachs. 
 Elsewhere we are told that when "the old bees 
 die, the young possess their hive." But there are 
 no successive generations of bees ; they are all the 
 offspring of the same mother, and possess the hive 
 by mutual arrangement, and not by heredity ; when 
 it gets too full the superfluous bees go off with a 
 queen bee to the "colonies," leaving the old folks 
 at home, as it were. Another error regarding the 
 bee is that it uses its sting only to avenge an injury 
 or in self-defence. On the contrary, the acid serves 
 as a preservation of the honey. Not only is it used 
 in minute f)ortions throughout the entire process of 
 manufacture, but it is also employed, and much 
 more freely, to complete the cells, and cover them 
 with the tiny cap. Humble bees are not so called 
 because they are humble or inferior to the honey 
 bee, but because they hum ! 
 
 Locusts are Good to Eat. —John the Baptist's 
 food was locusts and wild honey. The Greek word 
 is akris, plural akrides, and it does not signify the 
 bean-pods of the locust-tree as some ignorant com- 
 mentators affirm, but the insect. It has been eaten 
 in many places in Asia and Africa from early times. 
 The Bedouins string them together, and eat them 
 on their journeys with unleavened cake and butter. 
 Bushmen esteem them their greatest luxury. Dr. 
 Livingstone speaks highly of the same kind of food, 
 declaring it to be superior to shrimps, and Mr. J. 
 T. Bent, in "The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland," 
 
54 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 1895, says he found Mashonas and Matabele busily 
 engaged in cooking locusts. Honey is eaten with 
 locusts whenever it can be obtained. On the other 
 hand, honey would be quite unnecessary with the 
 locust-bean, which is itself sufficiently sweet. It is 
 worthy of note that the locust and grasshopper were 
 not prohibited to the Jews (see Leviticus xi., 22). 
 
 Why the Scorpion stings Itself. — It is not 
 true that scorpions, unable to escajDe from fire, 
 deliberately commit suicide by stinging themselves. 
 Experiments show that the scorpion's poison has 
 no eftect on itself, and that when placed in a test- 
 tube, so that the sting cannot be used, and then 
 subjected to a moderate heat (50 deg. C.) it quickly 
 dies. When the solar rays are directed upon it by 
 a lens, it raises its tail and tries to strike the cause 
 of irritation, and when it dies it is alleged to have 
 committed suicide ; but it has really been killed by 
 the heat to which it was exposed. Scorpions have 
 been seen to sting themselves in the case of local 
 irritation, if, for instance, acids, mustard, or the 
 like be applied. Not succeeding in ridding itself 
 of the annoyance by ordinary means, the creature 
 directs its sting on the point afflicted, with the 
 intention, not of killing itself, but rather of destroy- 
 ing the cause of pain ; in this case it does not die. 
 
 The Nautilus does not sail.— 
 
 ** This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 
 Sails the unshadowed main," 
 
 says Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Pope advises : 
 
BIRDS AND INSECTS. 55 
 
 " Learn of the little nautilus to sail, 
 
 Spread the thin oar and catch the driving gale." 
 
 Webster^s dictionary says it is "a kind of shell- 
 fish furnished with a membrane that [which] serves 
 it as a sail." Thus is perpetuated the fable that the 
 nautilus floats on the surface of the sea with concave 
 side of its shell upward, and that it holds out some 
 of its arms after the manner of sails to catch the 
 breeze, and directs its course with the remainder by 
 using them as oars. Aristotle believed this, and it 
 has been a favorite simile for poets ever since; but 
 naturalists know that the hard-shelled nautilus and 
 the thin-shelled argonaut float through, not on, the 
 water, that the arms are packed together in a straight 
 line to serve for a rudder, and that a stream of 
 water underneath drives them along. And when 
 these shell-fish crawl along the bottom, the so-called 
 boat is inverted like the shell of a snail. 
 
 As Merry as a Grig. — " Merry as a grig" is a 
 common comparison. Grig is a cricket ; but though 
 the cricket is the emblem of cheerful content, the 
 term in the comparison should probably be "As 
 merry as a Greek," the Greeks being notorious for 
 their happy natures. 
 
 Slow- worms and Glow- worms. — The blind 
 worm, or slow-worm, anatomically considered, is not 
 a snake, but a lizard without visible legs ; it is any- 
 thing but blind, in spite of its name, and its eyes, 
 though small, are brilliant. That it is a lizard is 
 proved by the presence of rudimentary legs beneath 
 
56 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 the skin ; the eyes are furnished with movable lids 
 — an arrangement not belonging to snakes, but 
 found in lizards ; the tongue is notched at the point, 
 but not forked as with snakes ; finally, the expan- 
 sion of the jaws and the shape of the scales are 
 quite different from the snake's. The idea that this 
 little snakelike lizard is venomous is also erroneous. 
 In calling it a worm we retain the original meaning 
 of the name ; the old English for any snake or 
 dragon is wyrm — that is, worm. On the other 
 hand, the glow-worm is not a worm, nor has it the 
 slightest resemblance to one, but is most emphati- 
 cally a beetle ; the coral anemone is incorrectly 
 called the coral "insect." 
 
 Snakes do not coil round a Tree. —We often 
 see snakes represented by artists and in stuffed 
 specimens in museums as coiling their bodies 
 around trunks and branches in close, corkscrew-like 
 coils. A live snake never does this. It simply 
 glides up with the whole body extended in a straight 
 line, gripping with the tips of its exjDanded ribs, 
 and clinging with the concave rows of pointed scales 
 as it presses against the bark ; and after reaching a 
 branch it maintains its position by still clinging, 
 neither round it nor half round it, but along its 
 upper surface. The tail alone is prehensile, and is 
 used particularly when the snake wishes to hang 
 down or to reach over to another branch. 
 
 Snakes have Ears. — " Deaf as an adder " is a 
 popular comparison. Many persons imagine that 
 
BIRDS AND INSECTS. 57 
 
 the auditory apparatus is either wanting or present 
 in a merely rudimentary state in snakes. This, 
 however, is all wrong. Cornish, in his "Life at 
 the Zoo," says: "At the first note of a violin the 
 cobra instantly raised its head and fixed its bright 
 yellow eyes with a set gaze on the little door at the 
 back." Snakes generally rustle away at the sound 
 of footsteps. There is no reason to suppose that 
 deafness is more prevalent among snakes than 
 among creatures with more prominent ears. 
 
 Coneerning Rattlesnakes. — Many think the 
 rattlesnake rattles only when it is bent on attacking. 
 But Darwin thinks it probable that the purpose of the 
 rattling, like that of the cobra in distending its hood, 
 is to alarm birds which attack even the most ven- 
 omous snakes. Others imagine that a rattlesnake 
 is a magnanimous enemy, and gives a sort of warn- 
 ing by rattling before it strikes ; but it very fre- 
 quently strikes horses without the least note of 
 warning. Another picturesque error regarding the 
 rattlesnake is that when it is about to fight it coils 
 itself up like a watchspring, in order to leap for- 
 ward at an object some distance ahead. It simply 
 gathers itself into a number of folds resembling a 
 pile of S's, and darts out but three-fourths of its 
 own length, and veiy rarely accomplishes even that 
 in actual warfare. 
 
 How Deep-sea Fish fall up. — When a man 
 ascends to a very high altitude, his blood, relieved 
 from a portion of the atmospheric pressure, forces 
 
5S THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 its way out through the nose, ears, eyes, and 
 mouth. If he could go higher still, his whole 
 body would expand and fall to pieces. So it is 
 with creatures inhabiting the depths of the ocean. 
 At three miles below the surface their bodies are 
 subject internally (by gases) and externally to a 
 pressure of more than two tons to the square inch, 
 and under this pressure are solid enough, and also, 
 because this pressure does not increase their den- 
 sity, are comfortable enough. When brought to 
 the surface in dredges the bodies of such creatures 
 are of the consistency of pulp, even their bones 
 become loose in texture, their eyes — when they 
 have any — start out of their heads, and often their 
 bodies burst asunder. Hickson, m his *' Fauna 
 of the Deep Sea," says : " The fish which [that] live 
 in the enormous depths are liable to a curious form 
 of accident. If, in chasing their prey, or for any 
 other reason, they rise to a considerable distance 
 above the floor of the ocean, the gases of their 
 swimming bladders become greatly expanded, and 
 their specific gravity [becomes] greatly reduced. If 
 the muscles are not strong enough to drive the 
 body downwards, the fish, becoming more and more 
 distended as it goes, is killed on its long and invol- 
 untary journey to the surface of the sea. The deep- 
 sea fish, then, are exposed to a danger that no 
 other creatures in this world are subject to, namely, 
 that of tumbling upwards." 
 
COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 59 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 
 
 Ancient Statues were eoloped and adopned 
 with Real Trappings. — Plaster casts in museums 
 do not correctly represent the ancient Greek and 
 Roman marble statues. The originals were often 
 IDainted in gorgeous colors, and gilded, and covered 
 with ornaments. The Greeks and the Romans were 
 much fonder of bright hues than we are. The 
 color covered the entire surface of the marble, 
 both nude parts and drajDcries. In recent times ex- 
 periments have been made by many sculptors and 
 painters in coloring statuary, but it is repugnant to 
 modern taste. Professor Lanciani, speaking upon 
 the universality of the practice of coloring marble 
 statues in ancient times, says of the Roman statues 
 found in Rome: " In good condition, in pure earth 
 and at a considerable depth, one-half showed traces 
 of colors at the very moment they were brought to 
 light. Of this half two-thirds lost their polychromy 
 at once, and one-third still preserve it." 
 
 There can be no doubt, either, that metal, cord, 
 wooden, and leather accessories were afKxed to the 
 marble. This is evident from the cylindrical holes 
 in some of the Parthenon sculptures in the British 
 
60 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Museum. The bridles and reins were real, the 
 sandal-straps were of leather, the stone hands' 
 grasped actual weapons, and there are unmistakable 
 examples in frieze carving that the cattle led to 
 sacrifice struggled against straps or cords. 
 
 Why the Cock stands on Steeples. —The com- 
 mon practice of setting a cock on a church steeple 
 is popularly associated with the reproach that bird 
 once conveyed to St. Peter. But in very early 
 times the cock placed on the tops of sacred trees 
 and turned by the wind was believed to disperse 
 evil spirits and ward off approaching calamities: 
 its living prototype did the same by its crowing. 
 The cock still stand on may-poles in North Ger- 
 many. 
 
 Minerva's ^gis. — The ^gis borne by Zeus or 
 Athene is frequently taken to be an ordinary shield. 
 Originally it was a simple goat-skin (as the original 
 of the word proves) used to sujDport the shield and 
 at the same time to serve as a protection and cover- 
 ing. Thus it came to be confused by the ancients 
 themselves with the shield or with the breast-plate. 
 It really was a breast-covering or kind of short 
 cloak, set with the Gorgon's head and fringed with 
 snakes. 
 
 Pan a Pupifler. — The Greek god Pan which 
 modern poets affect to worship is commonly con- 
 
 1 '• Rings. Ancient Roman. Diameter of bezel, 2| inches. 
 Ring for a colossal statue." (Copy of label at South Kensington 
 Museum.) 
 
COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 61 
 
 nected with the ^YOvd j^ctn, meaning all, as in pan- 
 theism. It really comes from the Sanskrit Pavana 
 (from the root pil, to purify), the wind-god. 
 
 Prometheus and Fire. — The legend that con- 
 nected Prometheus with the generous gift of fire 
 arose from the Sanskrit, in wliich Pramantha is the 
 fire drill ; it has really nothing to do etymologi- 
 call}^ with forethought. 
 
 Venus was not a Well-formed Woman.— 
 The so-called Venus di Medici is generally regarded 
 as a " perfect type of perfect womanhood." Pro- 
 fessor Chadwick thinks that she is not worthy of 
 being either a physiological or psychological stand- 
 ard. He points out that the narrow chest indicates 
 weak lungs, that the shoulders are not well braced 
 up, that the cranium and face show no trace of mental 
 vigor, that her limbs show want of muscular train- 
 ing, and that, as a type of what a mother and 
 mistress of a home should be, she is contemptible. 
 
 Pipe-coloring" not Modern. —We are apt to 
 think that, because tobacco is used in pipes, the art 
 of pipe-coloring dates only from the discovery by 
 Columbus of the Island of Tobago, or from the 
 time of the importation of tobacco by Sir Walter 
 Raleigh. But it is well known that smoking of 
 various leaves — sweet fern and perhaps Indian 
 hemp and opium — was regarded as a luxury even 
 in i^rehistoric times. Dr. Petrie says that bronze 
 smoking-pipes are frequently found in our Irish 
 tumuli, or sepulchral mounds, of the most remote 
 
62 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 antiquity. •' On the monument of Donough 
 O'Brien, King of Thomond, who was killed in 
 1267, and interred in the Abbey of Corcumrae in 
 the county of Clare, he is represented in the usual 
 recumbent posture, with the short pipe or dhudeen 
 in his mouth." It is said that in the mortar of the 
 Kirkstall Abbey Church, which was built in the 
 twelfth century and fell in ruins in 1779, several 
 small smoking-pipes were found. 
 
 In Asia and Africa, as well as in America, the 
 pipe was known in prehistoric times, and in 
 Europe generally it has been in use since and 
 during the Roman period, if not before. 
 
 Wear youp Fups outside. — According to the 
 poem the Indian woman, Nokomis, when she made 
 a pair of mittens, 
 
 " Put the skin-side inside outside, 
 Put the fur-side outside inside," 
 
 and many persons imagine that it would be an 
 advantage to wear the fur of garments and muffs 
 inside instead of out. Actual tests, however, have 
 proved that furs conserve far greater heat on the 
 body when the hair is exposed to the air than when 
 the leather is. 
 
 Is Death Painless? — Dr. Roberts Bartholow, 
 formerly Dean of Jefferson Medical College, de- 
 clared that he had seen persons die in all manner of 
 ways, and he firmly believed that dissolution itself 
 was not only painless, but in most cases blissful. 
 
COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 63 
 
 Even where features are distorted it is by involun- 
 tary muscular contraction, and usually where suffer- 
 ing has preceded death the features take on a 
 pleased exjDression as if the body were at perfect 
 rest. Freezing to death is generally imagined to 
 be the least painful of deaths, but the great Russian 
 painter, Vasili Verestchagin, says of the prisoner 
 defenders of Plevna, who fell by ones and twos in 
 the road through the forest: "I closely examined 
 the faces of the corpses lying in every imaginable 
 position along the road, and convinced myself that 
 every face bore the impress of deep suffering." 
 
 When Death is Most Busy. — Opinion has it 
 that the largest number of deaths occur in the early 
 morning hours, while dwellers by the sea are rather 
 generally credited with the belief that the dying 
 most frequently " go out with the tide." Careful 
 observations made in hospitals are said to have 
 shown that death takes place with fairly equal 
 frequency during the twenty-four hours of the day. 
 An inquiry lately made in Paris showed that death 
 is just a little less busy between seven and eleven 
 o'clock in the evening, but that with this exception 
 the proportion was about even. The death-rate 
 among dwellers in apartment houses is said to be 
 noticeably larger on the third and fourth floors. 
 This is perhaps due to the extra exertion put on the 
 heart by the effort in mounting the steep stairs. 
 
 A Popular Mistake about the Heart. — The 
 heart is not situated on the left side of the thorax, 
 
64 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 but in the centre immediately behind the breast 
 bone and between tJie lungs ; only the point is 
 directed toward the left side, and if a line be drawn 
 down the centre of the chest to divide the heart into 
 two 2^ortions, the rather larger portion wall be found 
 on the right side. Physiologically, the heart is 
 nothing but a powerful automatic muscle. In the 
 language of love, it is the seat of the affections ; but 
 the ancients attributed that supremacy to the liver. 
 
 Surgeons say that when a bullet enters the brain 
 the action of the heart is, for the moment, actually 
 stimulated, not depressed, but that the respiration is 
 stopped, and the proper treatment, as in the case of 
 a half-drowned person, is artificial resj)iration. 
 
 The heart is a force-pump measuring six by four 
 inches ; it beats seventy times a minute, 36,792,000 
 times a year, and in three score and ten years 
 2,575,440,000 times, forcing 2h ounces of blood 
 each time, or 7.03 tons a day; 30 pounds of blood 
 goes through every three minutes, equalling 122 
 tons raised 1 fool. In seventy years this little organ 
 raises 178,830 tons of blood. In each drop of blood 
 there are 1,000,000 corpuscles; 20,000,000 are de- 
 stro3^ed at each inhalation. 
 
 Bullets that act like Explosives. — In the 
 recent war with Spain the charge was made that the 
 Spaniards were firing explosive bullets at our men. 
 The small Mauser balls made clean w^ounds, and 
 when they did not instantly kill often went through 
 the lungs or the brain, disabling their victim, but 
 
COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 65 
 
 leaving him easily cured. But other bullets made 
 such ugly wounds that it was thought they must 
 have been filled, contrary to the courtesy of nations, 
 with bursting materials. In reality, the appearance 
 of exjDlosion arises from the nature of the substance 
 penetrated. In yielding flesh the impulse of a large 
 bullet is distributed laterally in all directions, and 
 the wound is correspondingly torn. By firing into 
 wet dough every indication of an explosion is made, 
 while similar bullets directed at solid substances, 
 like bone, have made only round holes. 
 
 Comets and Collisions. —Nervous persons are 
 afraid the earth may be struck by a comet. Accord- 
 ing to Babinet the chance of a collision between our 
 earth and a comet will occur once in fifteen million 
 years. Arago said there was one chance out of 
 281,000,000. 
 
 Round-pobins. — Some ingenious though per- 
 verse etymologists have tried to derive the expres- 
 sion round-robin from the French roitd ruban. But 
 no Frenchman ever heard of such an expression. It 
 is mistakenly supposed to have been first used in 
 1659 by sailors to call attention to existing evils, 
 and to have been devised so that the signatures 
 should be equally prominent, that, paradoxically 
 speaking, there should seem to be no ringleader. 
 But a round-robin was presented to Parliament in 
 1643. An English writer sensibly believes that, 
 like the word " Jack," Robin, the double diminutive 
 of Robert, was " a picturesque and euphonious sub- 
 
66 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 stitute for ' thing' or ' object.' " Applied to a pan- 
 cake, it is at least two hundred and fift}^ years old. 
 
 Plump Childpen. — Appearances are deceitful. 
 A j)lump child is not necessarily a healthy child. 
 Dr. E. Smith, in a work on foods, says : " The addi- 
 tion of sugar to fresh cow's milk greatly lessens its 
 nutritive value, and induces a tendency to muscular 
 starvation." And he concludes : " The more fatten- 
 ing infants' foods are, the less likely they are to 
 make muscular men and women." 
 
 The London " Lancet" declares that fat children 
 are not only backward in learning to walk, but are 
 also less able to resist disease ; they are the quickest 
 to succumb to measles, diarrhoea, whooping-cough, 
 and bronchitis. 
 
 There is no Noupishment in Beef-tea. — Beef- 
 tea is a stimulant and not a food. Dr. Geo. Her- 
 schel is authority for saying there is no nourish- 
 ment in beef -tea at all. It is absolutely poisonous 
 (in large doses') to those engaged in active exercise^ 
 as the extractives which it contains in such quanti- 
 ties are analogous in composition and action to the 
 poisons that accumulate in the muscle during exer- 
 cise, and cause the sensation of fatigue. Further, 
 the potash salts in beef-tea act as direct depressing 
 agents to the heart. Moreover, as ordinarily made, 
 it consists of the flavoring agents (extractive) and 
 salts of the meat, together with a certain quantity 
 of gelatine. The strong beef-tea, made in a cov- 
 ered jar in the oven, on cooling sets into a thick 
 
COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. (j7 
 
 jelly, which is gelatine. This thick, strong, glney 
 beef- tea is not digestible, for the digestion of gelatine 
 is a complicated process. Moreover, gelatine, being 
 a proximate organic principle, is incapable alone of 
 sustaining life. 
 
 It is supposed that a large proportion of the 
 nourisliing part of the meat is extracted, and that 
 the remainder from which beef-tea has been made 
 is of no food value. This is entirely erroneous, as 
 the proteid, or nourishing part of meat, is insolu- 
 ble in boiling water, or, in fact, in water above 
 160° Fahr. In such beef-tea all the real meat is 
 thrown away in the cUhris remaining in the jar 
 after the tea has been strained off. This fact can 
 easily be proved by feeding two dogs, the one on 
 the strongest beef-tea that can be made, and the 
 other on the shreds of meat from which it has been 
 extracted. The former will soon die of starvation : 
 the other will live in jDerfect health and strength. 
 On the other hand, the lean-meat diet has also 
 its dangers. While it develops the strength, it 
 overtaxes the poison-eliminating functions of the 
 liver. 
 
 Trust not Filtered Water. — To filter water 
 does not purify it from anything dissolved in it, 
 but only from particles floating in it. If tea, or 
 brandy and water, are poured through a charcoal 
 filter, they are still brandy and water, or tea. Hence 
 water in wliich sewage has been dissolved is not 
 purified by filtration ; for though the water lose its 
 
bo THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 bad smell and any foreign matter it may suspend, 
 there is no alteration in its composition. The report 
 of the Medical Commission at the instance of the 
 "British Medical Journal" (1895) condemned fil- 
 tration as affording no jDrotection against choleric, 
 typhoid, and other germs. The inquiry was based 
 on experiments with twenty-four kinds of table 
 filters in general use, and points out that what 
 is usually called "pure water" in this connec- 
 tion should be called "clear water" or "palata- 
 ble," as without the precaution of previous boiling 
 it may be, bacteriologically, unwholesome water. 
 Of course these remarks are probably inapplicable 
 to improvements in filtration such as the Pasteur- 
 Chamberland process. 
 
 Mistaken Notions about the Sea. — Story 
 writers dealing with the wonders of the deep have 
 imagined that dead bodies, cargoes of ships, and 
 ships themselves sink down only part way, the den- 
 sity of the water keeping them from reaching the 
 bottom. But as such bodies are of greater density 
 than water, they must sink to the very bottom ; 
 though the pressure of the water increases in pro- 
 portion to its depth, its density, even under the 
 greatest pressure, is but slightly increased, and 
 never sufficiently to make it identical with the den- 
 sity of any falling body — the only condition in 
 which suspension could occur. The sea in order to 
 move heavy bodies like rocks has to overcome only 
 about half of the weight of the object. A solid body 
 
COMMOX MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 69 
 
 immersed becomes lighter by the weight of water 
 which it displaces. 
 
 The First Transatlantic Steamer. — Some 
 cyclopaedias say that the first vessel to cross the 
 Athmtic by steam was the " Rising Sun " in 1818; 
 others say the first steam voyage was made across 
 the Atlantic by the " Savannah." All are wrong. 
 A tablet has lately been erected in the Great Hall 
 of the Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, commemo- 
 rating the fact that the first vessel to cross the 
 Atlantic propelled entirely by steam was the "Royal 
 William,''' built in Canada in 1833 by James 
 Groudie. Some fourteen years previously the 
 "Savannah" crossed from Savannah to London, 
 but the wood that she carried for fuel ran short, 
 and she was compelled to cover the greater part 
 of the distance with the aid of sails. And the 
 claim of the "Rising Sun " has yet to be proved. 
 The " Savannah " was a full-rigged ship of 380 tons, 
 with a pair of paddle wheels so constructed that in 
 a storm they could be unshipped. On her first voy- 
 age she was chased a whole day off the coast of 
 Ireland by a revenue cruiser, which took her for a 
 shijD on fire. Lombroso says, " Blasco de Garay 
 seems to have propelled a vessel by steam and pad- 
 dles in the harbor of Barcelona in 1543." 
 
 Steam Locomotion. — Stephenson was not the 
 first man to construct a steam railway. The father 
 of the locomotive was Richard Trevithick, of Corn- 
 wall, England. On Feb. 21, 1801, his tramway 
 
70 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 engine conveyed a load of ten tons of bar iron 
 and seventy passengers nine miles to Merthyr 
 Tydvil ; but though it worked satisfactorily, it was 
 regarded as more expensive than horses. 
 
 The same year Oliver Evans made a machine 
 called Eructor Amphibolis, for dredging purposes. 
 It was mounted on a scow with four wheels, and 
 after going, self-impelled by its own steam, from 
 his shop in Philadelphia to the Schuylkill, it 
 entered the river, and by means of a paddle-wheel 
 proceeded round to the Delaware and performed 
 its work of dredging. 
 
 The first engine to carry passengers on a track 
 in the United States was designed by Colonel John 
 Stevens, of Hoboken. It had a cog-wheel that 
 fitted into a cast-iron rack in the centre of the track. 
 It had four wooden wheels, the tires without 
 flanges. This was in 1825, the same year that 
 George Stephenson's engine " Locomotion " ran suc- 
 cessfully between Stockton and Darlington. 
 
 It is a very pretty legend that when Napoleon 
 was bound for St. Helena on the " Bellerophon," 
 he saw a ship passing by under steam and bear- 
 ing the name of Fulton, who, according to the 
 story, had proposed to him to move vessels by 
 steam and found no favorable response. Indeed, 
 Bonaparte is said to have called him hard names. 
 Neither did Dionys Papin escape from the anger of 
 the Landgrave Karl of Hesse by fleeing on a steam- 
 boat of his invention. He experimented in steam- 
 
COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 71 
 
 boats in the seventeenth century on the Fukla, but 
 unsuccessfully. Blasco de Garay proposed in 1540 
 to make ships move without oars or sail, and in 
 1543 successfully propelled a ship according to his 
 promise. Karl did not call him a fool and 
 swindler, as Napoleon called Fulton, but though 
 he saw no good in the machine gave him 200,000 
 maravedis and paid the expenses. Before Ful- 
 ton, Branca 1629, Savary 1698, Hull in 1736, New- 
 comb Watt, Perrier Murdock, in 1775, Jouffroy 
 in 1781, and others, made more or less successful 
 experiments with steam as a motor for naviga- 
 tion. 
 
 The Fpeezing" Power of Water. — If water is 
 kept quite still its temperature may be reduced 
 to much below 32° without solidifying ; in fact, it 
 is jDOssible to bring it actually below zero in a 
 liquid state, but the instant the least motion occurs 
 it solidifies in a mass. The adoption of 32° for 
 ordinary purposes is based on experiments with 
 pure water in a greater or less state of agitation 
 at the level of the mean tide at Liv^erpool. Water 
 when it freezes expands, and the leaking of water 
 pipes after a thaw signifies that the ice had acted 
 as a plug till it began to melt. The mischief was 
 done at the moment of solidification. 
 
 Primary Colors.— The artist's primary colors 
 are yellow, red, and blue, because he finds that 
 neither of these colors can be formed by the mixt- 
 ure of others ; on the other hand, the physicist, who 
 
72 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 deals with colored rays of light, shows that yellow 
 can be formed by mixing red and green rays, and 
 hence is not a primary color ; while violet, which 
 cannot be obtained by any admixture, he considers 
 to be one of the three primaries. 
 
 There is no National Holiday. — ]N^ot even the 
 Fourth of July is a national holiday. Congress 
 has at various times appointed special holidays. 
 In the second session of the Fifty-third Congress it 
 passed an act making Labor Day a public holiday 
 in the District of Columbia, and it has recognized 
 the existence of certain days as holidays, for com- 
 mercial purposes, in such legislation as the Bank- 
 ruptcy Act ; but with the exception named there is 
 no general statute on the subject. The proclama- 
 tion of the President designating a day of Thanks- 
 giving makes it a holiday in only those States that 
 provide for it by law. 
 
 The following is a list of the legal holidays in 
 the various States : 
 
 January 1. New Year's Day: In all the States 
 except Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode 
 Island. 
 
 January 8. Anniversary of the BaUle of New 
 Orleans : In Louisiana. 
 
 January 19. Lee's Birthday : In Georgia, North 
 Carolina, and Virginia. 
 
 February 12. Lincoln's Birthday : In Illinois. 
 
 February 22. Washington's Birthday : In all the 
 States except Arkansas, Iowa, and Mississippi. 
 
COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 73 
 
 March 2. Anniversary of Texan Independence : 
 In Texas. 
 
 March 4. Firemen'^s Anniversary: In New- 
 Orleans, La. 
 
 April i, 1896. State Election Day : In Rhode 
 Island. 
 
 Ajjril 3, 1S96. Good Friday: In Alabama, 
 Louisiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. 
 
 April 19. Patriots^ Day : In Massachusetts. 
 
 Aiml 21. Anniversary of the Battle of San 
 Jacinto: In Texas. 
 
 April 26. Memorial Day: In Alabama and 
 Georgia. 
 
 May 10. Memorial Day : In North Carolina. 
 
 May 20. Anniversary of the Signing of the 
 Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence : In North 
 Carolina. 
 
 May 30. Decoration Day: In Arizona, Cali- 
 fornia, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of 
 Columbia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, 
 Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, 
 Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New 
 Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, 
 Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, 
 Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, Washington, and 
 Wyoming. 
 
 June 3. Jefferson Davis's Birthday : In Florida. 
 
 July 4. Indep)endence Day : In all the States. 
 
 July 24. Pioneers'' Day : In Utah. 
 
 First Monday in September. Labor Day : In 
 
74 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Alabama, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Dela- 
 ware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, 
 Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michi- 
 gan, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New 
 Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, 
 South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, 
 Utah, Virginia, Washington. 
 
 ^eplennher 9. Admission Day : In California. 
 
 October 31. Admission Day : In Nevada. 
 
 November. General Election Day : In Arizona, 
 California, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, 
 Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New 
 Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, 
 Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, 
 Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, Washington, 
 Wisconsin, and Wyoming. 
 
 November. Thanksgiving Day: This is ob- 
 served in all the States, though in some it is not a 
 statutory holiday. 
 
 December 25. Christmas Day : In all the States, 
 and in South Carolina the two succeeding days in 
 addition. 
 
 Sundays and Fast Days are legal holidays in all 
 the States that designate them as such. 
 
 Arbor Day is a legal holiday in Kansas, North 
 Dakota, Rhode Island, and Wyoming, the day being 
 set by the Governor ; in Nebraska, April 22 ; Cali- 
 fornia, September 9 ; Colorado, on the third Friday in 
 April ; Montana, third Tuesday in April ; Utah, first 
 Saturday in April ; and Idaho, on Friday after May 1. 
 
COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 75 
 
 Every Saturday after 12 o'clock noon is a legal 
 holiday in New York, New Jersey, and the city of 
 New Orleans, Pennsylvania and Maryland, and 
 June 1 to September 30 in New Castle County, 
 Delaware. 
 
 Is Friday an Unlucky Day? — The belief is 
 widespread that Friday is an unlucky day. Wliy 
 should it be ? One reason given is that Christ was 
 crucified on Friday. Perhaps it arises from the 
 popular notion that Friday is a changeable day, or, 
 as Chaucer calls it, gerjul. He saj^s : 
 
 " Selde is the Friday al the wyke alyke." 
 
 An old Shropshire couplet says : 
 
 " Friday's a day as'Il have his trick ; 
 The fairest or foulest day of the wick." 
 
 As a proof of the universality of the superstition 
 among all nations and ranks, it is curious to note 
 that the shipping returns of all countries show a 
 much lower sailing rate on Friday than any other 
 day of the week. 
 
 And yet P'riday is really the luckiest day in the 
 week ! It is Frea, day of the god of peace and joy 
 and fruitfulness, whose emblems, borne aloft by 
 dancing maidens, brought increase to every field 
 and stall they visited, Friday is the Muhammedan 
 Sabbath, called el JimVci, " the assembly." 
 
 Here is a partial list of fortunate Fridays that 
 might well dispel forever the absurd notion : 
 
76 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 On Friday, Aug. 21, 1492, Christopher Columbus 
 first sailed upon his great voyage of discovery from 
 Palos, in Spain. On the 11th day of September, 
 which happened uf)on a Friday, while in mid-ocean, 
 to the consternation of his ofiicers and men, the 
 needle of the compass fluctuated and fell off in an 
 unexplainable manner, and it was then 'that all hut 
 Columbus lost faith in the enterprise. It was on 
 Friday, Oct. 12, 1492, that Columbus first discovered 
 land. On Friday, Jan. 4, 1493, he sailed on his 
 return to Spain, where he landed in safety on a 
 Friday. On Friday, Nov. 22, 1493, he arrived at 
 Hispaniola, on his second voyage to America. It 
 was on Friday, June 13, 1494, that he discovered 
 the continent of America. 
 
 On Friday, March 5, 1496, Henry YUl., of Eng- 
 land, gave John Cabot his commission which led 
 to his discovery of North America. This is the 
 first American state paper in England. 
 
 Friday, Sept. 7, 1505, Melendez founded St. 
 Augustine, the oldest town in the United States. 
 
 Friday, Nov. 10, 1620, the " Mayflower," with the 
 Pilgrims, made the harbor of Provincetown, and 
 on the same day signed the august compact, the 
 forerunner of our present Constitution. On Friday, 
 Dec. 22, 1620, the Pilgrims made their final land- 
 ing on Plymouth Rock. 
 
 George Washington was born on Friday, Feb. 22, 
 1732, in Westmoreland County, Va., near the banks 
 of the Potomac River. 
 
COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 77 
 
 Bunker Hill was seized and fortified on Friday, 
 June 16, 1776. 
 
 Fridfiy, Oct. 7, 1777, the surrender of Saratoga 
 was made, which had such power and influence in 
 inducing France to declare herself in favor of our 
 cause. 
 
 Friday, Sept. 22, 1780, Arnold's treason was laid 
 bare, which saved us and our country from destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 The surrender of Yorktown, the crowning glory 
 of the American army, occurred on Friday, Oct. 
 19, 1781. 
 
 Friday, July 7, 1776, the motion was made in 
 Congress, by John Adams, and seconded by Richard 
 Henry Lee, that the United Colonies were, and of 
 right ought to be, free and independent. 
 
 The first Masonic Lodge in America was organized 
 on Friday, Nov. 21, 1721. 
 
 Bismarck, Gladstone, and Disraeli were born on 
 Friday. 
 
 Friday, April 8, 1646, the first known newspaper 
 advertisement was published in the " Imperial In- 
 telliocencer," in Eno-land. 
 
 Friday, July 1, 1825, General Lafayette was wel- 
 comed to Boston and feasted by the Freemasons 
 and citizens, and attended at the laying of 
 the corner-stone, at Bunker's Hill, of the monu- 
 ment erected to perpetuate the remembrance of 
 the defenders of the rights and liberties of 
 America. 
 
78 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 The Hudson River was discovered on Friday, 
 March 25, 1609. 
 
 On Friday, March 18, 1776, the " stamp act" was 
 repealed in England. 
 
 On Friday, Nov. 28, 1814, the first newspaper 
 ever printed by steam, the London "Times," was 
 printed. 
 
 On Friday, Jan. 13, 1785, Gen. Winfield Scott 
 was born in Dinwiddle County, Va. 
 
 Friday, May 14, 1586, Gabriel Farenheit, usually 
 regarded as the inventor of the common mercurial 
 thermometer, was born. 
 
 Friday, Dec. 25, 1742, Sir Isaac Newton, the illus- 
 trious philosopher, was born. 
 
 Martin Luther was born on Friday, Nov. 10, 1543, 
 at Eiseben, in the county of Mansfield, in Upper 
 Saxony. 
 
 Friday, June 3, the steam vessel "Savannah" 
 sailed from Savannah to Liverpool. 
 
 George Stephenson, the father of railways, was 
 born on Friday. 
 
 The " Great Eastern " left the Irish coast to lay 
 the Atlantic cable on Friday, and reached Heart's 
 Content on Friday. 
 
 Queen Victoria was married on a Friday. 
 
 The battle of Waterloo was fought, the Bastile 
 was destroyed, Moscow was burned, and the battle 
 of New Orleans was fought on Friday. 
 
 On Friday, Jan. 1, 1808, the importation of slaves 
 into the United States was prohibited by Congress. 
 
COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 79 
 
 There are a multitude more that might be added. 
 Omar's words are wise: " Worship God; be not a 
 worshijjper of days." 
 
 Fountain Pens and Typewriters. — The foun- 
 tain pen is not a recent invention. In 1824 Thomas 
 Jefferson saw one in use and wrote to General Ber- 
 nard Peyton to get him one. The first English 
 patent for a fountain pen was granted in 1809 ; the 
 first American one in 1830. The first recorded 
 patent for a typewriting machine is by an English- 
 man named Henry Mill, and is dated 1714. In 1841 
 a Frenchman named Pierre Foucalt invented a 
 practicable machine. He was blind. The modern 
 machine is due to an American named Sholes, who 
 brought it to perfection in 1873. 
 
 The Bicycle not a New Invention. — Evelyn's 
 diary under the date of Aug. 4, 1665, speaks of 
 examining at Durdans " a wheel for one to run 
 races in," contrived by Dr. Wilkins, Sir William 
 Petty, and Mr. Hooke, three men notable for " parts 
 and ingenuity." In a stained glass window at 
 Stoke Poges, dating back to the seventeenth century, 
 there is a representation of a mechanical wheel like 
 a bicycle. It is " really a cherub on EzekiePs 
 wheel." 
 
 The Dutch did not invent Thimbles. — A 
 newspaper states " that the Dutch invented the 
 thimble in 1690." Thorold Rogers, in his " History 
 of Agriculture and Prices in England," gives the 
 quotation of a dozen thimbles, in 1494, as four 
 
80 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 shillings. Shakespeare speaks of them. Edward 
 Peacock thinks that they were undoubtedly pre- 
 historic. 
 
 Magnetic Mountains. — Readers of the "Ara- 
 bian Nights" will remember the mao-netic black 
 mountain that drew all the nails out of the ships and 
 caused them to fall to pieces. A Vienna newspaper 
 says the island of Bornholm in the Baltic is a huge 
 magnet that has sufficient power to deflect the needle 
 and turn the vessel out of its course. The magnetic 
 influence is felt at a distance of fifteen kilometers 
 (nine miles and a half). 
 
 The Earth as a Conductor. —It is still sup- 
 posed by many persons that the electrical conduc- 
 tivity of the earth is infinite. But it is a fact well 
 ascertained that "in railway return circuits the 
 earth return does more harm than good ; for power 
 service the earth is useless as a return, and in teleg- 
 raphy alone it appears likely to serve a permanently 
 useful purpose." 
 
 Electric Light in Fog. — The notion obtains 
 in England that the electric light does not penetrate 
 the fog. This is unfounded. Owing to this preju- 
 dice lighthouses furnished with electricity are fewer 
 on the English coast than along the coast of 
 France. 
 
 Depth of Coral Reefs. — Darwin's theory that 
 coral reefs are formed by subsidence, the coral poly^D 
 building up as the land sank, has been recently dis- 
 proved by borings. The great atoll on the Yucatan 
 
COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 81 
 
 bank is only 32 fathoms deep. Those on the Solomon 
 Islands are only from 125 to 130 feet deep ; along the 
 coast of Cuba only 145 feet ; and along the coast of 
 Florida only 60 feet. According to Darwin they 
 should have been at least 2,000 feet. 
 
 The Weig-ht of the Brain. — Advocates of the 
 superiority of man over woman usually use, as an 
 argument, the fact that man's brain weighs from 
 one-ninth to one-twelfth more than the average 
 woman's. Neither weight nor multiplicity of con- 
 volutions seems to be a safe criterion. The brain of 
 the great chemist Liebig was below the average in 
 weight. The brain of the elephant is richer in con- 
 volutions than man's. 
 
 Lead Shot. — It is generally supposed that lead 
 shot are made spherical by falling, and that the shot 
 towers are built for that puri^ose. They are more 
 perfect in shape the instant they start than at any 
 other time. But in falling the two hundred feet 
 they cool and harden, and are received into water 
 which acts as a cushion. Arsenic, mixed with the 
 lead, causes the molten mass, when strained through 
 a perforated receptacle, to form into globules. 
 
 The Hopse-power of Guns. — It is a mistake 
 to suppose that a large cannon is longer lived than 
 a shot-gun. The " Engineering and Mining Jour- 
 nal " says that after about one hundred shots have 
 been fired they are practically useless. Three hun- 
 dred shots represent only one second of actual work ! 
 For a 100-ton gun with a 550-pound charge of 
 
 U%X^ 
 
82 . THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 powder throws a projectile weighing 2,020 pounds 
 at an initial velocity of 1,715 feet a second. The 
 kinetic force employed in the one one-hundredth of 
 a second is equivalent to 92,597,000 foot-pounds, or 
 17,000,000-horse power. 
 
 Boek Bier. — In spite of the brewers' pictures 
 of a buck dancing on a barrel, the word bock in 
 the spring-brewing of beer has no derivation to cor- 
 respond with such art. It is said to be derived from 
 the town of Eimbeck, in Hanover, where particu- 
 larly strong beer was made. This was changed mto 
 ein bock, meaning a glass ; but here the buck may 
 be a pony. 
 
 Prussie Acid and Almonds. —A British news- 
 paper, referring to the death of a bird, attributes it 
 to the presence of prussie acid in a bitter almond. 
 But in the natural state there is none. Prussie acid 
 results from the manufacture of "oil of bitter 
 almonds." The cake left after the natural oil has 
 been pressed out contains two constituents called 
 amygdaline and synaj^tase. When the cake is made 
 into a paste with Avater, and allowed to remain at a 
 moderately warm temperature, the synaptase causes 
 the amygdaline to ferment and decompose into the 
 volatile " oil of bitter almonds," and, among other 
 substances, prussie or hyorocyanic acid. Neither 
 the oil nor the poison is in the almonds originally ; 
 in fact, the latter contain not the slightest trace of 
 either ready formed. Tiie " Globe " Encyclopiedia 
 says : '* Bitter almonds possess a poisonous principle 
 
COMMON MISTAKES OF MANY KINDS. 83 
 
 similar in effects to prussic acid," but while this 
 "poisonous iDi-inciple" remains undefined, we are 
 not quite sure, suj^posing bitter almonds were eaten 
 in large quantities and remained long undigested, 
 that the formation of j^russic acid in the way de- 
 scribed would not actually be accelerated by the 
 warmth of the stomach. 
 
 Pulque Skins. — Pulque is sold at Mexican 
 railway stations in hog-skins or sheep-skins taken 
 whole from the animal. A popular explanation of 
 the mystery is that the creature is tied, with food 
 placed just beyond his reach. He struggles so hard 
 to get at it that he finally walks out of his skin, 
 leaving it whole behind him. This is an error ! 
 
84 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 WORDS, PHRASES, AND THINGS THAT ARE MIS- 
 UNDERSTOOD. 
 
 " Born in the Purple." — The epithet porphyro- 
 genitus — " born in the purjile "" — does not refer to 
 the Roman or Grecian Imperial Court dye, but to 
 the fact that the Empresses of Constantine's city, 
 when they drew near the time of child-bearing, 
 were lodged in the Porphyry Chamber. This was 
 at the south-west corner of the palace, and its floors 
 and walls were covered with purple marble. The 
 title was first oflicially applied to Constantine VIL, 
 — Constantine Porphyrogenitus, — who reigned in 
 the tenth century. 
 
 The Bar Sinister. — It is a mistake to speak of 
 a bar sinister as a sign of bastardy. It is a false 
 translation of the French barre, which means bejid 
 sinister. 
 
 Apologies do not imply Faults. — George the 
 Third, when told that Bishop Watson had published 
 •• An Apology for the Bible," remarked that he did 
 not know that the Bible needed an apology. The 
 king did not realize that the word is also used in the 
 old Greek sense of defence. Hence a Christian 
 apologist is one who defends, not excuses ; he does 
 
THINGS THAT ARE MISUNDERSTOOD. S5 
 
 not admit the existence of fault in the Bible which 
 he defends. The " Evidences of Christianity '' are 
 for the same reason technically called apologetics. 
 
 Epicures.— Epicure is very generally supposed 
 to mean one whose chief pleasure is a voluptuous 
 gratification of the appetite. The right definition 
 is, one who, however humble his fare, will have 
 it of the best of its kind. Rousseau said: "Ab- 
 staining, so as really to enjoy, is epicurism," and 
 the " pleasure " which Epicurus, the apostle of tem- 
 perance, with his barley cake and water, set before 
 his apostles consisted of the pleasures of refine- 
 ment perfected by reason, whether in eating or 
 drinking, religion or politics, arts or science, or in 
 the pleasures of wine and love. 
 
 Norsemen and Northmen. — The Norsemen 
 were the Norwegians, who spoke a language called 
 Norse ; the Northmen were, of course, the ancient 
 inhabitants of Northern Europe. 
 
 Do not say " Vi-king." — This word is not prop- 
 erly pronounced " vy-king," and does not mean a 
 "sea-king." The appropriateness of this error has 
 made it long-lived. The termination is " ing," not 
 " king; " the syllable " vik" is the Norse word for 
 "creek" or "cove," and " ing " for "sons" or 
 " peojDle." Wherefore " Vikings " means " sons or 
 people of the creek." 
 
 A little more than Kin and less than Kind. — 
 The word king is not, as is commonly supposed, 
 derived from the Saxon cunnan, to know, as of one 
 
5b THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 who has power or can because he kens or knows. 
 It is allied with the Sanskrit ganaka, a father, from 
 the word gan, to beget, akin with our kin. Kin-ing 
 therefore means son of the kin or tribe, a chosen 
 leader. 
 
 The Origin of Foolscap. — The following par- 
 ticulars were given in the " Lithographer,'' to 
 account for the origin of this term: "Charles I. 
 granted numerous monopolies for the supj^ort of 
 the government, and among others was the man- 
 ufacture of paper. The vvater-mark of the finest 
 sort was the royal arms. This monopoly was set 
 aside by the Parliament that brought Charles I. to 
 the scaffold, and, by way of showing contempt for 
 the king, they ordered the royal arms to be taken 
 from the paper, and a fool, with his cap and bells, 
 to be substituted. It is now over two hundred 
 years since the fool's cap was taken from the paper, 
 but still the size which the Rump Parliament ordered 
 for their journals bears the name of the water- 
 mark placed there as an indignity to Charles." 
 
 There is no truth in this frequently reiterated 
 statement that the Rump Parliament placed a fool's 
 cap on their own paper to spite the dead king. 
 The cap and bells may account for the origin of the 
 name foolscap, but the water-mark itself is still 
 shrouded in mystery. The term was in use at 
 least as early as 1659 ; and an alleged example 
 of it, dated 1479, figures in a catalogue of an 
 exhibition. There is no justification for the deriva- 
 tion from the Italian foglio cajjo. 
 
THINGS THAT ARE MISUNDERSTOOD. 87 
 
 The Flag that rules the Wave. ~ The " Jack," 
 say most authorities, refers to James VI. of Scot- 
 land (James I. of England), whose signatm'e was 
 always "Jacques.'" It was so called because used 
 as a "jack" — that is, in sea language, a flag 
 displayed from the end of a staff on a bowsprit; 
 hence the name "Union Jack" has come to be 
 applied on land to the larger "union" flag itself. 
 The opinion is to some extent confirmed by the 
 sailors' personification of the yellow fever into 
 " Yellow Jack," which at first was merely a yellow 
 flag or jack. 
 
 "Tun" and its Meaning. — Many grammars 
 say tun, at the end of names, signifies "town" or 
 "village." But "tun" was really the name of a 
 single Saxon homestead. The popular accounts of 
 the depopulation of the New Forest by William I. 
 are thus brought at least within the bounds of credi- 
 bility. 
 
 Cinderella's Glass Slipper. — Unimaginative 
 etymologists have done their best to destroy the 
 poetic beauty of Cinderella's slipper by arguing that 
 the words la petite pantoufle de verre — the little 
 glass slipper — as found in Perrault's story, pub- 
 lished in 1697, should he jmiitoufle de vair, vair being 
 a kind of fur — miniver or weasel. But surely if 
 the slipper had been of fur the sisters would have 
 had no trouble in forcing their toes into it. More- 
 over, the fairy godmother who could change a 
 pumi^kin into a coach, and mice into horses, would 
 
8S THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 not hesitate to give Cinderella slippers of glass, 
 spun glass, perhaps, and flexible. 
 
 Wainscot. — In Walter M. Skeat's Etymolog- 
 ical Dictionary " wainscot" is derived from Dutch 
 wagen, a wain or wagon. He himself became 
 convinced that this popular derivation is wrong, and 
 his later edition attributes it to the Middle Dutch 
 waeg, a wall. 
 
 Cpeoles. — Strictly speaking, a creole is the off- 
 spring of European j^arents, though now the term 
 is used in the colonies as a general designation for 
 anything West Indian, negro, and English, animal 
 and vegetable alike ; thus, "creole mutton," " creole 
 cat," and "creole basket." Hence it has come to 
 mean a person of white and black parentage, born 
 in the West Indies or South America. This is 
 wrong, for such a one is a mulatto. The Standard 
 Dictionary gives the derivation of the word from 
 criollo, a negro; and that from creado, a servant, 
 from crear, to create. But this is doubtful. 
 
 Cyclones, Tornadoes, and Huppieanes. — 
 These three words are usually confused except in 
 scientific writings. A cyclone is a storm covering 
 a vast extent of countiy — some are one or two 
 thousand miles in diameter — and having a system 
 of winds that blow spirally, although, owing to the 
 great extent of the storm, the wind at any particu- 
 lar place seems to be blowing straight ahead. A 
 tornado, on the other hand, is a fierce whirlwind, 
 the path of which is generally only a few rods wide, 
 
THINGS THAT ARE MISUNDERSTOOD. 89 
 
 It sometimes travels many miles, destroying every- 
 thing in its course. A funnel-shaped cloud formed 
 by condensed vapor, and clouds of dust in the very 
 core of the tornado, are its distino^uishin^ feature. 
 Tn the infantile days of language-study hurricane 
 was supposed to be a storm that harried planta- 
 tions and hurried the cane ! In other words, raised 
 Cain with them. The word is really a West Indian 
 word. In Irving's "Columbus" it says that the 
 awful whirlwinds that " occasionally rage within 
 the tropics " were called by the Indians " furicanes " 
 or " uricans." The word is said to be the name of 
 the tempest god Hurikon. 
 
 Piazza. — This Italian word denotes what the 
 Spanish call plaza, French place, and the Eng- 
 lish a square. Architecturally it means an arcade, 
 a portico, or covered walk supported by columns. 
 In the United States it has come to mean a verandah 
 or porch, or even a balcony. 
 
 A Chateau is not necessarily a Castle. — 
 What the French call chateau, unless it be in 
 Spain, generally signifies a large stone farmhouse. 
 
 Mephistopheles a Devil, but not the Devil. — 
 This fiendish character in Goethe's ' ' Faust " was 
 not the devil, but only one of the devil's many 
 mediaeval assistants. 
 
90 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 MISTAKES WE MAKE IN CONNECTION WITH ANCIENT 
 HISTORY. 
 
 Thothmes the Third not to be eompared with 
 Alexander. — Miss Amelia B. Edwards, in her 
 " Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers '^ (p. 160), says : 
 " Thothmes the Third was the Alexander of ancient 
 Egyptian history. He conquered the known world 
 of his day ; he carved the names of six hundred and 
 twent^^-eight vanquished nations and captured cities 
 on the walls of Karnak ; and he set up a tablet of 
 victory in the Great Temple." 
 
 But Prof. George Rawlinson says his task was 
 trivial as compared with tliat of the Macedonian 
 general, and his achievements were insignificant. 
 Instead of plunging with a small force into the 
 midst of populous countries, and contending with 
 armies ten or twenty times as large as his own, de- 
 feating them, and utterly subduing a vast empire, 
 Thothmes marched at the head of a numerous dis- 
 ciplined army into thinly peopled regions, governed 
 by petty chiefs jealous of one another, fought 
 scarcely a single great battle, and succeeded in 
 conquering two regions of a moderate size, Syria 
 and Mesopotamia. 
 
MISTAKES IN ANCIENT HISTORY. 91 
 
 Alexander overran and subdued the entire tract 
 between the Mgeim and the Sutlej, the Persian 
 Gulf and the Oxus. Thothmes subdued not a tenth 
 part of the space, and the empire which he estab- 
 lished did not endure for more than a century. 
 
 Alexander conquered Egypt and founded a dy- 
 nasty there which lasted ior nearly three centuries. 
 It is thus absurd to compare the third Thothmes 
 with the great Alexander in the light of a conqueror. 
 
 Forgetting that he was a first-rate administrator, 
 we are inclined to think of Alexander as only a 
 victor. He so organized the East that it continued 
 for nearly three centuries, and mainly under Greek 
 rule. Thothmes, on the contrary, organized noth- 
 ing. He left his conquests in such a condition that 
 at his death all of them revolted and had to be re- 
 established. 
 
 Alexander did not weep for Other Worlds 
 to conquer. — Plutarch says: "Alexander wept 
 when he heard ' that there was an infinite number of 
 worlds, and his friends asking him if any accident 
 had befallen him, he returns this answer : ' Do you 
 not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that 
 when there is such a vast number of them, we 
 have not yet conquered one ? ' " 
 
 Alexander did not "weep for other worlds to 
 conquer, '^ but because his ambition was so far from 
 being realized in this. 
 
 1 From Anasarchus, his favorite philosopher, who accompanied 
 the Asiatic expeditions. 
 
92 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 There is good reason to suspect that in India his 
 army met with serious reverses, which induced him 
 to retrace his steps. 
 
 The Story of Troy a Myth. — Able historians 
 have tried to fix the time of the siege of Troy, and 
 liave argued in favor of at least a dozen dates 
 between 1335 and 1149 B.C. According to Homer's 
 account, Helen must have been not less than 
 sixty years old when Paris fell in love with her, 
 but then she was supposed to partake with Castor 
 and Pollux of immortality. Recent discoverers 
 have found remains of a number of large cities 
 on the supposed site of Ilion. 
 
 The Battle of Thermopylse. — History states 
 that in 480 B.C. a small army of Greeks under 
 Leonidas defended the pass of Thermopyl£e against 
 a vast army under Xerxes (Khshay^rsha) — the 
 Biblical Ahasuerus. Their position was betrayed, 
 and Leonidas sent away his troops, except 300 
 Spartans and 700 Thespians, who remained to defend 
 the j^ass, and were slain. But modern investigators 
 have proved that Xerxes' army was grossly exagger- 
 ated, and that it was not stopped by 1,000 men, but by 
 7,000, or even, as some authors compute, by 12,000. 
 Moreover, the Spartan contingent showed no more 
 bravery in this conflict than their companions in arms. 
 
 Apehimedes and his Cipeles. — It is undoubt- 
 edly a historical fact that Archimedes met his death 
 when the Romans under Marcellus attacked and 
 captured Syracuse, 212 B.C. But the story that he 
 
MISTAKES IN ANCIENT HISTORY. 93 
 
 was engaged in mathematical work, and was busy 
 contemplating certain circles drawn in the sand 
 when a Roman soldier appeared, may or may not 
 be true. " Do not disturb my circles ! " the phi- 
 losopher is said to have exclaimed, but the soldier 
 struck him down. This is a pretty fiction. So also 
 is the story of his great burning glass which burned 
 the ships of the Romans in the harbor. The cir- 
 cumstances are impossible. The story that he said, 
 "Give me a, pou sto and I will move the world," 
 is another invention of later days. 
 
 The Gate of Janus. — The strange Roman god 
 Janus, with two faces, had a gateway close by 
 the Forum dedicated to his honor by King Numa ; 
 but there is no reason for styling it Janus' Temple, 
 unless because it contained a bronze statue of the 
 god, and thus became a sacred place. It was 
 merely an archway with two doors, one on a side, 
 closed in time of peace, and opened only in time 
 of war. An Etruscan god, with two or four faces, 
 was identified with Janus, hence the plastic repre- 
 sentation. The word Janus is another form of 
 Dianus, the sun, just as the associated goddess 
 Jana is Diana, the moon. But the later Romans 
 connected the name with Janua, a door, hence the 
 name of the month January. As the god of all 
 beginnings, he was regarded with special rever- 
 ence. A temple to him was built by Cains Duilius 
 at the time of the first Punic war ; this was re- 
 stored by Augustus and dedicated by Tiberius. 
 
94 THE MISTAKES AVE MAKE. 
 
 Rose not a Flower. — The English given name 
 Rose is by some believed to be derived from the 
 Teutonic hros, meaning fame, just as Rosamond 
 is hros-mund, " famed protection," and not 
 •' chaste rose." Nor is tliere any rose in the Ro- 
 setta stone ; its name is a corruption of the Arabic 
 raahid, glorious. 
 
 A Left-handed Yarn. — Many stories have been 
 invented to explain the apj^arent meanings of proper 
 names. Thus the Roman family name Scsevola, 
 which means the Left Handed, is accounted for by 
 the familiar legend retold by Macaulay in his " Lays 
 of Ancient Rome." It is said that in 509 B.C. Mucins 
 Sca3vola made his way into the camp of King Por- 
 sena to kill him, while he was besieging Rome. 
 But he killed instead a royal secretary, whom he 
 mistook for the king. He was threatened with 
 death by fire unless he revealed the details of a 
 conspiracy, whereupon he thrust his right hand into 
 the fire prepared for him and burnt it off. This 
 firmness allayed the suspicions and excited the 
 admiration of Porsena, who ordered his release. 
 The story of Tarquin's insult to Lucretia is also a 
 legend. Tarquin's power may have been overthrown 
 by a popular insurrection, but its cause was not 
 that given in the poem of Shakespeare. 
 
 Hopatius and the Bridge. — Macaulay in an- 
 other lay tells 
 
 " How well Horatius kept the bridge 
 In the brave days of old." 
 
MISTAKES IN ANCIENT HISTORY. 95 
 
 Horatius never defended the bridge over the 
 Tiber against the Etruscans ; neither did the mother 
 of Coriolanus intercede with her son to spare Rome. 
 The story is a modern fabrication. 
 
 Sappho did not commit Suicide. — About 600 
 B.C. flourished the famous Grecian lyric poetess 
 Sappiio, or Psappha, as she called herself in her own 
 ^olic dialect. The ancients delighted to call her 
 " The Poet," so unique was her renown. There is no 
 foundation for the story that she was a wanton 
 beauty who threw herself from the Leucadian prom- 
 ontory into the sea, out of love for a beautiful 
 youth, Phason, who disdained her advances. Late 
 investigations prove her to have been a respectable 
 married woman with a large family, which she 
 raised with as much care as a Greek matron usually 
 bestowed on her children. * 
 
 It is not too commonly known that her nine books 
 of lyric poems were burnt by some anti-Pagan 
 fanatic. Scaliger says that Pope Gregory VII. was 
 the miscreant, in the year 1073 ; but Mr. N. T. 
 Wharton rejects this as lacking confirmatory evi- 
 dence, and offers the alternative story of Cardan, 
 who gives 380 as the year of the burning, under 
 Gregory Nazianzen. 
 
 All that are left to us are her " Ode to Aphrodite," 
 and the fragmentary allusions and quotations from 
 her works by ancient writers. 
 
 Romulus a Myth. — The beautiful story of 
 Romulus and Remus suckled by the she-wolf, and 
 
96 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 their quarrel, and the foundation of the city of Rome, 
 has no historic foundation. The first person to relate 
 it lived hundreds of years after the reputed A.U.C. 
 
 Dido and the Hide. — The story of Dido win- 
 ning land at Carthage by cutting oxhides into strij^s 
 and thus enclosing a considerable space arises from 
 the misinterpretation of the word byrsa, a Greek 
 mispronunciation of the Semitic bircihd, a citadel. 
 The story reappears in connection with many cities 
 and castles, even as late as the eleventh century, 
 when Hasan ben Sabah in this way is said to have 
 secured the castle of Alamut in Northern Persia, 
 where he established himself as the Sheikh ul Jebal, 
 the Head of the Assassins. 
 
 Opigin of the Irish. — The legend that the Irish 
 are of Phoenician origin is said to have arisen from 
 the similarity of sound in the Irish \\0Ydfena, plural 
 Jion, beautiful, agreeable. 
 
 Diogenes' Tub a Myth. — The same year that 
 Alexander died at Babylon Diogenes died at Corinth, 
 323 B.C. ; but not in a tub, because he never lived 
 in one. The story originated in a comment by his 
 biographer, Seneca, who was not born till more than 
 three hund-i-ed years after the cynic's death: "A 
 man so crabbed ought to have lived in a tub like a 
 dog." 
 
 iEsop's Fables. — The story of ^sop the lame 
 slave who is commonly reputed to be the author of 
 the fables is much involved in legend. He was 
 very probably not a historical personage. Many if 
 
MISTAKES IN ANCIENT HISTORY. 97 
 
 not all of his fables are of more ancient date. Miss 
 Amelia B. Edwards says : " Some of the fables at- 
 tributed to him are drawn from Egyptian sources 
 older by eight hundred years than the famous 
 dwarf who is supposed to have invented them. The 
 fable of the ' Lion and the Mouse ' was discovered 
 by Dr. Brugsch in an Egyptian papyrus a few years 
 ago. ' The Dispute of the Stomach and the Mem- 
 bers ' has been yet more recently identified by Pro- 
 fessor Maspero with an ancient Egyptian original." 
 
 Seneca a Usuper. — Seneca .was not the half- 
 Christian philosopher of whose virtues we are often 
 told, but a grasping usurer who died worth over 
 $3,000,000. Nor was Ca3sar Augustus a public 
 benefactor : he was the most exacting tax collector 
 of history. 
 
 The Hannibal Fable.— In 216 B.C. Hannibal 
 with about 50,000 men nearly annihilated the 
 Roman army of about 90,000 at Canna3, in Apulia, 
 Italy ; but it is all a fable to say that he sent 
 back to Carthage as evidence of his victory three 
 bushels of gold rings plucked from the hands of 
 dead Roman knights. The messenger that carried 
 the news to the Carthaginian Senate, on concluding 
 his report, " opened his robe and threw out a num- 
 ber of gold rings gathered on the field of battle." 
 
 The Colossus of Rhodes. — There is no prob- 
 ability that such a statue as is usually represented 
 in pictures as straddling the entrance to the port 
 of Rhodes ever existed. 
 
98 thp: mistakes we make. 
 
 Words falsely attributed to Caesar. — There 
 is no historical foundation for the story that when 
 Csesar in 49 B.C. reached the Rubicon lie communed 
 with himself, saying in effect : " There is still time 
 to turn back ; one step further and civil war breaks 
 forth ; " then, taking a sudden resolution, he marched 
 forward, exclaiming, " Aleajacta est .' " " The die 
 is cast ! " "He plunged, he crossed, and Rome was 
 free no more." Moreover, the Rubicon lay on the 
 opposite side of the Italian peninsula from where 
 he entered Italy. .Neither did Cassar exclaim, '' Et 
 iu. Brute!'''' when he was assassinated March 15, 44 
 B.C. Suetonia says Caesar drew a deep sigh, but 
 said not a word. 
 
 Lies about Cleopatra. — Cleopatra killed her- 
 self, 30 B.C., to avoid being exhibited at Rome in 
 the triumph of Octavius, who had made war upon 
 her and Antony because the latter had divorced his 
 (Octavius') sister on the queen's account. But did 
 she die from the bite of an asp ? Rawlinson argues 
 against it in his " Ilerod II.": "If her death had 
 been caused by any serpent, the small viper would 
 rather have been chosen than the large asp ; but the 
 story is disproved by her having decked herself in 
 * the royal ornaments,"' and being found dead ' with- 
 out any marks of suspicion of ^^oison on her body.' " 
 
 Death from a serpent's bite could not have been 
 mistaken, and her vanity would not have allo^t-ed 
 her to choose one which would have disfigured her 
 so frightfully. 
 
MISTAKES IN ANCIENT HISTORY. 99 
 
 No boy would have ventured to carry an asp in a 
 basket of figs, some of which he offered to the 
 guards as he passed. Even Plutarch shows that 
 the story of the asp was doubted. Nor is the fact 
 that the statue carried in Augustus' triumph had an 
 asp upon it any proof of his belief in it, since the 
 snake was the emblem of Egyptian royalty. The 
 statue (or the crown) of Cleopatra could not have 
 been without one, and this was probably the origin 
 of the whole story. 
 
 Who has not heard of Cleopatra's pearl which, 
 at a banquet given in Antony's honor, she dissolved 
 in vinegar? Either this story also is fictitious, or 
 vinegar was different in those days from the present- 
 day kind, which will not melt pearls ; nor will it 
 split rocks, as it is made to do in the story of " Han- 
 nibal crossing the Alps." 
 
 Nero not such a Bad Fellow. — Another royal 
 suicide was the Emperor Nero, who stabbed himself 
 68 A.D. He Avas not quite so bad a monster as 
 the author of " Quo Vadis" would have us imagine. 
 His mother, Agrippina, was not put to death by his 
 order, nor did he play on his harp, and sing "The 
 Burning of Troy" while Rome was on fire. 
 
 Our knowledge of him is gained mostly from 
 Tacitus, who hated him, and from Petronius Arbi- 
 ter, who was put to death for conspiracy against 
 him. Hodgkin, in " Italy and her Invaders," says : 
 " Even in Rome itself the common people strewed 
 flowers on the grave of Nero." 
 
100 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE IN RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 
 
 Israelites did not exterminate the Canaan- 
 ites. — It is a common belief, but erroneous, 
 that the Israelites exterminated the Canaanites. 
 The Israelites, by force of arms, were a domi- 
 nant caste, and ruled over the more civilized 
 Canaanites. 
 
 Moses had no Horn. — The Hebrew for " shone " 
 is qdran, to emit rays; for a horn, is qeren. The 
 early translators confused the two by translating the 
 passage in Exodus describing Moses on his descent 
 from Sinai Sisfacies cornuta, " his face was horned," 
 instead of "his face shone." Hence artists have 
 represented Moses with a liorn, as if it referred to 
 his power symbolized. 
 
 Christ was born 4 B.C. — Through the erro- 
 neous time fixed by the calculations of Dionysius, 
 the date generally" assigned for the nati\'ity of our 
 Lord is at least four years later than it should be. 
 It must have preceded the death of Herod, who 
 died four years before the beginning of the Chris- 
 tian era. After giving data upon which the later 
 computation is founded, Farrar, in his " Life of 
 Christ," adds: "Under no circumstances can it 
 
MISTAKES IN RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 101 
 
 have taken place later than February, B.C. 4." So 
 that instead of this being the year 1898, we should 
 sign our letters 1902. 
 
 The Wise Men of the East. — In early Chris- 
 tian art few subjects have been often er painted 
 than the worship of the infant Saviour at Bethle- 
 hem by the wise men or " kings." ^ 
 
 In these early representations, and those of the 
 Roman catacombs, the number of Magi varies, and 
 when the words of St. Matthew are Oiterally fol- 
 lowed there are no signs of royalty. In one paint- 
 ing there are four, in another — in the chapel of S. 
 Pietro e S. Marcellino — only two are shown. There 
 is no biblical authority for fixing an}^ number at all 
 to theMagi of the gospel narrative. St. Matthew, the 
 only evangelist who mentions them, says: " There 
 came wise men from tlie east to Jerusalem." The 
 idea that they were three in number no doubt is 
 founded upon the three kinds of gifts they offered — 
 gold, frankincense, and myrrh ; at least this was the 
 teaching of St. Augustine. It may also have some 
 mystical connection with the idea of the Trinity. 
 
 The First Easter. — It is sometimes said that 
 the first Easter was in the spring of the year 29 of 
 our era. The crucifixion took place on the 7th of 
 April of the Julian year, or the 5th of AjDril ac- 
 cording to the Gregorian reckoning, in 30 A.D. 
 
 1 Psalm Lxxii., 10, 11. " The kings of Tarshish and of the isles 
 shall bring presents : the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer 
 gifts." Recited by Roman Catholics on the Feast of Epiphany. 
 
102 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Belial was the Father of no Sons. — The ex- 
 pression sons of Belial, or children of Belial, with 
 the marginal rendering " naughty men," gives 
 readers of the Bible the impression that Belial was 
 a person or a god. It is really a Hebrew word 
 meaning useless, hence "good for nothing." 
 
 Mapy Magdalene. — Many persons, without any 
 justification, identif}^ the woman taken in adultery, 
 as related in the eighth chapter of St. John, with 
 Mary Magdalene, of whom nothing is known more 
 than that seven devils were cast out of her (Luke 
 VIII., 2) ; that she was present at Jesus* execution 
 (Matthew xxvii., 56) ; and that Christ appeared 
 first to her (Matthew xxviii., 1). The term 
 Magdalen, therefore, as applied to a fallen woman 
 is an unjust stigma. 
 
 The Athanasian Creed. — The "Athanasian" 
 Creed is not the production of the Alexandrian 
 bishop whose name it bears, though it correctly 
 expresses his doctrines. The original was written 
 in Latin, not, as it would have been, in Greek, had 
 Athanasius written it; in fact, it was entirely un- 
 known in the language of the Greek Church up to 
 the tenth century, and even in Latin did not appear 
 before the end of the eighth century, whereas 
 Athanasius lived in the fourth. 
 
 The Opigin of the Papacy. — Roman Catholic 
 controversialists urge that the Papacy was created 
 by the Founder of Christianity ; Protestant prej- 
 udices attribute it to designing priests. Its growth 
 
MISTAKES IN RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 103 
 
 was rather the inevitable product of mediaeval con- 
 ditions. Ferdinand Gregoroviiis, in his " History of 
 the City of Rome in the Middle Ages/' points out 
 the fact that the Bishop of Rome was the one rally- 
 ing-point in a world of confusion, the one centre of 
 order amid chaos, the one central light in a night of 
 darkness. After describing the final sacking of the 
 city of Rome he says: "Classical civilization per- 
 ished in Rome and throughout Italy. In cities 
 burnt, desolated, and mutilated, ruins remained the 
 sole evidences of former splendor. The night of 
 barbarism had descended on the Latin world, a 
 darkness in which no light was visible other than 
 that of the tapers of the church and the lonely stu- 
 dent lamp of the monk brooding in his cloister." 
 
 Barbarians swarmed over Italy ; the scat of empire 
 was transferred to Byzantium ; the Exarchate of 
 Ravenna, which represented imperial rule in Italy, 
 was powerless to stem the torrent of anarchy, and 
 the ancient Roman Curia had perished. No author- 
 ity remained save that which rested in the person 
 of the Bishop of Rome, whose see thus gradually 
 became the one object of obedience and highest 
 veneration throughout Western Christendom, and 
 who, therefore, naturally became the head of the 
 Holy Roman Church. That power was more firmly 
 secured by temporal possessions, partly gifts to the 
 Roman see, and partly territories acquired by 
 diplomacy of the bishops when popes. By the end 
 of the eighth century the Temporal Power was 
 
104 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 estiiblislied largely by the reciprocal aid of one of 
 the world's most noted rulers — the emperor of 
 tlie German Western Empire, Charles the Great. 
 
 Is the Pope Infallible ? — In calling the pope 
 infallible Roman Catholics mean that God preserves 
 him from erring in expounding Holy Scripture, and 
 in teaching points of faith or of morals, when he 
 does all this ex cathedra. The Pope is not regarded 
 as impeccable ; that is, preserved from sinning. In 
 a somewhat like manner in civil matters a judge 
 may be blamable in his private life, and yet eminent 
 and faultless in his official duty of deciding points 
 of civil law. 
 
 "Saint" and "Holy." — The famous mosque 
 ^t Constantinople was not called so for any " saint" 
 of the name of ' ' Sophia." The church was originally 
 dedicated by Constantino the Great to '* sacred or 
 holy wisdom," Hagia Sophia ; that is, to Christ, as the 
 personified wisdom of God. Among other instances 
 where " Saint" does not mean " saint," but *' holy," 
 we have St. Sepulchre, Protestant churches at Lon- 
 don and Cambridge, St. Croix River in Wisconsin, 
 and Sainte Chapelle at Paris, built by St. Louis to 
 receive and enshrine the crown of thorns. St. 
 Mary, when used for Roman Catholic churches, 
 means "Holy" Mary, as the reverence there paid 
 her is" much greater than the word "saint" would 
 imply. 
 
 Auto de fe. — The first auto de fe was at Yalla- 
 dolid in May, 1559, and was witnessed by Philip 
 
MISTAKES IN RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 105 
 
 II., the Prince of the Asturias. Another took place 
 in Seville, Dec. 22, 1560 ; thirteen were burnt to 
 death, four in effigy. It is a mistake to use the 
 particle da or to put an acute accent over fe. The 
 words are Spanish, and signify act of faith. 
 
 No Woman was ever Pope. — A story was at 
 one time popularly believed, that a beautiful and 
 learned German woman named Joanna, born at 
 Mayence or Ingelheim, fell in love with a recreant 
 monk, and escaping with him in man's attire trav- 
 elled through France, Italy, and Greece. After the 
 lover died in Athens, Joanna came to Rome, and, 
 still keeping up the fiction of her assumed sex 
 under the name of Angelicas, established a school 
 there. After the death of Pope Leo IV. in 855, 
 she was unanimously elected pope and took the 
 appellation of Johann VIII. Her rule was, after 
 two years and six months, interrupted by a scandal ; 
 an angel appeared to her and offered her the choice 
 of being damned in the next world or acknowl- 
 edging her transgression in this. She accordingly 
 joined in a procession, was taken with the pangs 
 of child-birth on the way between the Coliseum 
 and the Chapel of St. Clement, and died, and was 
 buried without any honors, after a pontificate of 
 nearly two years and a half ; and on the spot a 
 chapel was erected which succeeding popes always 
 avoided. The first historian to mention this fable 
 was Marianus Scotus, but others made capital of it. 
 Of course as Leo IV. died July 17, 855, and Bene- 
 
106 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 diet III. succeeded him, reigning till 858, there 
 could have been no place for Joanna. The cere- 
 mony of the sedia siercoraria from which the story 
 may have arisen was discontinued in the sixteenth 
 century. Some attribute the rise of the story 
 to the effeminacy or licentiousness of Pope John 
 XTI., who was killed in 964 while prosecuting a 
 conspiracy against the Emperor of Germany, 
 Otto I. 
 
 Nuns were never "walled up." — Despite the 
 fate of Constance de Beverly, as depicted in Scott's 
 "Marmion," monks and nuns have never been 
 walled up alive, as many still believe, by the Roman 
 Catholic Church. The word murus, a wall, used as 
 a substantive in mediaeval Latin and all the deriva- 
 tive tongues, signified prison, and murato, ])ut in 
 walls, did not necessarily mean walled up, any 
 more than immured means walled up in England. 
 
 Mr. Rider Haggard, in his novel " Montezuma's 
 Daughter," has confessed that, even if the taking 
 of the life of a nun for a grave moral transgression 
 might be conceivably defended as an act of judicial 
 authority, there is no proof that such a barbarous 
 punishment was ever enforced. Tliere was a time 
 when foundations were actually laid with the sacri- 
 ficial blood and other remains of human bodies. 
 From this circumstance originated the superstition 
 that to secure the permanence of bridges, castles, and 
 other great structures, it was necessary to buikl uji 
 the body of a live child or maiden in the foundations. 
 
MISTAKES TX RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 107 
 
 This belief has survived for many centuries in 
 Europe, and was invoked to account for every 
 skeleton found in an unusual part of any religious 
 or other old building. 
 
 Helena not a Briton. — The story that Helena, 
 the mother of Constantino the Great, and the col- 
 lector of so many Christian relics, was a British 
 lady rests on no good authority. There is good 
 reason to believe that she was really the daughter 
 of an innkeeper at Antioch. 
 
 Dives not a Propep Name. — The name 
 "Dives" is generally supposed to have been the 
 surname of the rich man at whose door Lazarus 
 lay, and is therefore improperly printed with a capi- 
 tal " D." There is no such name in Scripture. 
 The painted representation of this parable was a 
 favorite with the monks, and under it they in- 
 scribed in hsiiin,, Dives (the rich man) et Lazarus, 
 hence the misapprehension. The correct pronun- 
 ciation of this name is di-ves, not dives. 
 
 Papsis not Fipe-wopshippeps. — The Parsi is 
 unjustly called a fire-worshipper. Yet to him fire is 
 but the emblem of the power of God, whom he wor- 
 ships as devoutly as Christians do the God of the 
 Bible. The name Parsi is only another form of Farsi 
 or Persian, and is borne by the descendants of those 
 who at the ]\Iuhammadan Conquest took the relig- 
 ion of Zoroaster (Zarathustra) down into India. 
 
 Juggernaut not a Fetish. — It has been told 
 that the worshijjpers of Juggernaut throw them- 
 
108 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 selves under the wheels of the car by the score, in 
 the belief that they will thus obtain eternal salva- 
 tion. The car is taken out only about once in 
 thirty years, and the deaths which the old missionary 
 stories and pictures so exaggerated were generally 
 accidental. The two or three exceptional victims 
 of self-immolation chose this manner of death to 
 free themselves from excruciating complaints. 
 Even in the last reincarnation year of Juggernaut 
 (1893), with every precaution, accidents Avere 
 barely avoided, but in old days Avith no police 
 this was impossible. 
 
 Savonarola not the Preeupsor of Protestant- 
 ism. — Savonarola was a contemporary of Colum- 
 bus. Popular histories, text-books, and the like, 
 often call him " among the leaders of the Reforma- 
 tion," or say that "he was a harbinger of the 
 Reformation," or that he is " rigktly called a pre- 
 cursor of Protestantism." It Avould be very easy to 
 pile up instance upon instance of this ignorance, 
 this misunderstanding of the great reformer's 
 work. 
 
 Savonarola's life and words preclude the idea that 
 he was a " harbinger" of the Protestant Reforma- 
 tion. But he was a "great reformer" of the evil 
 lives of men in high places. Like Nehemiah, he 
 preached against abuses. Yet Savonarola's own 
 works show that he would have regarded the six- 
 teenth century Reformation as an act of apostasy. 
 As to his contempt for the reformers with whom he 
 
MISTAKES IN RELIGIOUS HISTORY. 109 
 
 is SO frequently ticketed, how do we find him in 
 every page of his liistory ? Saying mass, believing 
 in transubstantiation, devoted to the Virgin, duti- 
 fully submitting to the rules of his order, and par- 
 ticipating in all the ceremonies of the Roman 
 Chureli as they are performed to-day, and, unlike 
 Martin Luther of the next half century, keeping his 
 religious vows till his death. He Avas disobedient 
 to the Pope, but his disobedience was through mis- 
 apprehension, and therefore can hardly be called 
 heretical. 
 
 Muhammad was not a Miracle- worker. — 
 The Christian's notion of Muhammad the Prophet 
 of Islam is that he was an impostor and fanatic. 
 The most curious thing about him is that he him- 
 self never claimed an}^ supernatural powers, and 
 that the attribute of miracles to the prophet is not 
 warranted by the Koran. 
 
 jNIoreover, the earliest life of Muhammad makes 
 very little mention of miracles, and all those which 
 are associated with his name are the creation of 
 later biographers, who accurately gauged the taste 
 for sensational details. 
 
 The Kingdom of Prester John. — The legend 
 of a Christian sovereign called Prester or Presbyter 
 Johannes, ruling in Central Asia, grew out of a 
 name. It may have been Bahram Gur ; or a chief 
 named Gur Khan (meaning universal Khan), which 
 was twisted into Yurkhan and Juchanan, hence 
 Johannes. Other writers have tried to find the 
 
110 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 origin of the m^-th in John Orbelian of Georgia. 
 Probably some rumor of Jenghis Khan was founda- 
 tion for the story, which is attributed to the Bishop 
 of Gabala. 
 
 St. Augustine did not introduce Christianity 
 into England. — Many persons confuse St. 
 Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 about 600, with St. Augustine, the celebrated 
 Father of the Latin Church, who died 430, and 
 believe that the author of the celebrated confessions 
 introduced Christianity into England. There had 
 been fifteen archbishops of London before then ; 
 and — to say nothing about the primitive churches 
 of Ireland and Scotland — there were three sees, 
 with cathedrals, in the province of Caerleon, or 
 Wales, before Augustine saw the white cliffs of 
 Albion. Ba3da said that Ethelbert gave Augustine 
 and his people, on his conversion, power to restore 
 the churches. The word restore implies their pre- 
 vious existence. Was there an accidental Christian 
 colony in Canterbury, or was there a British Chris- 
 tian Church before the Saxons came? 
 
 Bpuno was not burnt Alive. — In 1587 the 
 philosopher, Giordano Bruno, was lecturing at the 
 University of Wittenberg. About his death there 
 is a very common error. Flammarion in his " Pop- 
 ular Astronomy," 1894, still further spreads it. It 
 is to the effect that Bruno "was burned alive at 
 Rome before the terrified people," because he 
 asserted the stars to be the centres of other systems. 
 
MISTAKES IN KELIGTOUS HISTORY. Ill 
 
 The charge laid against Bruno was not the one 
 mentioned ; and it is extremely doubtful whether 
 he met with scientific martyrdom at all, the sole 
 evidence of his execution being a letter of Sciopj^ius, 
 the genuineness of which has been seriously called 
 to question by Professor Desdouits. 
 
 It is certain that he left Italy to avoid the conse- 
 quences of publicly denouncing the doctrines of 
 transubstantiation and of the immaculate concep- 
 tion, and that on his return to Naples, some years 
 later, he was arrested by order of the Inquisition, 
 as an unbeliever, and especially as being the author 
 of " The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast," 
 " Spaccio della bestia Trionfante," written in 
 London while under the protection of the French 
 Ambassador, J584. 
 
 The "Italian missionary" (as Dean Hook calls 
 St. Augustine) found himself in conflict with the 
 British bishops almost as soon as he landed. And 
 his failure to bring the British church into union 
 with that of Canterbury was lamentable. 
 
 Mr. Newel, after examining various hypotheses, 
 is inclined to trace British Christianity to a Galilean 
 origin. Christianity was founded in these islands 
 toward the close of the second and the beginning of 
 the third centuries, and was probably brought from 
 the Rhone Valley after the persecution of the year 
 177. Some of the persecuted Gallican Christians 
 fled through Aries and Lyons to Britain. "In de- 
 fault of genuine tradition," writes Mr. Newel, " re- 
 
112 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 specting the origin of the British church, it appears 
 most probable that the Christian missionaries came 
 that way from the churches of the Rhone Valley to 
 Britain." 
 
 Cantepbupy is not the Fipst Chpistian Chupeh 
 in England. — Canterbury is not "the first Chris- 
 tian Church in England." The honor belongs 
 rather to (jlastonbury, the vetusia ecclesia — the 
 wicker church — founded by St. Patrick, the apostle 
 of Ireland, more than a century before Pope Greg- 
 ory sent missionaries to those whom he declared to 
 be '* 71071 Angli sed Angeli.'''' 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 113 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 We are not descended from the Celts. — The 
 
 ancient Britons are usually called Celts or Kelts, 
 but tlie ancient Kelts probably never came into 
 Briton at all. Their peculiar skulls are not found 
 there either in river-bed or barrow. Northern 
 Europe was represented by the ancients as occupied 
 by the Celts — the Western people — and the Scythi- 
 ans — the Eastern people. The Rhine came to be 
 considered the eastern frontier of the Celts, and 
 Celtica, in the time of Caesar, was called Gaul. 
 The British Islands were never included in the 
 term, and were distinctly stated to be outside of 
 and " opposite " Celtica. Csesar refers to the Celtae 
 as a definite race occupying central France. 
 
 Wherefore the term " Kelt" should be applied to 
 the Britons, not as a distinct race, but as a people 
 speaking one of the European languages which 
 philologists have merely for convenience chosen to 
 call Keltic.^ The Britons of pre-Roman and pre- 
 Saxon times were not Kelts because they spoke 
 Keltic, any more than an Indian is "Anglo-Saxon" 
 
 1 Similarly the term '* Aryan " can only be used in a linguistic 
 
114 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 because he speaks English. If language were a 
 test of race, it would be quite allowable to class the 
 Irish of Dublin and the Shetland folk as English. 
 
 The Piets were not Painted. — Lord Strang- 
 ford says: "The Picts got their name from the 
 Romans, as being tattooed distinct from the clothed 
 and tamed Britons." An English Board School 
 "Historical Reader" says, "but the Picts — the 
 Painted Men — came pouring in over the old Ro- 
 man walls." This derivation is noticed by Claudian, 
 who speaks of the Picts as nee /also nomine Picti. 
 All the early Roman and Irish chronicles perpet- 
 uate his derivatio.n of the word. 
 
 It is taken for granted that because the Picts 
 painted or stained themselves, their name means 
 "the painted." The Romans could scarcely have 
 used it in specializing one tribe in the north of 
 Britain, while at a much earlier date they M^ere 
 familiar with the custom of tattooing practised 
 by other tribes in the south ; therefore the south- 
 ern Britons ought to have been the true Picts. 
 
 There is little doubt that the name was the origi- 
 nal tribal name j^eida slightly altered in the mouths 
 of the Romans, and meant " fighters," the term 
 being traceable to the Gaelic peieta or the Welsh 
 -peith, a "fighting man," — a root related to tlie 
 Latin pugna. Tliat they were preeminent fighters, 
 of huge stature, is no speculation, but a historical 
 fact based on the scanty records of Roman writers. 
 And of the invincible Attacott Picts it is told that, 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 115 
 
 SO valued was their prowess, they were drilled 
 with the Roman cohorts, and fonght under the mas- 
 terly lead of Kenneth MacEdairn for the Emperor 
 Honorins. 
 
 The Britons were not driven into Wales.— 
 An English historical reader, following the iisnal 
 statement, declares that when the Anglo-Saxons 
 conquered Britain "the native Britons, or Welsh, 
 as the English called them, were driven into 
 Wales." All the rest were killed. This theory 
 of extermination and expatriation is proved by 
 Professor Huxley, Dr. Rolleston, Dr. Beddoe, and 
 other competent investigators to be utterly false. 
 
 The examination of burial places in the so-callecl 
 ** Anglo-Saxon" period shows that the Britons and 
 their conquerors continued to live on side by side ; 
 and the modern Englishman shows every grada- 
 tion of type which would be produced by the inter- 
 marriage of such people as the dark-haired, long- 
 headed Briton, and those of Roman admixture, 
 with the light-haired, broad-headed Saxon, More- 
 over we are expressly told in the English " Chron- 
 icle " that the lineage of the Saxon kinoes and the 
 royal families of the Strathclyde Britons was often 
 blended. 
 
 Our " Anglo-Saxon " ancestors called the " Kelts " 
 Wealas, Welshmen (the singular of which is 
 wealh), which means foreigners, just as the 
 Germans call Italy Walschland. Boeda mentions 
 how the Saxon king, Eadwine of York, rendered 
 
116 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 most of the Welsh abbots tributaries to his race. 
 William of Malmesbnry, f om' centuries later, can 
 hardly transcribe in his classical Latin the names 
 of Welsh abbots, " because they smack of British 
 barbarism." Again he says: "The English and 
 Britons joined together against him (Ceawlin), and 
 his army was put to flight at Wodnesdic," which 
 was about one hundred years after the popular 
 date of the first Saxon settlement. Besides, as the 
 Angles or Saxons took at least four hundred years 
 to do what they did, and appeared only after long 
 intervals, without any semblance to concerted action, 
 it must have been physically impossible to drive the 
 Britons en masse into the Welsh mountains ; to 
 admit the possibility of such a feat is to credit the 
 invaders with the ability to do without what both 
 the earlier Romans and the later Normans found 
 to be a very exacting necessity, namely, dependence 
 upon the conquered. 
 
 Had the Britons all been displaced, the names of 
 the towns would have disappeared also ; but the 
 most ancient cities of the Roman occupation re- 
 tained, and still retain, their Welsh names — Col- 
 chester, Winchester, Worcester, and ,^n immense 
 number of others, in which the first syllable, the 
 real name, is unaltered, and the second is merely 
 an Anglicized form of the Roman castra. Even 
 Mr. Freeman admits that some of the cities may 
 have been tributary to the English I'ather than occu- 
 13ied by them. 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 117 
 
 Again, almost every English river where the 
 settlers were thickest bears a British name ; and 
 our oldest existing documents prove that when the 
 English renamed a place, that name was contempo- 
 raneous with a Welsh one. It is asked: "If the 
 British siH-vived in comparatively large numbers, 
 why is our language wholly a Teutonic tongue ? " 
 
 The most plausible answer is: "Consider what 
 language the Mashonas will speak in a few genera- 
 tions ; consider whether the thousands of tourists 
 who visit Wales ever trouble to learn even Welsh 
 place names ; think of the Englishman's island — 
 Anglesey; its very name spells annihilation, and 
 yet it need hardly be said that the population still 
 remains essentially Welsh." 
 
 It would seem, therefore, preferable to believe that 
 when the English colonized Britain they enslaved 
 rather than exterminated the mass of the population. 
 
 The Saxons did not land when the Romans 
 left. —Historians have asserted that the Saxons 
 landed in Britain after the Romans had left it unpro- 
 tected. This statement conveys a false impression. 
 There is little doubt that the Saxon tribes had settled 
 on the maritime parts of Britain long before the 
 landing of Caesar. Else it cannot be understood 
 how the Romans should have met with such stub- 
 born resistance, and not infrequent reverses, if 
 the defenders had as weapons only the clubs of the 
 primitive savages, instead of the superior Saxon 
 weapons. 
 
118 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 In burial grounds dating from pre-Roman times 
 two distinct types of skull are found ; the short- 
 headed ones are accompanied by sujDerior weapons. 
 This coincides with Cassar's account. He says : 
 " The natives of the interior were indigenous, and 
 the coast people — totally different — had crossed 
 over from the neighborhood of Belgium." 
 
 Tacitus, writing one hundred and fifty years 
 later, gives testimony to the same effect. The title 
 " Comes Litoris Saxonici," given to the Roman 
 governors of the coast tribes, — two of whom are 
 known by their Germanic names, — shows that the 
 Romans actually found it expedient to prevent 
 further Saxon immigrations. 
 
 Pearson ("History of England," I., 6) says: 
 " The Saxons of the fifth century seem to have 
 found a kindred people already established in East 
 Anglia, since no conquest of that district is on 
 record." 
 
 The English are not an Anglo-Saxon People. 
 — Tennyson, in his " Welcome to Alexandra," says : 
 
 " Saxon and Norman and Dane are we, 
 But all of us Danes in our welcome of thee." 
 
 And with a still further enlargement of the idea at 
 the end of the poem : 
 
 " For Saxon or Dane or Norman we, 
 Teuton or Celt, or whatever we be, 
 We are each all Dane in our welcome of thee, 
 Alexandra." 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTOKY. 119 
 
 The term " Anglo-Saxon " is frequently applied 
 to the EnHish, but the Eno-lish are not an " AnHo- 
 Saxon,'' but an Anglo-British, people. The Roman 
 half-breed and the pure Briton after the evacuation 
 made too stout a resistance to be effaced by the 
 Saxons. The Roman element may be recognized by 
 its influence in the English municipal institutions ; 
 in not a few towns, such as London, York, Leices- 
 ter, and Exeter, we see distinctly that the Roman 
 legacy was never practically broken. 
 
 The dominant legal and religious traditions 
 remain unbroken, and so the dominant racial ele- 
 ment in the 'British Isles to-da}" is not Saxon, but 
 British, or, in deference to popular parlance, Kel- 
 tic. Considering that the Angles and Saxons were 
 one and the same people, it would be well to 
 eliminate one of the names — " Saxon, " for pref- 
 erence. Their own name was probably " Angles ; " 
 "Saxon" was only another name given to them 
 by the Britons as a common expression for 
 any invader. The Romans in Britain always 
 called *' Saxons" those people whom we are accus- 
 tomed to name "Angles." As the Angles and 
 Britons became blended, the two words became 
 interchangeable, and Latin writers of a later period, 
 to avoid confusion, naturally wrote Angli-Saxones. 
 
 King Alfred did not burn the Cakes or enact 
 Good Laws. — The story that King Alfred 
 allowed the cakes to burn, or that he ventured 
 into the Danish camp disguised as a minstrel, has 
 
120 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 no historical foundation, though it frequently ap- 
 pears in books written for children. A students^ 
 history states that he enacted good laws. The Ox- 
 ford Local Examiners, in their annual report for 
 1894, found occasion to deplore similar misinfor- 
 mation. The fact is that as a legislator Alfred 
 added nothing to existing laws, but simply revised 
 those of his predecessors, keeping " those that 
 seemed to him good," rejecting " those that seemed 
 to him not good," and combining the former into 
 a single code. 
 
 Ethelred not Unready. —Ethelred's epithet, 
 " Unready," had not the modern meaning, unpre- 
 pared, that so many school-books state, but referred 
 to the king^s indiflference to the rede, or council, of 
 the Witan. 
 
 The Battle of Hastings. — According to the 
 English "Historical Review" of May, 1894, the 
 English at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 were not 
 protected by a "■ palisade," and therefore the 
 advance and the feigned flight of the Norman 
 infantry were not for the purpose of forcing this 
 alleged palisade, but solely to tempt the English 
 to break their ranks. 
 
 The *' Conqueror's " Title. — William I. did 
 not owe his title of the " Conqueror" to this victory. 
 He was, in fact, not transformed into a " con- 
 queror " till some years later — not till all hopes of 
 English freedom had died in the surrender of Ely 
 in 1071. Not even then was he a conqueror in the 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 121 
 
 ordinary sense, for he came only to assert his rights 
 bequeathed to him, as was the custom in those days, 
 by Edward the Confessor. 
 
 He did not lay Nopthern England waste.— 
 The dreadful chastisement following the Northern 
 English resistance to the Normans in 1069, and 
 repeated in every school-book, is undoubtedly an 
 exao^geration. We read that " With fire and sword 
 he [the Conqueror] took a revenge so terrible that 
 from the Ilumber to the Tyne there stretched for 
 almost a century a vast desolate waste unbroken by 
 the plough." Prof essor Freeman says, in '* The Nor- 
 man Conquest of England," "The revenge grew 
 in the narratives of later writers into a pitiless lay- 
 ing waste of all Northern England, into a clearance 
 from this region of every form of life. From this 
 representation we may withhold our belief till 
 evidence sufficient to establish so comprehensive a 
 crime be produced." 
 
 Rufus was not shot by an Arrow. — The Con- 
 queror's son Rufus — the greedy, the merciless, the 
 iiTeligious, the hated oppressor of all classes — 
 was not shot accidentally by an arrow from the bow 
 of Walter TyrreL He was assassinated. His body 
 bore the marks of three or four sword-thrusts. 
 Almost all the authorities of his time called Tyrrel 
 the "murderer," and the fact that he immediately 
 fled across the sea is strong presumptive evidence. 
 Some authorities opine that his younger brother, 
 Henry, who was in the New Forest at the time, was 
 
122 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 the instigator of the crime, arguing that William 
 Rufus had despoiled Henry ; the Church and barons 
 were suffering from his violent extortions, and 
 longing for speedy relief; the eldest brother, 
 Robert, the rightful heir, was opportunely away in 
 the crusades ; Henry, on hearing the news, reached 
 Winchester, in all haste seized the treasure, and put 
 forward the lavish jDromises that secured him the 
 crown (1100). 
 
 Henry I. did not die of Gluttony. — It is com- 
 Hionly said of this Henry that his death was caused 
 by his gluttonous love of lampreys. The accusa- 
 tion is not a just one, because the truth is that the 
 lamprey's skin, like the skin and roe of other fish, 
 is poisonous when eaten at certain times. One may 
 as well bring the charge of gluttony against those 
 suffering through the sometimes deleterious oyster. 
 
 The Plantagenets. — The new line of kings 
 beginning with Henry II. (1154) did not know the 
 title under which it is usual to recognize'them, the 
 " Plantagenets," a title derived from ^j/an/a genes- 
 ta, the broom-plant ; at least it is not on record 
 that any sovereign ever used that name. It is more 
 correct to style them the Angevins, from Geoffrey ' 
 of Anjou, the father of the first of this line. He 
 
 1 It is doubtful whether this custom of Geoffrey was to indicate 
 a love of field sports, or to shew that he was not ashamed to 
 acknowledge the humble founder of the House of Anjou, — a 
 woodman of Rennes, — or to ward off the machinations of witch- 
 craft. 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 123 
 
 was the only one who is certainly known to have 
 worn a sprig of broom in his cap. 
 
 Henry II. did not conceal Fair Rosamond. — 
 There is no truth in the popular legend that says 
 that this king built a labyrinth to conceal his mis- 
 tress, the "Fair Rosamond'' Clifford, from Queen 
 Eleanor, who discovered her by means of a silken 
 thread. The fact is that Henry, instead of conceal- 
 ing her, publicly acknowledged her. Indeed, it 
 would have been quite an extraordinary exception 
 to the State and Church practices of those days to 
 have done otherwise. 
 
 Neither was " Fair Rosamond " poisoned by the 
 queen, for she died in the Convent of Godstow, 
 where she long resided as a nun, much esteemed by 
 her companions. 
 
 Rosamond was not the Mother of an Arch- 
 bishop. — Further, Rosamond is commonly, 
 though erroneously, stated to have been the mother 
 of Richard Longsword and Geoffrey, Archbishop of 
 York. Richard was the son of Henry II. ; but he 
 Avas not a Clifford. The argument that he was rests 
 upon a confusion between the Manor of Appleby, 
 in Lincolnshire, which M'as granted to Longsword 
 by his father, and the Manor of Appleby, in West- 
 moreland, which was held by Rosamond's family, 
 the Cliffords. Geoffrey, the only non-rebellious one 
 of Henry's children and the only one j)i'esent at his 
 death-bed, was born of a woman named Hikenai. 
 
 A Legend of Beeket's Mother. —The mother 
 
124 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 of the famous archbishop of this reign — Thomas 
 Becket — was not of Saracenic origin. The story 
 goes that a London merchant, while fighting with 
 the crusaders, was taken prisoner by a Saracen 
 chieftain, whose daughter fell in love with him; he 
 escaped and returned to England. The broken- 
 hearted girl followed, and with the aid of only two 
 English words, "London" and "Gilbert," reached 
 London and her lover. But the facts are these : 
 The archbishop's father, Gilbert Becket, one of the 
 Norman strangers who followed in the wake of the 
 Conqueror, was a burgher of Rouen,, and his 
 mother ivas of a burgher faintly from the neigh- 
 boring town of Caen. 
 
 Bpuee and the Spider. — The incident of the 
 spider connected with the career of Robert the 
 Bruce is another latter-day fable. Sir Herbert 
 Maxwell says, in " Robert the Bruce " (" Heroes of 
 the Nation Series") : " Where is the evidence to be 
 found in support of it ? Not in the writings of 
 Barbour, Fordun, or Wyntoun, those most nearly 
 contemporary with Bruce, and least likely to sup- 
 press a circumstance so picturesque and illustrating 
 so aptly the perseverance and patience of the na- 
 tional hero under desperate difficulties. No ; noth- 
 ino- is heard of this adventure till lono^ after Bruce 
 and his comrades had passed away, and then it 
 makes its appearance in company with such trash 
 as the miraculous appearance of the arm bone of 
 St. Filian on the eve of Bannockburn, and worthy 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 125 
 
 of just about as much consideration.'' The same 
 story has been told of another Scottish hero — Sir 
 James Doughis. 
 
 Richard Coeup de L6on a Subject of Legend. 
 — In March, 11S9, the Emperor Frederick Barba- 
 rossa, at Mayence, undertook the third crusade. 
 He died June 10, 1190, as the Christian army was 
 crossing the river Saleph. Richard of England 
 also entered on the crusade, and was present at the 
 capture of Akkon in the autumn of 1191. Leopold 
 v., Duke of Austria, planted his banner on the 
 wall ; then went and aided Richard to capture Ar- 
 suf, in September, and to restore Joppa. History 
 stops here and fable takes up the dropped thread. 
 It says that Richard tore down the Austrian banner 
 from the palace and flung it into the street ; whereat 
 Leopold in anger started home. When Richard, 
 returning in October, 1192, was shipwrecked on 
 the coast of Istria, it is said he dressed as a tem- 
 plar and set out by land. Near Vienna he was 
 betrayed by a gold coin which he chanced to pass, 
 or according to a variant, penetrating to the duke's 
 kitchen, he served as a turnspit and was detected 
 by a costly ring on his finger. In either case, he 
 was arrested and imprisoned, first at Dlirenstein, 
 where Blondel de Nesle, the French trouvere, 
 found him by his song. Later, having been trans- 
 ferred to the Emperor Henry VI., he was eon- 
 fined in the Castle of Trivel, where he is said to 
 have won his name of the Lion-hearted by killing a 
 
126 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 starving lion and eating its heart. Such is the 
 fable. 
 
 The truth is this : Richard of England was 
 arrested and delivered to the Emperor, on the 
 ground that he favored the Guelfs, who were 
 the enemies of Henry YI. His appearance in 
 Germany was expected, and spies were set to 
 watch for him. 
 
 The secret of his imprisonment was really dis- 
 closed by a letter from his captor to Philip of 
 France. Hostages were then found, and the king 
 agreed to remit his own ransom, and did so after 
 his return to England, January, 1194. The receipt 
 for it is among the Austrian archives. The popu- 
 lar story does not appear to have been known prior 
 to the fifteenth century. 
 
 The Fpeneh Areher was not flayed Alive.— 
 The offensive story associated with Richard can, how- 
 ever, be traced to its source. Roger of Hovenden 
 — one of the most valued of our early chroniclers, 
 on whom we particularly rely for the events of 
 Richard's reign — states, and the modern histories 
 follow him, that after Richard's death Merchader 
 seized Gourdon, the archer, whose arrow mortally 
 wounded the king before the Castle of Chaluz, 
 flayed him alive, and then hanged him. This is 
 absurd. No medical authority will allow that any 
 one could be flayed alive, or that it is possible 
 by the most skilful operation to remove the 
 skin of even half an arm — from the elbow to 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 127 
 
 the wrist — before the patient would die under 
 the shock. 
 
 King" John did not sign "Magna Charta." — 
 Nelson, on page 123 of his " Royal History," speak- 
 ing of King John in 1199, says: " And there, with 
 the faintest shadow of objection, John took pen in 
 hand and affixed (sic) his royal signature to Magna 
 Charta." A picture accompanying the text repre- 
 sents John actually writing his name with a quill 
 pen. By the way, the Charta is upside down ! 
 What the king really did was to affix his seal 
 only, for the very precise reason tlmt he was una- 
 ble to write. 
 
 The early Saxon and Norman kings were con- 
 tent to put their mark, usually a cross, to a docu- 
 ment written by a scribe. Not until the reign of 
 Edward III. is a royal sign manual other than a 
 cross placed on a document, the earliest of all being 
 what is described in W. J. Hardy's " Handwritings 
 of the Kings and Queens of England" as words 
 equivalent to his signature by the Black Prince. 
 The words in question are Homout Ich Dene on a 
 writ of 1370. But the Charta was signed, i.e., 
 sealed, in 1215. 
 
 Recent f ac-similes of the Great Charter have been 
 copied, as the publishers state, by "express per- 
 mission from the original document in the British 
 Museum." Mr. C. E. Clarke availed himself of an 
 " express permission," and found, instead of an 
 original document, only a few square inches of 
 
128 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 charred parchment rescued from the fire of 1731, 
 and tenderly cemented on what is, perhaps, card- 
 board. 
 
 One detail of the ftic-simile was the entire red 
 seal hanging on a cord ; whereas the original has 
 only half a seal, in brown — not red — wax, hang- 
 ing on a strip of curled parchment. 
 
 The Gartep on another Footing. — The ordi- 
 narily accepted story of the founding of the Order 
 of the Garter is a legend. It states that the beauti- 
 ful Countess of Salisbury, while dancing, lost the 
 blue garter from her left leg. King Edward III. 
 threw himself at her feet, picked up the precious 
 object, and in order to stifle the sarcasms that might 
 and perhaps did go from mouth to mouth, he uttered 
 the famous phrase honny soit qui mal y pense (" evil 
 to him who evil thinks ") and founded the exclusive 
 society which has that motto. 
 
 Another legend, less authenticated, but regarded 
 as more probable, has it that King Edward at the 
 battle of Crecy, in 1346, gave the signal of attack 
 by elevating a garter on the end of his lance, with 
 the battle-cry '* St. George," and in remembrance 
 of his victory over Philippe de Yalois founded the 
 order, giving its device to guard against criticism 
 of the name. The motto was known in the Middle 
 Ages. 
 
 Neither of these legends is known to the order 
 itself. The statutes state that Edward founded it 
 "to the glory of God, the Blessed Virgin, and the 
 
MISTAKES IJ^ EXGLISH HISTORY. 129 
 
 Holy Martyr St. George, the Protector of England, 
 in the twenty-third year of his reign." 
 
 The First Ppinee of Wales. — In 1301, in the 
 next rei^n but one, that of Edward I., the arreatest 
 of the " Plantagenets," the first Prince of Wales, 
 and weakest of the " Plantagenets," received his 
 title; but the chamber in Carnarvon Castle, shown 
 as his birthplace, is an imaginary shrine. It has 
 been proved beyond doubt by the well-known archa3- 
 ologist, Mr. Albert Hartshorne, that the castle was 
 barely begun by Edward I., and not finished till 
 thirty-three years after the babyhood of this his 
 fourth son. 
 
 Queen Eleanor and the Fable of the Poison. 
 — Neither did Queen Eleanor, the mother of this 
 boy, suck the poison from the arm of his father, as 
 she did not accompany the king on his Palestine 
 expedition, 1270-72, during which this incident is 
 alleged to have taken place. 
 
 The Prince of Wales' Three Feathers. — The 
 grandson of this first Prince of Wales " won his 
 spurs " near the forest of Crecy, 1346. At the bat- 
 tle John, the blind King of Bohemia, was among 
 the slain, and his crest is supposed to have become 
 the possession of the Black Prince, and to have ever 
 since been borne by the Princes of Wales. • This 
 crest is almost universally believed to have con- 
 sisted of three ostrich feathers. But John's seal, 
 still extant, shows there were not three, but nearer 
 fifty, and the feathers were not from the ostrich, 
 
130 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 but from the eagle ; and, further, that the feathers 
 were not arranged like our familiar designs, but like 
 a widely opened feather fan, extending over the top 
 of the helmet to the back in much the same way as 
 a Red Indian wears his feathers.' 
 
 It is suggested that the three plumes in the mod- 
 ern crest were originally not feathers at all, but 
 fleurs-de-lis; and also that only John's motto, "I 
 serve" (Ich dien), was assumed and transferred to 
 the arms of France by the Black Prince to empha- 
 size that, whereas formerly the objective of "I 
 serve " was the French king, it now meant, in token 
 of victory, "I serve (and the fleurs-de-lis with me) 
 the English king, my father (Edward 111.)." 
 
 The FleuF-de-Lis. — On Assyrian monuments 
 date-trees are always figured with ibex or goats' 
 horns tied to the trees to ward off the mischief of the 
 evil eye. It is done in Sicily and Southern Italy at 
 the present day. The device was taken up by the 
 Greeks, and what is known as the honeysuckle pat- 
 tern is nothing but ibex horns tied to a tree. The 
 crusaders in the East took this to be a royal em- 
 blem and brought it home to France, where it was 
 adopted as the fleur-de-lis. 
 
 The Black Prince did not always wear Black. 
 — The Black Prince, says the author of "Names 
 and Their Meaning," " was not exclusively addicted 
 to the wearing of black armor, as he is usually 
 
 J p. Norman, in " London cjigns and Inscriptions," 18y3, says; 
 King John's crest was a vulture's wing expanded." 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 131 
 
 re^Dresented in waxwork shows and picture toy- 
 books; consequently he did not derive his name 
 from such an association." As the useful, though 
 not always trustworthy, Froissart informs us, " He 
 received his name by terror of his arras." The 
 helmet and coat of mail hanging over the prince's 
 tomb in Canterbury Cathedral bear no evidence of 
 ever having been black. 
 
 Why Wat Tyler was killed. — Thirty-one 
 years after Crecy the Black Prince's son was 
 crowned as Richard II. ; four years later the Peas- 
 ants' Revolt occurred, and its leader, Wat Tyler, 
 was killed at Smithfield by one of the king's 
 esquires, Walworth, — Mayor of London — not as 
 an insurgent, but for having set fire to all the South- 
 wark houses of ill-fame which the Mayor held as 
 a very profitable monopoly. 
 
 How did Richard II. die?— When Shake- 
 speare, in " Richard II.," follows the story com- 
 monly current as to the death of Richard 11. , and 
 makes Sir Pierce of Exton murder him at Pomfret, 
 we are rightly sympathetic, but when school his- 
 tories do the same they pervert facts. An English 
 text-book says : "The dethroned king died in the 
 dungeons of Pontefract, either by starvation or by 
 the hand of an assassin." 
 
 This is worded and accepted as if it were a 
 correct statement. Other accounts with equal 
 emphasis assert that it was a case of suicide. 
 
 But the truth is that after Richard's abdication he 
 
132 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 entirely disappears from history ; neither the time 
 of his death is known for certain, nor that it took 
 place at Pomfret; and there is no evidence to jDrove 
 that Richard died other than a natural death. 
 
 Another of Shakespeare's Lies. — The "Mad- 
 cap " son who caused so much anxiet}^ to Henry 
 lY. during his declining years, and who was about 
 twelve years of age when Chaucer died, was not 
 sent to prison by Sir William Gascoigne, the judge, 
 for striking him while on the Bench, nor was 
 Gascoigne reappointed by the prince when he 
 became Henry Y. The story did not appear for a 
 hundred and fifty years after that time; and the 
 tradition is mainly kept afloat by Shakespeare's 
 *' Henry lY." (second part). Act Y., Scene H. 
 
 The City of London Arms. — The dagger in the 
 City of London Arms is generally supposed to 
 have been granted by Richard to Sir William 
 Walworth for his assistance in putting down the 
 Kentish iron-founders' rebellion. This is not true, 
 for " it had been there long before, and perhaps 
 referred to past services of the citizens in furnish- 
 ing arms; or, more likely, to St. Paul, the city's 
 patron saint, whose emblem it was." 
 
 Dick Whittington had no Cat. —In 1397, dur- 
 ing the reign of Henry lY., the famous Dick Whit- 
 tington was Lord Mayor of Loudon. But the old 
 legend which depicts him as going to London and 
 achieving his fortune by means of his cat is not 
 true. An Eastern lesfcnd of the same nature is the 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 133 
 
 origin of the whole tale. The phrase " Whitting- 
 ton and his cat " is supposed to be made from the 
 French word achat, used in the 14th century to des- 
 ignate buying or selling at a profit, and probably 
 pronounced in English " acat," and then simply 
 " cat." When its meaning had been almost forgot- 
 ten, some inventive genius found the disused word a 
 very convenient stock on which to graft the Eastern 
 story. 
 
 According to tradition, Whittington made his 
 *• cat" by trading in coals, which were first made an 
 article of trade from Newcastle to London in 1381. 
 
 Jack Cade was a Gentleman. — At the death 
 of Whittington the new king, Henry VI., was but 
 fifteen months old, and some twenty-seven years 
 later the well-organized gathering from Kent, Sur- 
 rey, and Sussex, known as the Jack Cade Rebellion, 
 assembled on Blackheath, and after retracing their 
 steps to Sevenoaks, where they routed the king's 
 forces, marched to London, which, by a vote of ad- 
 mittance from the Common Council, they occupied 
 for some days. 
 
 The " Captain of Kent," as the leader called 
 himself, was not a wanton Socialist and the illiter- 
 ate person and impostor that Shakespeare so com- 
 pletely caricatured in " Henry VI." (second part). 
 
 On the contrary, he was, in a political sense, a 
 humane reformer, with a well-defined program 
 based on a cause as just as that which secured 
 Magna Charta. Pie had served with distinction in 
 
134 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 the French wars, and owned land — both freehold 
 and leasehold — in Kent. His enterprise was ar- 
 ranged strictly under the regular local machinery 
 and was backed by many of tlie squires of Kent and 
 adjoining counties, as well as by some prominent 
 Churchmen — the great landowners. Abbot of Battle 
 and Prior of Lewes. 
 
 The ''Complaint of the Commons of Kent" ably 
 set forth the grievances of the people and their 
 demands, — economy of public money, exactions 
 under color of law, and freedom of election, — 
 and Cade enforced it with dignity, tact, and cour- 
 age ; but the Fates, with Shakespeare and school 
 histories, have combined to give him the libellous 
 character of an unruly impostor and a vulgarly 
 impudent rebel, who undertook to make himself 
 king and "to sell seven half -penny loaves for a 
 penny."" 
 
 Sebastian Cabot did not discover the Ameri- 
 can Continent. — Sebastian Cabot is sometimes 
 still mentioned as the discoverer of North America. 
 The Sebastian thesis was undermined years since, 
 and exploded a little later hj Mr. Weare, whose 
 account of the Cabot voyages is most complete. 
 Though in Henry VH/s Lettei's Patent Sebastian 
 is mentioned with his father, John Cabot, it is cer- 
 tain that he did not accompany him in the voyage 
 of 1497, that in which the continent was discov- 
 ered. It is equally certain that he was not a mem- 
 ber of the second expedition, from which John 
 
mistakp:s in English history. 135 
 
 Cabot never returned. " The undoubted discoverer 
 was the never-to-be-forgotten John Cabot. '^ 
 
 The Duke of Clarence was not drowned in 
 Wine. — Edward in 1477 impeaclied his brother, 
 the Duke of Clarence, who was thereupon con- 
 demned to die within tlie Traitor's Gate, and was 
 there secretly made away with. There is, how- 
 ever, absolutely no evidence to show that the duke 
 was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine, either in 
 the dark, windowless room pointed out in the 
 Bloody Tower or anywhere else. 
 
 The Traitor's Gate shown to visitors at the Tower 
 of London is not the original (which Phineas Barnum 
 told G. A. Sala he had purchased at a sale of con- 
 demned government stores, and which he intended 
 to erect at the entrance to his New York museum) , 
 but a "modernized sham." 
 
 What really happened to Jane Shore. —A 
 17th century ballad entitled, " The Woful Lamen- 
 tations of Jane Shore, a Goldsmith's Wife in 
 London, sometime King Edward IV. his Concu- 
 bine," says : 
 
 " I yielded up my vital strength 
 Within a ditch of loathsome scent, 
 Where carrion dogs did much frequent." 
 
 The tale that Jane Shore, worn out with agoniz- 
 ing poverty and hunger, and discarded by the king, 
 died miserably in a ditch is wholly erroneous. 
 
 Jane Shore survived Edward by thirty years, and 
 
136 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 died at a ripe old age in a religious house. Her 
 penance at St. Paul's, maliciously ordered by 
 Richard III., is alluded to by Michael Drayton. In 
 spite of this order, which extended to the robbing 
 of her house as well, poverty was averted by the 
 care of the Marquis of Dorset. In the reign of 
 Henry VIII. Sir Thomas More distinctly asserts 
 that she was then alive, and seems to imply that 
 he himself had seen her. 
 
 Jane did not give hep Name to Shorediteh. — 
 Shoreditch, as a matter of fact, took its name from 
 the old family of the Soerdiches, who were lords 
 of the manor in the time of Edward III. Stowe 
 mentions a house at Hackney called Shoreditch 
 Place, probably the old mansion of Sir John Soer- 
 diche, who was one of the brothers-in-arms with 
 the Bhick Prince. 
 
 Richard III. not a Humpback. — Richard III. 
 may have been a monster of iniquity, as Sir Thomas 
 More and other Tudor partisans describe him, yet 
 he was no worse than his brother, and certainly 
 he was less unscrupulous than his successor; but 
 to call him "ugly" and a "hunchback," because 
 Shakespeare does, is unjust. 
 
 Besides possessing great muscular strength, a 
 pleasant if not handsome face, and desperate 
 courage, he had the perfect figure of a soldier. 
 
 Bloody Queen Mary. — The evils with which 
 popular opinion has stained tiie character of Queen 
 Mary were really perpetrated through the instiga- 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 137 
 
 tions and under the direction of the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, Cardinal Pole, and the Spanish 
 Court then residing in England, after the marriage 
 between Maiy and Philip of Spain. He alone, if 
 anybody, should in strictness bear the dishonorable 
 distinction. 
 
 The full extent of the sanguinary persecutions of 
 her short reign was hardly known to her — for 
 during a great part of the time she was in a state 
 of deep depression and inactivity, owing to mental 
 and bodily ill-health. It has not been proved that 
 her disposition was cruel and harsh. 
 
 Edward VI. was not a Founder of Schools. — 
 Mr. Leache's learned "English Schools of the 
 Reformation " shows conclusively that Edward VI., 
 instead of being a great founder of schools, had 
 been their great spoiler, some three hundred being 
 suppressed under him and his father. " Never w^as 
 a great reputation so easily gained and less deserved 
 than that of King Edward VI. as a founder of 
 schools." 
 
 But it should be remembered that " Edward VI." 
 stands for his Council, not '• the poor, rickety, over- 
 educated boy, who was only sixteen when he died," 
 and who, with the very doubtful exception of 
 Christ's Hospital, had personally no lot in the 
 matter. 
 
 Edward's government must be considered as not 
 having founded a single school. At the death of 
 the Protector Somerset, the Duke of Northumber- 
 
138 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 land managed to induce the Council to reendow a 
 few of those schools that had been robbed ; but that 
 was all. 
 
 The Pilgrim Fathers. — The Pilgrim Fathers 
 of the days of James 1. did not emigrate straight 
 away from England to America, as many suppose. 
 The little band of Lincolnshire " Puritans" at first 
 fled to Leyden in Holland, and some years later 
 departed for Delft, where, after a farewell prayer- 
 meeting in the church, they embarked for New 
 England, or rather for the Hudson, calling for 
 friends at Southampton on their way. There is an 
 absurd idea that the Pilgrim Fathers of popular fame 
 differed widely in their views from the men of the 
 "Mayflower." Puritanism arose in the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth, and the sect split into two or more 
 branches, of which the Pilgrims, who were SejDarat- 
 ists, having openly withdrawn from the National 
 Church and practised the prerogative of self-rule, 
 formed, one, founding the Brownist or Congrega- 
 tional Church, but the Puritans were strict Church of 
 England men, and so were the Massachusetts 
 colonists. Thus Francis Higginson, who came to 
 Salem in 1629, remarked, "We do not go to New 
 England as Separatists from the Church of Eng- 
 land, though we cannot but separate from the cor- 
 ruptions in it; but we go to practise the positive part 
 of church reformation ;" and Winthrop's company 
 spoke of the Church of England as their "dear 
 Mother." You will see " Pilgrim Fathers " defined 
 
MISTAKES IX ENGLISH HISTORY. 139 
 
 as the name given to one hundred and two Puritans 
 who sailed in the "Mayflower" from Plymouth. 
 Pilo-rim and Puritan are not the same ; the Pilcrrini 
 Fathers did not start from Plymouth. It may be 
 of some interest to mention that in the vestibule of 
 the House of Lords is a fine painting, by Cope, of 
 the sailing of the " Mayflower." It was formerly 
 inscribed, "Departure of a Puritan Family for New 
 England." Lords Macaulay and Stanhope gave a 
 hearing to the artist and others interested ; and 
 seeino; their habitual error in confoundins: Puritan 
 with Separatist, they, as Commissioners on Decora- 
 tions, changed " A Puritan Family" to "Pilgrim 
 Fathers." 
 
 The Puritans were not so Strict. — The idea 
 prevalent is that Cromwellian Puritanism signifies 
 the bigotry of " gloomy fanatics." That it was an- 
 other name for dulness consequent upon the assump- 
 tion of a too elevated standard of moral conduct is 
 proved by the enthusiasm with which Charles 11. 
 was welcomed back to the throne. But to suppose 
 that the Puritans were harsh and sour and tried to 
 crush out all forms of pleasure and amusement is a 
 great mistake. 
 
 Cromwell was fond of out-door games and sport, 
 and liked horses, although it is not true that he ever 
 kept race-horses. 
 
 We find that the benchers of the Middle Temple 
 gave a great dance in their hall in 1651, and the 
 additional fact that the exercise was inaugurated by 
 
140 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 singing a psalm eloquently declares the ideal of 
 Puritanism to be not in the present debased mean- 
 ing of the word " Puritanical," but rather of God- 
 fearing restraint. 
 
 Moreover, magnificent State dinners Avere accom- 
 panied by music, which was an innovation at that 
 time, and Sabbatarians will be horrified when they 
 discover that Cromwell opened his last Parliament 
 on Sunday with a magnificent ceremonial. " The 
 better the day the better the deed " was obviously 
 Cromwell's maxim. 
 
 Cromwell and Hampden did not attempt to sail 
 to America just before the outbreak of the English 
 revolution. A number of their friends did, but they 
 had no thought of going. 
 
 The Execution of Charles I. — The conven- 
 tional conception of the historic scene at Whitehall 
 (Jan. 30, 1649) when Charles I. was executed 
 shows him kneeling down and laying his head 
 upon a block several feet high. Such is the one 
 preserved at the Tower as the original block on 
 which Lord Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino 
 were executed, the one in 1746, the other in 
 1747. 
 
 This is a mistake. There was no such block, 
 and Charles did not kneel. He simply lay flat at 
 full length on the scaffold, and his head was cut 
 ofi" as it lay over a little piece of wood not more 
 than two or three inches high. Among so many 
 who suffered in this way was Lady Jane Grey 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 141 
 
 (1554), and therefore not on the Tower block, as 
 is often supposed. 
 
 There is ample jDroof that the method of behead- 
 ing in Tudor and Cromwellian times necessitated 
 the victim lying prone on the scaffold. John 
 Button's "Descriptive Sketches of Tunbridge 
 Wells " declares that Judge Jeffreys presided over 
 the trial of King Charles I. 
 
 The Tpee Charles did not hide in. —The dance 
 in which the Puritans took part celebrated the 
 scattering of Charles II. ''s army at Worcester 
 (1651), and hundreds of pious tourists eveiy year 
 visit Boscobel Oak, which is reputed to possess the 
 distinction of having concealed Charles for a whole 
 day after the battle, while he watched through its 
 leafy screen Oliver's soldiers searching for him. 
 Scientific evidence shows that the tree, being only 
 eleven feet ten inches in girth, could not have been 
 the pollard oak of nearly two and a half centuries 
 ago. 
 
 In 1817 an inscription, afterwards removed, 
 expressly intimated " the present tree " to have 
 sprung from the royal oak. It has been ascertained 
 that the original tree, whether deserving of the 
 celebrity attaching to it or not, disappeared soon 
 after 1787, the oak long before that date having 
 been almost cut away by relic hunters who came 
 to see it. 
 
 Boys and others gather oak leaves on the 29th of 
 May to commemorate the king's mode of conceal- 
 
142 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 ment. But the king hid himself early in Septem- 
 ber. Had he climbed an oak-tree in May, the 
 foliage would not have been sufficiently developed 
 to conceal him. What is really celebrated, and, 
 perhaps, combined with the former event, is his 
 restoration in 16G0, when his route through Lon- 
 don was strewn with oak branches. 
 
 Nelson did not disobey Parkep. — Only about 
 eleven months before Dr. Jenner's fame had 
 reached its zenith. Lord Nelson returned to Eng- 
 land after his ' ' glorious disobedience " at Copen- 
 hagen (1801). We all know the story — so often 
 repeated to characterize Nelson's reckless and 
 determined bravery — of Nelson putting his tele- 
 scope to his sightless eye and declaring that he did 
 not see Sir Hyde Parker's signal to discontinue 
 fighting. But Prof. Knox Laughton explains 
 away this story and substitutes phenomenal cool- 
 ness for reckless disobedience. He says : " It is 
 very well established that Parker sent his flag- 
 captain, Otway, with a verbal message that the 
 signal was to be understood as permissive, and 
 was made in that way so that the whole responsi- 
 bility might rest with Parker, if Nelson judged it 
 advisable to discontinue the action. If he thought 
 it advisable to continue it he was at liberty to do 
 so. He judged it right to continue; and the little 
 pantomime was only a joke, at the expense of 
 Colonel Stewart standing by, who had no knowl- 
 edge of the message Otway had brought." 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 143 
 
 The Massacre of Gleneoe not by Englishmen. 
 
 — The Ilig-hlanders joyfully believed that the res- 
 toration had permanently secured the ancient name 
 of Stewart, but the Massacre of Gleneoe in 1692 
 dashed their hopes. Thousands believe that the 
 Macdonalds were massacred by a party of English 
 soldiers, in consequence of an order signed by 
 William III. The truth is that neither the insti- 
 gators nor the assassins were Englishmen ; they 
 were all inhabitants of Scotland, and neighbors — 
 and some were relatives — of the murdered men. 
 
 " The king signed this warrant under the impres- 
 sion that the Macdonalds of Gleneoe were the main 
 obstacles to the pacification of the Highlands, the 
 fact that Macdonald had submitted being carefully 
 kept from his knowledge. The iniquitous act was 
 done at the instigation of the Earl of Braedalbane, 
 whose lands had been plundered during the late hos- 
 tilities by the men of Gleneoe, and who thirsted for 
 vengeance on that account, and also because his 
 treachery to William had been exposed by Macdon- 
 ald himself, who showed that he had been secretly 
 negotiating with the other clans. The execution of 
 the warrant of extermination was therefore urged 
 on by the Secretary of State (the friend of Braedal- 
 bane) with the utmost rigor." The full facts can 
 be read by any one in " Notes to the Highland 
 Widow," by Sir W. Scott. 
 
 Her Majesty is not a Guelph. — Queen Victoria 
 and the other members of the Houses of Brunswick- 
 
144 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Llineberg and Hanover are descended from Azon, 
 Margrave of Este. Her name and that of the Duke 
 of Cumberland who claimed the throne of Hanover 
 is Azon, or Azon von Este. The Prince of Wales, 
 being the son of Albert of Saxe-Coburg, is neither 
 a Guelph nor an Azon ; he belongs to the Wettin 
 line, which was founded by the first Count of Wettin 
 in the twelfth century. The Queen's given names 
 are Alexandrina Victoria, and her partiality for the 
 second, and as it were inferior, name arises from the 
 fact that it was her mother's. The first name com- 
 memorates her godfather, the Emperor of Russia. 
 
 Tsar Nicholas is an Oldenburg. — The Em- 
 peror of Russia is known as a Romanof, but if 
 instead of tracing his descent through the feminine 
 line we trace his name to the father of his race, in 
 accordance with the generally accepted rule, it i« 
 found to be Oldenburg. For the same reason, it is 
 not correct to call the members of the English 
 Royal family Guelphs. 
 
 Mistaken Anniversaries. — In "Peveril of the 
 Peak" and several other books the 17th of Novem- 
 ber is siDoken of as the anniversary of the birth of 
 Queen Elizabeth. She was born on the 7th of Sep- 
 tember, 1533, and the 17th of November was the 
 anniversary of her accession in 1558, and conse- 
 quently was " the birthday of the Protestant re- 
 ligion." 
 
 In the same way the accession of Queen Victoria, 
 June 20, has been recently confounded with her 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 145 
 
 coronation, which took place on the 23d of Sep- 
 tember. 
 
 About the Armada. — For three centuries the 
 failure of the great Spanish Armada has been pop- 
 ularly believed to have been due to its dissipation 
 by a great storm. The legend struck off at the 
 time was, " Flavit Deus et dissipati sunty From a 
 religious point of view such a representation is 
 childish ; from the historical it is false. 
 
 The Spanish fleet had already met with a crush- 
 ing defeat in which the English had destroyed many 
 ships and men before it was overtaken by storms in 
 the Northern seas. That fleet was badly com- 
 manded, badly equipped. The best English sea- 
 men did not believe in the seaworthiness of the 
 Spanish vessels, which were overmasted and 
 leaking. 
 
 By August 4th five of the most important Spanish 
 ships had not a drop of water ; very little food was 
 on hand, and many of the men were ill. It is doubt- 
 ful whether 120 Spanish ships of all sizes came into 
 the channel, while the total number of Spanish 
 fighting men was not more than from 10,000 to 
 12,000, (Green's " History" says : " Spain had 149 
 ships and 28,000 men,") 
 
 On the other hand, England had 197 ships and 
 about 18,000 men, (Green says : " Only 80 ships and 
 9,000 men.'" ) The English sailors also were accus- 
 tomed to the great open seas, while the Spaniards 
 were mainly fair-weather seamen. Thus it will be 
 
146 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 seen that the defeat of the Armada, like the recent 
 defeat at Sant' lago and Manihi, was due, not to 
 storms, still less to Divine favoritism, but to the 
 simple fact that England had the better navy.^ 
 
 Why the Apmada was sent. — The reason for 
 sending this great expedition against England was 
 JMary Queen of Scots' transference of her interest 
 in the English succession to Philip, for this was 
 made after the Armada had been projected ; not the 
 pressing need of destroying Protestantism, nor 
 Elizabeth's refusal to marry Philip, — yet each of 
 these motives may be found advocated in various 
 text-books as explanatory of "Castile's black 
 fleet." 
 
 We must understand that the Anglo-Spanish 
 conflict began several years before the Armada 
 appeared, and also that its immediate cause was 
 not the dislike of the Inquisition, but the dread of 
 a hostile power establishing itself in the seaports 
 of the Netherlands, and the special fear by English 
 statesmen that France would join Spain in making 
 the attempt, in which case the history of British 
 progress might have been considerably delayed. 
 
 An English arni}^ was, therefore, sent there, and 
 miserably failed ; but the English fleet swept the 
 Spanish West Indies, — where " an exclusive com- 
 
 1 How closely the facts and figures agree wilh those given by 
 Mr. Hume — the acknowledged authority on the Elizabethan 
 period — may be seen in the "Nineteenth Century " for rieptember, 
 
 1897. 
 
MISTAKES IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 147 
 
 mercial policy, adopted and enforced by the Spanish 
 Government,'^ led Hawkins, Drake, and others into 
 smuggling and bloody reprisals, — and it was ,the 
 naval success of England in her illicit traffic with 
 the Spanish colonies that determined Philip on the 
 expedition of the Armada. 
 
 During the alarm of the Spanish invasion the 
 command of the land forces was intrusted to the 
 Earl of Leicester — the courtier who intrigued to 
 obtain the favor of his peers in proposing marriage 
 with the queen, and who, in the interests of which 
 l^roject, is supposed to have procured the murder of 
 his wife, Amy Robsart. 
 
 Rizzio's Bloodstains. — Six years after Amy's 
 murder the blood of Rizzio, the Italian Secretary 
 of Mary Stuart, was shed on the floor of Holy rood 
 by certain Protestant leaders, aided by the queen's 
 husband, Darnley, and in the imaginacion of the 
 public the stain has not yet disappeared. But what 
 is seen there is not Rizzio's blood. It may have 
 been at one time a daub of red paint ; perhaps pig's 
 blood — any suggestion will do. The stain — assum- 
 ing of course that it is over three hundred years 
 old — may be the blood of one of the conspirators^ 
 for "so eager and reckless were they in their 
 ferocity that in the struggle to get at him they 
 wounded one another y But then why are there not 
 many stains? All the guide-books speak of a 
 certain stain. Surely fifty-six stabs would have 
 been sufficient to deluge the place. By what in- 
 
148 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 herent virtue is this certain stain alone able to 
 remain ? Simply, we repeat, because it is painted 
 and renewed with a superstition, still prevalent, 
 that bloodstains cannot be washed out. 
 
 Queen Mary's Bed.— Of equal consequence 
 to the confiding sightseer, no less than to his guide's 
 frame of mind, are the well-attested disclosures that 
 *' Queen Mary's bed, also at Holyrood, is of the last 
 century, and her room at Hardwick is in a house 
 which was not erected till after her death," at 
 Fotheringay, in 1587. 
 
BLUNDERS IN GENERAL HISTORY. 149 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CURIOUS BLUNDERS IN GENERAL HISTORY. 
 
 Mediaeval Dipt.— The Right Hon. Dr. Lyon 
 Playfair, M.P. (pronounced Pluffer), stated in an 
 address delivered at Glasgow in October, 1874, 
 that " for a thousand years there was not a man or 
 woman in Europe that ever took a bath ! " And he 
 attributes to the extraordinary condition of things 
 the epidemics that ravaged the Middle Ages. Mi- 
 ch elet before him said the same thing. It is prob- 
 ably a gross libel on our ancestors. Viollet-le-Duc 
 states that in the twelfth century bath-rooms were 
 built in houses as now, only they were more com- 
 modious than ours. 
 
 Moguls and Romans. — Speaking of the Mogul 
 Empire, Freeman^ says: *' This dynasty is com- 
 monly known as Mogul, both in and out of India; 
 but Baber "" — who founded the so-called Mogul 
 Empire in 1525-26 — "was for all practical pur- 
 poses a Turk. His memoirs were written in Turk- 
 ish ; and he always speaks of the real Moguls with 
 dislike. The cause of the misnomer is that the 
 name Mogul is in India loosely applied to all 
 
 1 " Historj' of the Saracens," p. 292. 
 
150 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Strangers from the North, much in the same way 
 as that of Turk is throughout the East for all 
 strangers from the West. It is even applied to the 
 Persians with hardly more reason than the Persians 
 themselves have for calling the Ottoman Turks 
 Romans." 
 
 The Eastern Empire, being the legitimate suc- 
 cessor of the Holy Roman Empire, was known to 
 the Mediaeval Persians as Rum. When the Otto- 
 man Turks succeeded in capturing Constantinople 
 or Byzantium, the name Rum was still loosely 
 applied to all that region. So it is hardly true to 
 state that the Persians call the Turks Romans. 
 
 William Tell did not exist. — Until 1836 it 
 was believed that the story of Wilhelm Tell in all 
 its poetic details was an historic fact. But in that 
 year a German named Bopp subjected the legend 
 to a rigid examination and separated its historic 
 foundations from fable. The first attempt of the 
 Swiss to throw off the yoke of the Habsburgs was 
 in 1231, when the canton of LM was freed from 
 Count Rudolf. Schwyz followed in 1240, and 
 some years later Unterwalden obtained the same 
 boon. In 1291, the year of the death of the Em- 
 peror Rudolf I., Niedwalden and Oberwalden 
 joined forces. On August 1 the three first can- 
 tons made a defensive alliance. Open war broke 
 out shortly after between the Swiss and Austria, 
 and lasted till 1293, when Albrecht, Rudolf s son, 
 made peace. This lasted with various interrup- 
 
BLUNDERS IN GENERAL HISTORY. 151 
 
 tions till into the fifteenth century. The battle of 
 Morgarten on the 16th of November, 1315, when 
 an insignificant horde of shepherds and peasants 
 won a brilliant victory over the best-trained troops 
 and ablest generals of Austria, was the foundation- 
 stone of the famous Bund der Eidgenossen. In 
 the oldest chronicle, that of the monk Johannes 
 Yon Winterthiir (1340-1347), which describes the 
 battle of Morgarten, nothing is said of Tell, 
 Staufacher, Melchtal, Fiirst, or of Gessler and 
 Landenberg. Nor in any other account of these 
 circumstances is there any hint of the legend until 
 1470, when the so-called " White Book'' was pub- 
 lished. In this the story is told in simple form, 
 and the scene of the Riitlibund is laid in Unter- 
 walden. Melchior Russ, of Lucerne, in his chronicle 
 of 1482, makes Tell the leader, but lays the scene 
 in Uri. But there are no conspirators and no Riit- 
 libund. Elterlin, in the sixteenth century, and 
 Stumpf, in 1548, call the Landvogt Grissler ; and 
 Stumpf dates the conspiracy 1313, after the death 
 of the Emperor Heinrich. The famous Swiss 
 chronicler Tschudi, of Glarus, who died in 1572, 
 gave its present form to the story ; but certain 
 details — that Tell was from Burglen, that he was 
 Walter Fiirst's son-in-law, and that he had two 
 sons, Walter and Wilhelm, that Gessler's name 
 was Hermann, or that the conspiracy was called 
 Riitli — were left for Johannes Miiller, at the 
 end of the last century, to add ; and Miiller ob- 
 
152 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 tained them from the pious priests who invented 
 them. 
 
 Tell, then, is a myth made up of folk legends 
 common to many peoples and lands. The story is 
 told, in a ballad, about the archer William of 
 Cloudesley, and in legendary history as occurring 
 even in English territory: "The canton of 
 Schwyz, in August, 1890, ordered the story of Tell 
 to be expunged (as being non-historical and leg- 
 endary onl}') from the school-books of the can- 
 ton." The London " Echo '' for May 23d is authority 
 for the statement that in Scotland TelPs name was 
 Leod ; in Scandinavia, Palmatoke ; in Denmark, 
 Tako. Also in Persia the Tell myth was popular. 
 There was a Landvogt named Gessler in 1386 at 
 Thurgam, and a knight Ulrich Gessler in 1369 at 
 Meyenberg. 
 
 The Stopy of Arnold von Winkelried is a 
 Legend. — Poetry has enjoyed great license with 
 the story of the heroic Winkelried. In the oldest 
 chronicle of the battle of Sempadi, written by Jus- 
 tinger, the city scribe of Bern, not a word is said of 
 Winkelried, or of the Wall of Lances. In one of 
 the Ziirich chronicles it says : "After the Confed- 
 erates had suffered great losses, God helped them to 
 the victory. This was due to a true man among 
 the Confederates. When he saw that things Avere 
 going so ill with his comrades, and that the gentle- 
 men were everywhere piercing the foremost in the 
 ranks with their lances and pikes before the Swiss 
 
BLUNDERS IN GENERAL HISTORY. 153 
 
 could reach them with their halberds, this hon- 
 orable, pious man pushed forward and seized as 
 many pikes as he could grasp and bore them down 
 so that the Confederates could now j^ush forward. 
 And with joy he shouted : "All in the rear are in 
 flight!" " So fliehen Alle da hinlenV 
 
 The name of the hero is not given nor is his death 
 mentioned. His rejoicing in the flight of the enemy 
 would seem to disprove that he was killed. But 
 the whole story is an addendum inserted ten years 
 after the chronicle was composed and eighty years 
 after the battle. Melchior Russ, who wrote in 1486, 
 a hundred years after the battle, knew nothing of 
 the circumstance. Winkelried's name was not 
 heard of before the sixteenth century, and the 
 same Tschudi who did so much to formulate the 
 Tell myth was the inventor of the name of this 
 hero — a name, however, well known in Switzer- 
 land in other connections. 
 
 Who invented the Art of Printing? — Many 
 persons suppose that Gutenberg knew only the art 
 of printing from wooden types, and that Peter 
 Schoff'er was the first to make steel matrixes, and 
 thus deserves the credit of being its inventor. 
 Gutenberg was a metal worker and goldsmith ; and 
 he it was Avho invented the art of printing from 
 metallic types in 1450. The credit was stolen from 
 him by his unscrupulous assistant, Johann Fust or 
 Faust, and was afterwards by some attributed to his 
 son-in-law, Peter Schofter. 
 
154 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 The Ppinting-ppess. — The death of Henry YI. 
 and the ascendency of the House of York (Edward 
 IV., 1461) bring us, within a few years, to the 
 most serviceable agency in the evokition of social 
 England — the introduction of the iDrinting press. 
 Faulty text-books have it that the earliest book 
 printed in England was "The Game and Playe of 
 the Chesse,'' and that this book was i3rinted in 
 Westminster "Abbey" in 1474. 
 
 It was translated from the French in that year, 
 and, although published the following year in Eng- 
 land, was 2)ri?ited in Bruges. Moreover, Caxton did 
 not set up his printing-plant until 1476, and it was 
 near, not inside, but outside, the church ; Green says 
 "in the almonry, a little enclosure containing 
 the almshouses, near the west front." The first 
 book actually printed in England was Caxton's 
 " Dictes or Sayinges of the Philosophers," which 
 was completed in November of the year 1477. 
 
 Columbus' Egg a Myth. — Benzoni, in his 
 " History of the JS'ew World" (1565), is said to have 
 been the first to tell the story of Columbus stand- 
 ing the egg on end. It is quoted with approval by 
 Washington Irving, and Mr. Clements R. Markham, 
 in his " Columbus" (1897), says : " Although it was 
 first told fifty years after the admiral's death, it 
 may quite possibly- be founded on fact." It is now 
 known to have been Brunelleschi, the architect, and 
 not Columbus, who stood an egg on end, and he 
 did it in the simple way of the story, so as to silence 
 
BLUNDERS IN GENERAL HISTORY. 155 
 
 critics, who asked him how he was going to 
 support the dome of Sante Maria del Fiori, the 
 cathedral of Florence. 
 
 Columbus was not Columbus. —There is also 
 some misunderstanding associated with the name 
 of the Great Discoverer. Columbus was not his 
 paternal name any more than it was '* Plantagenet." 
 
 It was only a borrowed title — a sea term that 
 covered up some early mystery of his birth. It 
 was a name acquired from two pirates, or corsairs, 
 father and son, known by the merchants whom they 
 chased as the Columbi, from their flag, which 
 depicted a dove, Colombo. 
 
 The great Columbus sailed under their flag, 
 claimed them as his relatives, and fought and jjlun- 
 dered with them on the high seas. So great was 
 the terror inspired by the merciless sea-rovers that 
 the very name alone was a guarantee of non-resist- 
 ance. How unlikely, then, the use of a less famous 
 one, or that the world would use that one regarding 
 which Columbus himself has always preserved 
 silence ! 
 
 Washington Irving and the Monks of New- 
 stead.— In 1780 the lake near Xewstead Abbey 
 was drained and deepened, and the workmen found 
 a large brass bookstand which had once belonged 
 to the monks. It was shajDed like an eagle, and had 
 been thrown in the lake at the dissolution of the 
 monastery in 1536. The globe on which the eagle 
 stood was found to be full of documents, and Wash- 
 
156 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 ington Irving in his book on Newstead states that 
 the parchments threw an awkward light on the 
 monks. Bja-on sneers also at the bold immorality 
 of the " holy men" who once lived there. But later 
 examination proves that the docmnent was only a 
 general pardon forced on religious houses by Henry 
 v., and had nothing to do with the morals of 
 Newstead. 
 
 The Bopgias. — There is very good reason to 
 believe that Alexander VI. was a worthy pope and 
 a great king, that Cesare Borgia was the defender 
 of the liberty of his people, and that Lucrezia Borgia, 
 far from being the modern Messalina, was a pure 
 and lovable woman; that the stories about the 
 crimes of the Borgias are inventions and calumnies. 
 
 Max Piccolomini no Myth. — In Schiller's 
 splendid trilogy " Wallenstein " Max Piccolomini is 
 represented as the son of the field marshal Ottavio 
 Piccolomini and in love with Thekla, the daughter 
 of Wallenstein. But it has been shown that Ottavio 
 Piccolomini was married only five years previous to 
 his death, and Thekla Wallenstein was fourteen in 
 1634. It is true, however, that Ottavio Piccolomini 
 had in his household a nephew named Joseph Sylvio 
 whom he dearly loved, and who was killed in a 
 battle with the Swedes in March, 1645. 
 
 Don Carlos died a Natural Death.— The drama 
 and the muse of history have found rich material 
 for imagination in the story of Don Carlos, the 
 second son of King Philip II. of Spain. Many his- 
 
BLUXDERS IN GEXERAL HISTORY. 157 
 
 tories state that he was executed by command of his 
 father, and Schiller's famous tragedy turns on this 
 incident. It is now well proved by historical docu- 
 ments that as the infanta, who had expressed deep 
 hatred of his father, was on the point of fleeing from 
 Spain, he was arrested on the night of Jan. 18-19, 
 1568, and died unexpectedly, but by a natural death, 
 in prison at one o'clocli on the morning of July 23 of 
 the same year. The story soon spread that he had 
 been executed, and that Philip II. had also caused 
 his queen, Elizabeth of Valois, to be poisoned. She 
 died October 3. But the story that she had had illicit 
 relations with the young man was a gross libel. 
 
 The Age of Champagne. — It is generally sup- 
 posed that champagne is an entirely modern wine. 
 Brillot-Savarin states in his "Philology of Taste" 
 that it was first known in the fourteenth century. 
 There is an apocryphal story to the eff'ect that Charles 
 VI. of France gave a feast at Rheims in May, 1397, 
 to the Roman Emperor and King Wenceslaus of 
 Bohemia, who were so pleased with this new wine 
 that they and their followers could not drink enough 
 of it in a month of steady drinking. But bottles 
 were not generally used till the last century, and 
 "corkage" was an unknown factor. The first 
 cork was used by Perignon, cellarer to the Abbey of 
 Haute Villers in the eighteenth century. Champagne 
 is said to be first mentioned in print in 1718, coupled 
 with the statement that it had been known for 
 twenty years. 
 
158 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 The Stopy of the Iron Mask. — The history of 
 the mysterious man in tlie iron (or properly the 
 velvet) mask excited the curiosity of Europe for 
 nearly two hundred years. It was rumored that 
 he was a natural son of Louis XIV., who having 
 been incarcerated in 1660, a month after the death 
 of Mazarin, was kept at the Bastille until his death 
 in 1703, when, according to Voltaire, he was secretly 
 buried in the graveyard of St. Paul's Church. 
 After his death every document relating to him was 
 supposed to have been burnt; the walls white- 
 washed and the floors torn up, that no trace of his 
 existence might remain. During the eighteenth 
 century no less than eight persons were identified 
 with this prisoner ; among them the Due de Beau- 
 fort whom Dumas pictures in prison in " Vingt Ans 
 Apres," but who really died at the Turkish assault 
 in Candia, June 26, 1669 ; Henry Cromwell, second 
 son of the Protector; the Duke of Monmouth, 
 natural son of King Charles II. ; an Armenian 
 patriarch ; Ercole Matioli, minister to the Duke of 
 Mantua, who was said to have sworn to betray to 
 Louis XIV. the castle of Casale, but proved recreant 
 to his word. 
 
 Benche tried to make out that the story was a 
 legend, but in 1873 a book was published in Paris 
 giving substantial reasons for believing that the 
 man in the iron mask was Harmoises, a noble of 
 Lorraine, who put himself at the head of a con- 
 spiracy against Louis XIV. He was arrested March 
 
BLUNDERS IN GENERAL HISTORY. 159 
 
 19, 1673, and confined in various prisons, dying 
 finally at the Bastille. 
 
 Louis Philippe no Changeling. — Dr. Hugh 
 Macmillan, in his " Gate Beautiful," asserts that 
 " Louis Philippe had all the low tastes and cowardly 
 feelings of the ignoble race to which he is said to 
 have belonged, though seated on the throne of 
 France ; whereas the real child of the French king, 
 who was supposed to have been exchanged for him 
 when he was born because she was a girl, exhibited 
 all the pride and dauntless courage of the Bourbons 
 in her humble condition." The girl who claimed 
 to be daughter of the Due d'Orleans (figalite) was 
 Maria Stella Petronilla, putative daughter of an 
 Italian, Crappini. She was married first to the earl 
 of New borough and secondly to Baron Sternberg, 
 and the tribunal of Faenza recognized her claims. 
 But the story was wholly a fabrication. Louis 
 Philippe's father was also said to be the bastard son 
 of Louis, Comte de Melfort. 
 
 Charlotte d'Eon de Beaumont was a Man. — 
 The story once widely believed that the Chevalier 
 d'Eon was a woman is a complete fable. The man 
 who bore the feminine names of Charlotte, Gene- 
 vieve, Louise, Auguste, was born at Tonnerre in Bur- 
 gundy, and served in the Seven Years' War as Cap- 
 tain of Dragoons and Aide to Marshal Broglio ; 
 afterwards as secretary of Legation in London. 
 He certainly in later life wore the dress of a woman 
 — it is said by command of Louis XVI., who desired 
 
160 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 him thus to hide certain indiscretions. After the 
 outbreak of the Revolution, 1791, he petitioned the 
 National Assembly from England to be allowed to 
 resume his rank in the army. But his petition was 
 disregarded ; his pension was taken from him and he 
 was obliged to sell his library. As late as 1809 it 
 was still believed by men in authority that he was 
 a woman, and not till after his death, May 10, 1810, 
 was the contrary definitely established. 
 
 Moscow was not set on fire by the Russians. 
 — Moscow was not destroyed by the Russians ; its 
 destruction was due to the negligence of the French 
 soldiers when smoking, and to their rough cooking 
 arrangements. In a town built chiefly of wood, 
 where fires were of every-day occurrence in spite 
 of the vigilance of police and landlords, the catas- 
 trophe was inevitable when those care-takers fled 
 and when the French had, of course, not thought of 
 organizing precautions. 
 
 A legend that has been accepted as truth for 
 eighty years cannot, however, be overthrown by 
 mere deductions, so Count Tolstoi produces proof 
 in the shape of letters written b}^ the very men who 
 are said to have been tlie patriotic authors of the 
 fire. Among these alleged incendiaries stands 
 preeminently Count Rostopchin. He wrote to 
 the Emperor Alexander to inform him that on 
 the 2d of December fires had broken out in the 
 ware-houses and corn-stores all along the wall of 
 the Kremlin, and he was then in doubt whether 
 
BLUNDERS IN GENERAL HISTORY. 161 
 
 they were the work of the invaders or of their 
 owners. 
 
 A few days later he again wrote to Alexander 
 accusing Napoleon of the act, and concluding with 
 the remark that if he had known two or three days 
 previously what was about to happen, he himself 
 would have set fire to tiie city, in order to have de- 
 prived Napoleon " of the glory of saying that he 
 took Moscow and sacked and burnt it." 
 
 Coronation Mugs. — The historic coronation 
 mugs that were distributed to the crowds in May, 
 1897, at Moscow were not of Russian manufacture, 
 but came from Vienna. The curious craze of the 
 populace to obtain them resulted from a rumor that 
 those first given out would contain lottery tickets 
 and ruble notes. This, it will be remembered, re- 
 sulted in one of the most appalling disasters ever 
 known. 
 
 Guillotin did not invent the Guillotine. — The 
 decapitating machine employed in France was 
 named after Dr. J. I. Guillotin, who has the 
 reputation of being its inventor; but a somewhat 
 similar machine was used long before he had seen 
 one. 
 
 The rude instrument used in Halifax between 
 1541 and 1650 (m^^e " Tales of a Grandfather") 
 was the " maiden." A similar decapitating machine 
 was in France called ** Za demoiselle;'''' in Italy it 
 was known as the *' mannaia.'''' But unlike the 
 guillotine they were without any contrivances for 
 
162 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 binding their victims, and they chopped off heads, 
 while the French invention has a sharp sliding 
 knife that slices. All that Dr. Guillotin himself 
 did was, in 1759, loublicly to encourage a jDrefer- 
 ence for this means of death as being jDainless. 
 
 Dr. Guillotin on Jan. 21, 1790 (three years to a 
 day before the execution of Louis XVI.), proposed 
 that all executions should take place by decapita- 
 tion and by a simple mechanism. The motion was 
 referred to a committee of seven, and became a 
 law in October, 1791. C. H. Sanson and Dr. 
 Guillotin tried to devise a machine that should 
 meet all requirements. They examined various 
 German engravings of instruments; also Achille 
 Bocchi's engraving of the mannaia, used as early as 
 the thirteenth century, and the Scotch maiden, which 
 is similar to an instrument used in Persia, and 
 one used in 1632 in Toulouse. A German harpsi- 
 chord-maker named Schmidt happened to come to 
 Sanson's to play duets with him, and heard Sanson 
 mention the matter. He exclaimed in broken 
 French: " Wait, I think I have what you want!'' 
 and with a pencil made a drawing. It was the 
 guillotine with a crescent knife raised between 
 the posts and released by a cord. Louis XVI. 
 suggested substituting a straight-edge set slantingly, 
 forming an acute angle. Experiments were made 
 on three dead bodies, and a man named Guidon 
 erected the first guillotine at a cost of 5,500 francs, 
 and on April 25, 1792, a highwayman named Pelle- 
 
BLUNDERS IN GENERAL HISTORY. 163 
 
 tier was executed by it. It was at first called 
 louison or louisette ; but the name guillotine won 
 the day. 
 
 Guillotin was not its first victim. He nearly 
 became a victim of the Revolution, but escaped, 
 and after the close of his political career resumed 
 his duties as a physician, became one of the foun- 
 ders of the Academy of Medicine in Paris, and 
 died May 26, 1814, aged seventy-six., 
 
 A New Bpougham sweeps Clean. — Lord 
 Brougham did not invent the carriage that bears 
 his name. It was used in Paris long before his 
 day, but in 1837 he brought one to England from 
 France and had a coach-maker build one like it, 
 only lighter, stronger, and more elegant. It became 
 popular and was called a brougham. 
 
 Jefferson more Democratic than is gen- 
 erally supposed. — It is generally stated in 
 sketches of Thomas Jefferson's life that he showed 
 his democratic spirit by tying his horse in front of 
 the Capitol and by simply walking in to be in- 
 augurated. Contemporary newspaper accounts 
 state that he was at that time boarding near the 
 Capitol, and that he walked over to take his part 
 in the ceremony 
 
164 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 BLUNDERS MADE BY FAMOUS AUTHORS AND 
 OTHERS. 
 
 Some of Shakespeare's Slips. 
 
 " Then our ship has touched the deserts of Bohemia," 
 
 says Shakespeare in "The Winter's Tale." The 
 ship bearing the infant Perdita is thus pictured as 
 beino; driven on the coasts of Bohemia, but Bohemia 
 has no seaboard at all. 
 The couplet, 
 
 " Peace, count the clock — 
 The clock has stricken three," 
 
 is found in the dialogue between Brutus and Cas- 
 sius in Shakespeare's " Julius Caesar." Yet clocks 
 were not known to the Romans, though sun-dials 
 were; and striking clocks were not invented till 
 some hundreds of years after Caesar's death. 
 
 Bacon, in his essay on "Vain Glory," says: "It 
 was prettily devised of ^sop, the fly sat up on the 
 axletree of the chariot-wheel and said, ' What a 
 dust do I raise.'" A writer in ** Notes and Queries" 
 points out that the fable is by Laurentius Ab- 
 stemius. 
 
BLUNDERS BY FAMOUS AUTHORS. 165 
 
 London's Highest Ground. — A curious sign, 
 the Boy and Pannier, in Panyer Alley, Newgate 
 street, reads : 
 
 " When you have sought the city round, 
 Yet still this is the highest ground." 
 
 But the old rhyme is not true. The highest ground 
 in the city is in Cannon street, where it reaches 
 sixty feet, and not in Newgate Street, where it is 
 only fifty-eight feet. 
 
 The Real Story of Robinson Crusoe. — Headers 
 have formed an idea that because Robinson Crusoe 
 became an unwilling dweller on his island through 
 shipwreck, therefore Selkirk, the Scottish sailor on 
 whose marvellous adventures Defoe founded his 
 fascinating story, must have landed there through 
 like circumstances. The exact contrary is true. 
 Selkirk had been roving about the Southern seas 
 as sailing-master of one of the ships that set out 
 on a privateering expedition under the famous navi- 
 gator Dampier, and being dissatisfied with his ship 
 desired to be put ashore. A few others joined him, 
 and they remained on the island of Juan Fernandez 
 for several months until their vessel returned for 
 them. But Selkirk's lifelong aversion to discipline 
 again manifested itself, and the next time his ship 
 touched at Juan Fernandez he was put ashore by 
 his own request, in 1704. All things that could be 
 spared to make him comfortable were freely given 
 — food, tools, clothes, weapons, and ammunition. 
 
166 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 After the expiration of four years four months, he 
 was taken off by another jDrivateer, the "Duke and 
 Duchess." His sea-chest, .cup, gun, etc. (which 
 Crusoe saved from the wreck), created some sensa- 
 tion when they were exhibited in London on his 
 return, in October, 1711. They are now in the 
 Society of Antiquaries' Museum, Edinburgh. 
 Robinson Crusoe, on the other hand, must have 
 landed on some island east of Panama, and tliere 
 is good reason to believe that it was the Island of 
 Tobago. But Defoe blunders in locating Juan 
 Fernandez Island on the eastern side of South 
 America. 
 
 Defoe makes Anothep Mistake. — Defoe, in 
 his " History of the Plague," says he was an eye- 
 witness of the experiences he relates. Seeing that 
 the Great Plague of London did not break out till 
 1G65, and that he was born in 1661, this cannot be 
 true. Of course Defoe wrote it as a fiction. 
 
 The Story of Baron Munchausen. — The Ger- 
 man soldier. Baron Munchausen, was not the author 
 of the book of travels named after him. The 
 absurdly exaggerated fictions in this book were 
 written by an expatriated countryman of his named 
 R. E. Raspe, who published them in England in 
 1785. Raspe made the Baron the putative author, 
 having become acquainted with the false stories 
 which this officer related, and for which he became 
 notorious after returning from his adventurous 
 campaigns in the Russian service. 
 
BLUNDERS BY FAMOUS AUTHORS. 167 
 
 The Wpong" Bones. —Sir Walter Scott, in the 
 *' Fortunes of Nigel," causes David Ramsay to swear 
 "by the bones of the immortal Napier/' Napier's 
 bones or " rod" were an apparatus for calculating 
 with ; the invention was attributed to John Napier 
 (1550-1617), but in reality known much earlier. 
 They are still said to be made. It is possible that 
 Ramsay's oath was Sir Walter's wit. 
 
 A Mistake in " Ivanhoe." — It is said that 
 the Anglo-" Saxon " called the flesh of the brute 
 he had only to tend "cow," and that his Norman 
 master called it, when prejjared for his festive 
 board, "beef." The insinuation here is obvious; 
 but it is met by the fact that the Norman nobles 
 called the same flesh when alive " beef," but that 
 "the Saxon slave" — as he is called in Scott's 
 " Ivanhoe," and from whence started the erroneous 
 idea that all flesh was carried to the castle-hall 
 — always called it, even when roasted, "cow." 
 " Swine is called f)ork when carried to the castle- 
 hall to feast among the nobles." But so it was by 
 the nobles when alive. Many infer from this that 
 the swineherd rarely tasted pig, whereas it was his 
 principal food. 
 
 Seott makes Another Mistake. — What pur- 
 ports to be the true scene of the murder of Amy is 
 one of the chief jDoints of interest at Kenilworth 
 Castle : the ruins of Mervyn's Tower. Here Amy 
 was lured to death by Varney, at the instigation of 
 the earl. But in connecting the unfortunate Amy 
 
168 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 with that splendid ruin, Sir Walter Scott has given 
 it an importance which is mere fiction. It is even 
 very doubtful whether Amy ever saw the place ; 
 at any rate, Kenihvorth was not given to Leicester 
 until three years after her death (1560). 
 
 A Gladstonian Eppop. — Gladstone, in "Glean- 
 ings of Past Years," Vol. 1, p. 26, causes Daniel to 
 walk unscathed through the furnace seven times 
 heated. 
 
 A Bpowning Mistake. — Dr. Berdoe, in his 
 Browning Cyclopasdia, states that in Prince Hohen- 
 stiel-Schwangau we have the description of an 
 imaginary meeting of the exiled Emperor Napoleon 
 III. with a woman of the town. The poem really 
 relates a supposed dream of the emperor at the 
 Tiiileries in 1868. 
 
 Mistakes about Diek Tuppin. — The thief Dick 
 Turpin never rode to York on " Black Bess," and 
 did none of the things popularly associated with his 
 name. In their original form the imaginary ex- 
 ploits of this criminal were written, it has been said, 
 by William Maginn, who must have put them on 
 paper about seventy-five years after the events. But 
 whether this be so or not, Ainsvvorth's account of them 
 in " Rook wood " was written nearly one hundred 
 years after the criminal's execution ( 1739) , and must 
 necessarily be pure fiction, the newspapers of the 
 day being silent on all points but Turpin's contempt- 
 ible meanness. Even in ascertainable facts Ains- 
 worth is wrong. Turpin was not born at Thack- 
 
BLUNDERS BY FAMOUS AUTHORS. 169 
 
 stead, but at Hampstead ; the King who was shot 
 was not " Tom," but Matthew, and the affair took 
 place not at Kilburn, but in Whitechapel. 
 
 Cromwell had no Illegitimate Childpen.— 
 The Abbe Prevost, author of " Manon Lescaut," 
 while he was in London wrote a book which pur- 
 ported to be the *' Story of Mr. Cleveland, natural son 
 of Cromwell or the English philosopher." Part of it 
 was published in 1732, and the whole work in eight 
 volumes in 1739. An English translation came out 
 in 1734—5. There was no historical authority for 
 the birth of any natural children to Cromwell. 
 
 Milton in Eppop. 
 
 '< Till the dappled dawn doth rise, 
 And at my window bid good-morrow 
 Through the twisted eglantine." 
 
 Thus ends the forty-first line of Milton's " L'Alle- 
 gro." The eglantine does not "twist," but Milton 
 was mistaken in giving this name to the honey- 
 suckle. The eglantine is the prickly sweet-briar of 
 our gardens. 
 
 Pope misled Wapbupton. — Pope, in a note on 
 " Measure for Measure," states that the story was 
 taken from Cintheo's novel, Dec. 8, Nov. 5, meaning 
 decade 8, novela 5. Warburton in his edition of 
 Shakespeare filled out the contractions as December 
 8, November 5. 
 
 Thepe Nevep was a Hannah Glasse. — Any one 
 who has read Sala's " Journal" will not soon forget 
 that there is such a book as Mrs. Glasse's " Art of 
 
170 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Cookery made Plain and Easy" (1746). But not 
 all may know that " Hannah Glasse " is as much a 
 myth as was Sairey GamjD's ^ Mrs. Harris. The 
 real compiler, as Dilly, the publisher, told Johnson, 
 was Dr. John Hill. The choice of a woman's name 
 arose through business prudence on the publisher's 
 part. Nevertheless, the alleged Hannah has been 
 often treated as a real individual, as, for instance, 
 in an American publication wherein it is stated : ' 
 " Mrs. Glasse wrote other books on similar subjects." 
 
 The mention of Dr. Johnson calls to mind his 
 erstwhile pupil, David Gar rick, and those who 
 know anything of the great actor perhaps remem- 
 ber that it is Hill that figures in David's stinging 
 e^Digram : "His farces are physic — his f)hysic a 
 farce is ! " Another association is the ironical prov- 
 erb : " First catch your hare," which, though some- 
 times attributed to *' Mrs. Glasse," is not found in 
 "The Art of Cookery," but in all likelihood was 
 suggested by the words, " Take your hare when it 
 is cased," ^.e., skinned. '' 
 
 A Star that is not a Star.— 
 
 "Till clombe ^ above the eastern bar 
 The horned moon, with one bright star 
 Within the nether tip." 
 
 iln Dickens' " Martin Chuzzlewit," a fat old woman " with a 
 husky voice and a moist eye," engaged in the profession of nurs- 
 ing. She is always quoting her mythical friend Mrs. Harris, and 
 her affection for the bottle is proverbial. From a part of her 
 varied belongings a very stumpy umbrella is called a gamp. 
 
 2 Climbed, 
 
BLUNDERS BY FAMOUS AUTHORS. 171 
 
 The "star" mentioned in this quotation, from 
 the third part of Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," 
 is not a star, but a lofty lunar peak from which the 
 light of the sun is reflected, and which may be seen 
 sometimes on clear evenings, when the moon is in 
 the first quarter, in the shadowed disc at some dis- 
 tance from the bright crescent. 
 
 Byron's Blunder. — The last line of Byron's 
 " Marino Faliero " reads : 
 
 *' The gory lieacl rolls down the Giant's Steps." 
 
 The steps alluded to are in the courtyard of the 
 Ducal Palace, Venice, and are known as the Giant's 
 Staircase, because of the colossal statues of Mars 
 and Neptune on its summit; and by the "gory 
 head " is meant that of Marino Faliero, one of the 
 doges of Venice. Unfortunately this sovereign was 
 decapitated before this stairway had been built ; but 
 it is a fact that he was beheaded in the palace. 
 
 A Mistaken Pijppheey. — In view of the recent 
 " recrudescence" of interest in Lord Byron and his 
 works, George Borrow's cynical description of By- 
 ron's funeral, in Chapter xxxix. of " Lavengro," 
 is rather amusing. He says: "A time will come 
 when he will be out of fashion and forgotten." 
 Then, as if afraid to venture such a prediction, he 
 adds: "And yet I don't know; didn't he write 
 ' Childe Harold' and that ode? Yes, he wrote 
 ^ Childe Harold ' and that ode. Then a time will 
 scarcely come when he will be forgotten. Lords, 
 
172 THE MISTAKES AVE MAKE. 
 
 squires, and cockneys may pass away, but a time 
 will scarcely come when ' Childe Harold ' and that 
 ode will be forgotten." 
 
 The Wrong Sumner. — The Rev. H. E. Haweis, 
 in his book "My Hundred Thousand Miles of 
 Travel," states that he met Charles Sumner in 1893 
 at San Francisco, after his sermon at the Golden 
 Gate Hall ; that Sumner went to Washington in 1895, 
 and " defeated a pretty little Southern Pacific job ; " 
 that he was in England in 1883, and tried in vain to 
 get into St. James' Church, owing to the crush. 
 Charles Sumner died on March 17, 1874. Mr. 
 Haweis afterwards tried to convince the world that 
 he referred to Senator Charles A. Sumner of the 
 Pacific slope. This Charles Sumner was never a 
 senator. 
 
 Victor Hugo's Mathematical Blunder. — 
 Victor Hugo lays the scene of one of his novels in 
 England, but makes the drollest blunders in regard 
 to English life and customs. • Like almost all 
 Frenchmen, he misspells English proper names. 
 For instance, he transforms the Firth of Forth into 
 the First of the Fourth ! 
 
 Dumas creates an English Village. — Alex- 
 andre Dumas, in '* Twenty Years After," brings 
 the fallen King Charles to a village named 
 Ryston, which is not to be found in the kingdom ; 
 moreover he assigned to it a locality so near Lon- 
 don that, even if it did exist, the journey from 
 Derby thither could not possibly have been per- 
 
BLUNDERS BY FAMOUS AUTHORS. 173 
 
 formed in one day, at the period and under the 
 circumstances referred to in tlie narrative. His 
 whole account of the execution as well as of the 
 blowing up of the felucca is an extravagant fiction 
 which makes an element of undesigned comedy 
 in a tragedy. 
 
 Caplyle's Queep English. — At a sale that took 
 place in London in June, 1896, a pane of glass said 
 to have been inscribed by Carlyle brought £11 5s. 
 The lines, quoted in the " Athenaeum, " read: 
 
 ** Little did my mother think, 
 That night she cradled me, 
 What land I Avas to travel to, 
 Or what death I should die. 
 Oh, foolish thee ! " 
 
 The last line only was by Carlyle. But the whole 
 poem was wrongly copied. It reads : 
 
 " Little did my mother think, 
 The day she cradled me, 
 What land I was to travel in. 
 Or what death I should die. 
 Oh, foolish me ! " 
 
 The first four lines are from a well-known ballad. 
 
 Errors of Translation. — The similarity be- 
 tween many English and foreign words, even where 
 the meanings are different, often mislead translators 
 into odd mistakes. A translator of a Spanish book 
 caused a man wrestling with another to " smell his 
 opponent's powerful breath," instead of "perceiving 
 
174 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 his labored breathing." The German translator of 
 Anna Karenina, misled by the Slavonic epigraph 
 of the story, translates it to mean " Vengeance is 
 sweet, I play the ace," instead of " Vengeance is 
 mine, I will repay." The Slavonic for I is Az, 
 while the Russian is Ya. 
 
 African She-goats. — In a book on "The Illus- 
 trious Henris," published in 1858, the editor trans- 
 lates the Latin words Affra caj)ella as follows : 
 
 " A she-goat's skin receives his father's bones." 
 Mr. T. E. Bridget points out that Floto, in his his- 
 tory of Henry IV., states that the emperor's body 
 lay in a stone sarcophagus in the unconsecrated 
 chapel of St. Af ra at Spiers. So that Affra capella, 
 the words the Rev. F. C. Hingeston mistook for 
 African she-goat, really mean the Chapel of St. 
 Afra. 
 
 Hapmless as Doves. — In the New Testament 
 passage, "Be ye therefore wise as serpents and 
 Tiarmless as doves," the Greek word is incorrectly 
 translated, though the right meaning is indicated in 
 the margin as simple. It means unmixed, there- 
 fore guileless ; and not hornless, and therefore with- 
 out means of doing harm. Another odd misconcep- 
 tion is found in the authorized version of the Book 
 of Baruch, where it says : "Prepare ye manna and 
 offer upon the altar of the Lord our God." The 
 word manna there stands for mincha, an offering. 
 
 Goggle-eyed Saints. — Wyclif mistook the 
 Keltic expression goggle-eyed, which means with 
 
BLUNDERS BY FAMOUS AUTHORS. 175 
 
 full, rolling eyes, for the Latin codes (compare the 
 Greek Kuklojys, one-eyed), and translated Mark 
 IX., 47 : " It is good to thee for to entre gogil-yzed 
 into rewme of God, than havynge twey yzen for 
 to be sent into helle of tier." 
 
 Good Yeepes that are Bad. — Shakespeare 
 mistook the name of the gougeres, a filthy disease, 
 and called it the good yeeres. " The good yeeres 
 shall devour them flesh and fell." But in this he 
 had fellowship in many other writers of his cen- 
 tury and later. 
 
 A Glove fop a Shoe. — In the English render- 
 ing of Ruth IV., 7,8, it reads: "A man plucked 
 off" his shoe and gave it to his neighbor ; and this 
 was a testimony in Israel. Therefore the kinsman 
 said unto Boaz, ' Buy it for thee."' So he drew off 
 his shoe." The Hebrew nagal is said to mean 
 sandal only when it is followed by regil, the foot ; 
 but when it stands by itself it means glove. In 
 one of the German versions it is correctly trans- 
 lated hand-schuh, or glove. 
 
 Tulips and Tupbans. — Spenser, in his " Faerie 
 Queene," speaks of " old Cybele " as 
 
 " Wearing- a Diaderae embattild wide 
 With hundred turrets like a turribant." 
 
 But the word has nothing to do with turrets or tops, 
 nor has it anything to do with the Latin torquere, to 
 twist. It is said to come from the Persian du, two, 
 and Icii, a fold. The word tulip has the same 
 
176 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 origin : one of its former names was Dalmatian or 
 Turk's Cap. 
 
 The Street of the Golden Dragon. — The Street 
 of the Golden Dragon in Hong Kong is said by 
 Andrew Wilson to have derived its name from the 
 call of the Chinese girls, who, sitting at the win- 
 dows, would greet the sailors visiting them with the 
 cry "Come 'long, Jack." Hence it came to be 
 known as " Come 'Long'' Street, which the Chinese 
 glorified into Kum Lung, meaning Golden Dragon. 
 
 Deceptions about Dickens. — The "Old Curi- 
 osity Shop," in Portsmouth Street, Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields, was not " immortalized by Charles Dickens." 
 The novelist's son calls the building •' a complete 
 fraud." At Broadstairs, in Kent, the title of 
 *' Bleak House " has been apjDlied to a building once 
 known as Fort House on the cliff above the harbor, 
 and hence many, especiall}^ in those parts, believe 
 that "Bleak House" was written there. Much of 
 Dickens' work was done there. "Bleak House" 
 was written elsewhere. 
 
 The Mouse Tower. — Southey's poem of the 
 Mouse tower on the Rhine is founded on a miscon- 
 ception. It was originally the mautthurm or toll- 
 house, which became corrupted into Mauseturm, and 
 the legend was manufactured to suit. 
 
 Peeled, but not Skinned. — In the eighteenth 
 chapter of Isaiah, messengers are said to be sent 
 out to a nation scattered and peeled. A marginal 
 reading gives " outspread and polished." But the 
 
BLUNDERS BY FAMOUS AUTHORS. 177 
 
 word peeled does not signify stripped of skin or 
 pelt, but bald, — " pylled as one that wanteth heare," 
 — and hence robbed, as in the word pillage. 
 
 Gpoliep not a Binder. — It is a mistake to 
 suppose that Grolier, for whom the well-known 
 club is named, was a bookbinder; he was a book 
 collector. 
 
 Where Shelley was drowned. — 
 
 *' Drowned by the upsetting of his boat in the Gulf of 
 Spezia." 
 
 So reads the epitaph on Shelley's monument 
 erected at Christchurch, Hants, by his son, Sir 
 Percy, and Lady Shelle}^ ; and dictionaries and 
 encycloj^aedias also jDcrpetuate the error. The 
 boat really foundered in the roads of Viaregio. 
 The seaport of Viaregio is only fourteen miles 
 northwest of Pisa, while the Gulf of Spezia, 
 following the coast-line, is not far short of fifty 
 miles. 
 
 Queen Bess's Pocket-pistol. — 
 
 *' Load me well and keep me clean, 
 And I'll carry a ball to Calais Green," 
 
 is popularly supposed to be a translation of the 
 Flemish inscription on the cannon given Queen 
 Elizabeth by the Low Countries in recognition of 
 her efforts to protect them and their religion at 
 Dover. The "pocket pistol'' is now removed to a 
 less conspicuous part of the castle. 
 
178 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 The common idea is that the gun is able to sweep 
 the French port which lies in fi-ont of it. The 
 Calais in question could not refer to the French 
 town, but to a place called Calais Green, about one 
 and a half miles from Dover ; but according to the 
 " Daily Telegraph " of May 26, 1894, the refrain is, 
 however, " completely erroneous," as the words 
 really mean : 
 
 " Over hill and dale I can throw a ball ; 
 My name is Breaker of Mound and Wall." 
 
 An Untrustworthy Gravestone.— 
 
 Tho : Parr of y« county of Sallop Borne in A^: 1483. 
 He lived in y^ reignes of Ten Princes viz : K. Edw. 4 
 K. Ed. 5 K. Rich. 3 K. Hen. 7 K. Hen. 8 K. Edw. 6 
 Q. Ma. Eliz. K. Ja. and K. Charles Aged 152 years and 
 was Buried Here Novemb 15 1635. 
 
 The inscription is over the grave of Old Parr in 
 the south transept of Westminster "Abbey;" but 
 though the gravestone is in such a place, neverthe- 
 less it is absolutely untrustworthy. 
 
 Parr's pretensions, like those of another veteran 
 impostor, Henry Jenkins, aged 169, were ruth- 
 lessly exposed by the late Mr. W. T. Thorns (the 
 original editor of " Notes and Queries ") . Parr was 
 an exceptionally old man, yet certainly he lived 
 not more than a year or two over a century. 
 
 The fabulists say his son lived to the age of 113, 
 his grandson to 109, his great-grandson to 124, his 
 
BLUNDERS BY FAMOUS AUTHORS. 179 
 
 great-granddaughter, who died in Skiddy's Alms- 
 house, Cork, October, 1792, to 103. To these may 
 be added another grandson, John Newell, Esq , of 
 Michaelstown, Ireland, who died at the age of 102. 
 But the fact is that he left no children ; for his son 
 lived but ten weeks and his daughter only three 
 weeks ! 
 
 The King's Libpapy. — Above the south door 
 in the stately gallery in the British Museum known 
 as the King's Library there is an inscri23tion which 
 runs as follows : 
 
 This library, collected by George the Third, was 
 given by His Most Gracious Majesty George the Fourth, 
 in the third year of bis reign, a.d. mdcccxxiii. 
 
 This statement is misleading. When George the 
 Fourth was hard pressed for mone}^ he desired to 
 sell his father's collection, and at one time the books 
 were in danger of getting into the hands of a royal 
 purchaser abroad. The king was approached on 
 the subject, and a bargain was struck that he should 
 be secretly paid for the library, but that it should 
 be given out that he had presented it to the nation. 
 For his alleged generosity his Majesty was actually 
 thanked by the House of Commons in terms of the 
 *' strongest gratitude." 
 
 The "Daily Chronicle," March 21, 1895, says: 
 '•' A tradition of the British Museum asserts that a 
 l^ortion of the library was actually placed on board 
 a ship to be sent to Ftussia. In the centre of the 
 
180 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 king's library is displayed the letter of gift of the 
 collection from George the Fourth to Lord Liver- 
 pool. Such is certainly worth keeping as a curios- 
 ity ; still, an official statement as to the true facts of 
 the case ought to be appended." 
 
 The Iron Duke. — This sobriquet for the Duke 
 of Wellington came from an iron steamship plying 
 between Liverpool and Dublin ; its owners called it 
 the Duke of Wellington, but the public, as they will, 
 nicknamed it the " Iron Duke." The humorous 
 association was a transference obviously inevitable. 
 
 Mepcatop should be Kpemep. — Mercator is 
 proi^erly Gerhard Kremer, a Belgian geographer, 
 born in 1512. And the system of map-drawing 
 eilled Mercator's should therefore be called 
 Kremer's j) rejection. But, according to the pe- 
 dantic custom of the time, his name, meaning a 
 merchant, was Latinized into "Mercator." GilPs 
 "Student's Geography" says the inventor's real 
 name was Kauffman, but this is wronff. 
 
MISQUOTATIONS. 181 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 MISQUOTATIONS AND OTHER LITERARY STUMBLING- 
 BLOCKS. 
 
 Do not quote, but if You do, quote Cop- 
 reetly. — Any one depending on the memory for 
 quotations is almost certain to make verbal alter- 
 ations, and sometimes will quite change the sense- 
 There are few things more vexatious than to hear 
 hackneyed quotations introduced into common 
 speech, unless it is to hear them misquoted. 
 
 As generally quoted, the line from "Richard 
 III," Act I., Scene i., beginning " Now is the win- 
 ter of our discontent," is made to mean : "At this 
 present time we are suffering." But the follow- 
 ing line, " Made glorious summer by this sun of 
 York," shows that the "now" modifies the verb 
 "made," and this, of course, gives the words a 
 diametrically opposite meaning. 
 
 So with the line from " Troilus and Cressida," Act 
 III., Scene iii., " One touch of nature makes the 
 whole world kin ; " for whenever quoted it inva- 
 riably deviates from the original meaning. The 
 " touch of nature " is now used to mean a touch of 
 joy, or the wound of sorrow, or, indeed, any sus- 
 ceptibility that opens a source of sympathy to all 
 
182 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 men. But all this was far from the mind of 
 Shakespeare. What he intended to depict was 
 foolish Jmmanity united in 2^1'aising everything 
 that happened to be merely new fashioned, as the 
 context will show : 
 
 ** One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, 
 That all, with one consent, praise new-born gawds, 
 Though they are made and moulded of things past." 
 
 Equally interesting are these lines from the 
 " Tempest," and found on Shakespeare's monu- 
 ment in Westminster "Abbey": 
 
 " The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temple, the great globe itself, 
 Yea, all which it inhabit, shall dissolve; 
 And like the baseless fabric of this vision 
 Leave not a wreck behind." 
 
 But by referring to Act IV., Scene i., it will be 
 seen that the penultimate line is a transposition, 
 and that another has been omitted. In Clark and 
 Wright's text the lines run thus : 
 
 " And like the baseless fabric of this vision. 
 The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself. 
 Yea, all which it inhabit, shall dissolve, 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a rack behind." 
 
 It is noticeable that "wreck" in one line be- 
 comes " rack " in the corresponding line. Imagine 
 
MISQUOTATIONS. 183 
 
 the absurdity of a "vision" leaving behind it 
 " a wrecks What Shakespeare actually wrote 
 was " rack," and what he meant, as in other pas- 
 sages as well, was in the sense of drifting vapor ; 
 cf. ♦• Hamlet," II., ii., 506 ; " Antony," IV., xiv., 10, 
 etc. Thus Shakespeare is not properly quoted 
 even on his monument. 
 
 Another Misquoted Epitaph. —Wren's famil- 
 iar epitaph is frequently misprinted " Si monumen- 
 tum quceris circumsjncey The word which the 
 great architect's son wrote in the inscri|)tion over 
 the north transept door of St. Paul's Cathedral was 
 not '' queer is,'"' but ''requires.''' The usually reli- 
 able " Murray's Handbook to London" inserts the 
 word " qucEris " in the inscription. 
 
 Coleridge Mispepresented. — Very few, if put 
 to the test, could complete correctly Coleridge's 
 line : " W^ater, water, everywhere." The almost 
 universal rendering is : " And not a drop to drink." 
 The " Echo" of March 19, 1895, prints it thus, and 
 in quotation marks too ! Wliat Coleridge wrote in 
 "The Ancient Mariner" was: "Nor any drop to 
 drink." 
 
 Others of the Same Sort. — Another well- 
 known quotation from "The Fire Worshippers" 
 suffers in the first line: "'Tvvas ever thus from 
 childhood's hour " is the usual reading. What 
 Thomas Moore actually says is: "Oh, ever thus.'' 
 Misquoters also nonsensically interject "happy" 
 between " childhood's " and " liour ; " the comple- 
 
184 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 mentaiy line being: " IVe seen my fondest hopes 
 decay." 
 
 Tennyson's "Irresponsible indolent reviewers" 
 is frequently misquoted as " Irresponsible ignorant 
 reviewers." 
 
 '* Fresh fields and pastures new" should be, 
 according to Milton's " Lycidas," line 193, "Fresh 
 woods and pastures new ; " and to correct the 
 erratum, "The human form divine," we must go 
 to his "Paradise I^ost," Book III., and read: 
 
 "... Thus with the year 
 Seasons return; but not to me returns 
 Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, 
 Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, 
 Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine." 
 
 " Spare the rod and spoil the child " is not from 
 the Bible. It may be as quoted in " Hudibras," 
 Part 11. , Canto i., verse 45, either a misquotation 
 or a quotation attributed to the wrong source. 
 Certainly Solomon did not say it. What he said 
 was: "He that spareth the rod hateth his son." 
 
 And the word " rod " in this connection does not 
 stand necessarily for a leather strap or a willow 
 stick, but as a symbol of guidance and correction. 
 Compare : " His rod and His staff they comfort me." 
 
 In Gray's "Elegy" will be found the correction 
 of "The even tenor of their way;" Gray wrote 
 " The noiseless tenor of their way." 
 
 " The end justifies the means " is a free transla- 
 
MISQUOTATIONS. 185 
 
 tion of " Cui licitus est finis, etiam licent media.^'' 
 " Where the end is lawful, the means thereto are 
 lawful also " — the maxim of the Jesuit writer, 
 Busenbaum. The reference is his "Medulla Theo- 
 logize Moralis," and the precise place 6. 6. 2. 
 
 Fupthep Instances. — " When Greek meets 
 Greek, then comes the tug of war," sliould be, if cor- 
 rectly quoted, " When Greeks joined Greeks, then 
 was the tug of war" (see Nathaniel's "Alexander 
 the Great," Act X., Scene ii.), or if one wishes to 
 make the present tense aj^plicable to it, then use 
 "joins," not " meets." 
 
 " Every mickle makes a muckle " is a misrender- 
 ing of a familiar Scotch saying, and is absurd. 
 "Mickle" and " muckle" are different spellings of 
 one and the same word, but " mickle " is generally 
 understood to mean "little;" even then the inter- 
 pretation is hardly warranted, for it is obvious that 
 every "little" will not make a "much," though 
 many "littles" may. The true rendering runs : 
 " Mony a little maks a meikle," meaning in 
 English, " Many smalls make a big." 
 
 A vulgar (and sometimes intentional) error of 
 misquoting the conclusion of our " duty toward our 
 neighbor" makes it run, " to do my duty in that 
 state of life unto which it has pleased God to call 
 me," whereas the Catechism says, "unto which it 
 shall please God to call me." Dickens makes the 
 same error in " Bleak House" (see Chaps, iii. and 
 
 XXVIII.). 
 
186 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. ' 
 
 " You have hit the nail on the head " (" Rabelais," 
 Book III., Chap, xxxiv.). Unthinking people 
 almost always say the " right nail," which is absurd. 
 The much more correct meaning is: "He who is 
 quick to use his advantages hits the nail on the 
 head, while others hammer round it," and observa- 
 tion will prove that the reference to the "right 
 nail " means this in nine instances to one where it 
 is a contradistinction to the finger-nail. 
 
 ** The Knights are dust, 
 
 And their good swords are rust ; 
 
 Their souls are with the saints, we trust." 
 
 This is a misquotation found in " Ivanhoe," 
 Chap. VIII., and elsewhere often repeated. The 
 correct lines are : 
 
 " The Knight's bones are dust, 
 
 And his good sword rust ; 
 
 His soul is with the saints, I trust." 
 
 (Coleridge, " The Knight's Tomb.") 
 
 "He that runs may read" should be "he may 
 run that readeth it." 
 
 Quotations like Ipon-fllings cluster around 
 Some Famous Men. — Allied with misquotations 
 are sententious sayings wrongly attributed to 
 famous persons. Like iron-filings around a mag- 
 net, witty remarks are apt to attach themselves to 
 some person with a reputation for cleverness. 
 Thus many brilliant jetix cVesirrit are fathered on 
 
MISQUOTATIONS. 187 
 
 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who took them from 
 D^A.rgenson and otliers. Abraham Lincoln is made 
 to originate a great number of witty stories. Thomas 
 G. Appleton did not invent the name for Nahant, 
 " Cold Roast Boston ; " nor did he wish that some one 
 would exiDOse a shorn lamb on the corner of Park 
 Street, that the Lord might temper the wind to it. 
 
 Talleyrand and Foueh^. — Talleyrand did not 
 invent the expression, "It is the beginning of the 
 end " : it may be found in Shakespeare's " Midsum- 
 mer Night's Dream " (Act. V., Scene i.). Neither 
 did he say of the Bourbons, " lis ii'ont rien aj^pris 
 ni rien oublie,^'' " They have learned nothing and for- 
 gotten nothing." It is found in a letter written in 
 January, 179G, by the Chevalier de Panat to Mallet 
 du Pan. Nor again did he invent the phrase ' ' Words 
 were given man to disguise his thoughts" (" Xa 
 jmrole a eU clonn^e a rhomme pour dcguiser sa 
 pensee''''). Voltaire uses it in his fourteenth dia- 
 logue, and it is quoted by Oliver Goldsmith in " The 
 Bee." It really goes back to a hoary antiquity. 
 
 "It is worse than a crime: it is a blunder." 
 Talleyrand was not the author of these words, 
 neither is it a correct quotation. In their original 
 form the words were by Josej^h Fouche ^ (1763- 
 1820), Minister of Police under Napoleon. "It is 
 worse than a crime: it is political fault, words 
 which I record because they have been repeated 
 and attributed to others." 
 
 1" Memoirs of Fouche." 
 
188 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 The aphorism Le style c'est Vhomme would apply 
 still more forcibly if it were restored to the form 
 which Biiffon gave it : Le style c'est rhomme meme 
 — is the very man. 
 
 Words that Some Great Men never spoke. — 
 Dr. Johnson is said to have said, " Let us take a walk 
 down Fleet Street" ("Old and New London," Vol. 
 I., p. 34). G. A. Sala, in his " Life and Adventures," 
 says: "To this periodical I gave the name of 
 ' Temple Bar,' and from a rough sketch of mine of 
 the old Bar, which blocked the way in Fleet Street, 
 ]\[r. Percy Macquoid drew an admirable frontispiece. 
 As a motto I imagined a quotation from Boswell : 
 * " And now, sir," said Dr. Johnson, "we will take a 
 walk down Fleet Street." ' To the best of my knowl- 
 edge and belief, Dr. J. never said a word about taking 
 a walk down Fleet Street ; but my innocent super- 
 cherie was, I fancj^ implicitly believed in for at least 
 a generation by the majority of magazine readers." 
 
 The doctor's exact words, "Let us take a walk 
 down Cheapside," are found in George Lewes' 
 " History of Philosophy." They, or the somewhat 
 similar ones of Boswell, must have been running 
 through Sala's mind at the time. 
 
 An Epitaph Falsely Attributed. — The well- 
 known epitaph : 
 
 " Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother, 
 Death, ere thou hast slain another 
 Learn'd and fair and good as she, 
 Time shall throw a dart at thee," 
 
MISQUOTATIONS. 189 
 
 on the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, author of 
 "Arcadia," is usually ascribed to Ben Jonson and 
 placed in the editions of his works ; but it is found in 
 a manuscrij)t collection of William Browne's f)oems 
 in the British Museum (Lansdowne MS., No. 777), 
 and Sir Egerton Brydges ascribes the authorship to 
 him in his edition of Browne's poems. 
 
 In Westminster " Abbey " " Rare Ben Jonson's " 
 patronymic is misspelled with an "h" in three 
 different inscriptions. 
 
 Cambponne at Waterloo. — The story is often 
 repeated that at the battle of Waterloo (June 18, 
 1815) Hugh Baron Halkett (pronounced Hacket) 
 demanded that General Cambronne should surren- 
 der and that Cambronne replied: ''La garde meurt 
 et [mais] ne se rend pas.'''' Cambronne all his life 
 long, in public and in private, denied having said 
 the words attributed to him, and an eye-witness 
 declares that his words as his horse was shot under 
 him were: " Je me rends,''" "I surrender." The 
 words were invented by a Paris journalist, Rouge- 
 mont, two days after the battle, in the " Independ- 
 ant," and are engraved on a monument to Cam- 
 bronne at Nantes. Other French writers, Victor 
 Hugo, for instance, in " Les Miserables," declare 
 that Cambronne's only exclamation was the untrans- 
 latable word, " Merde ! " 
 
 The famous words : " Up, Guards, and at them!" 
 were never uttered by the Duke of Wellington at 
 Waterloo : and, moreover, it was not the Guards, 
 
190 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 but tlie 52d Light Infantry, who broke the advanc- 
 ing column of the French Imperial Guards in the 
 final charge. 
 
 And here must be thrown overboard another 
 cherished tradition. Who does not know Byron''s 
 lines — "Within a window'd niche in that high hall 
 sat Brunswick's fated chieftain " — -referring to the 
 revelry in the ballroom of the Duchess of Richmond 
 at Brussels the night before Waterloo, wiiich was 
 suddenly interrupted by " the cannons' opening 
 roar"? The " high hall" has been recently the 
 subject of a most animated discussion, and has been 
 found to be, alas ! nothing more than a coachmaker's 
 low-roofed show-room hired by the duchess for the 
 occasion. It still may be seen in the Rue de la 
 Blanchisserie by the inquisitive tourist. 
 
 Galileo did not say E pup si Muove. — The story 
 that Galileo, when compelled by the Inquisition to 
 recant and confess, in June, 1633, muttered, ''And 
 yet it does move," and that he had his eyes put out 
 in consequence, is a late fiction. He remained in 
 confinement only three days, and when released lived 
 in the villa Medici, occupied by the Tuscan ambassa- 
 dor. He afterwards returned on foot to Sienna. 
 
 Louis XIV. and the State. — There is no historic 
 foundation for the story that Louis XIV., a boy 
 under sixteen, strode into Parliament in April, 
 1695, and flourishing his riding-whip exclaimed to 
 the president of Parliament: *' L'etat! c'est moi, 
 monsieur ! " 
 
MISQUOTATIONS. 191 
 
 Kosciusko and the End of Poland. — It is 
 
 frequently stated in histories that Kosciusko, at the 
 battle of Maciejowice, Oct. 10, 1794, as he fell from 
 his horse, exclaimed, '' Finis Polonice,'''' "The end 
 of Poland." 
 
 ** And Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell." 
 
 In a letter that he wrote Oct. 31, 1803, he dis- 
 tinctly repudiates having made any such derogatory 
 remark. *' It would be a crime in the mouth of any 
 Pole, much more in mine." 
 
 Remarks attributed to Wrong Person. — ^N'a- 
 poleon did not say, " Austria is always behind with 
 an idea, with an army," but William Pitt said : " The 
 gentlemen of Vienna are always behindhand with 
 an idea, a year, and an army." Neither did Napo- 
 leon say, " Scratch the Russian and you will find 
 the Tartar" {^'Orattez le Russe, voics trouverez le 
 Cosaque ") ; it was said by Prince Karl Josef de 
 Ligne ; nor the phrase, " lie is fond of washing his 
 soiled linen in public ; " it is Voltaire's. 
 
 Huss did not say " Saneta Simplieitas " or pun 
 on his Own Name. —The story goes that when 
 Huss was bound to the stake an old woman came 
 bringing a bundle of faggots and threw it on the pile 
 which was to consume him, and that Huss ex- 
 claimed, " Saneta Simplieitas!'''' ("Oh, holy sim- 
 plicity ! ") , and that immediately after he uttered this 
 prophecy, which contains a punning reference to 
 the meaning of his Slavonic name, Huss {gtts, a 
 
192 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 ^oose) : " This day ye burn a goose, but in a hun- 
 dred years a white swan will come, which ye will 
 not be able to burn. " ' 
 
 It is a pure fabrication. Neither is it certain that 
 Luther said : " Here I stand ; I have no other alter- 
 native ; God help me ! Amen." ^ 
 
 Only the last four words are historic. 
 
 All is lost save Honor. —Francois I. in an- 
 nouncing to his mother the capture of Pavia, Feb. 
 24, 1525, did not write, " Tout est perdu fors Vhon- 
 neury His autograph letter still exists. He wrote : 
 "Madame, that I make you acquainted with the 
 whole extent of my misfortune I will say, that of all 
 that I had nothing remains to me except honor and 
 life." ("Z)e toutes choses ne m'est demeurS que 
 Vhoniieur, et la vie qui est saulvey) 
 
 The Crime of Youth. — The elder Pitt did not 
 use the expression " The atrocious crime of being a 
 young man," in his reply to Walpole on being 
 taunted on account of his youth. The words were 
 composed and reported in the " Gentleman^s Maga- 
 zine " by Dr. Johnson, who was not present, but 
 who, from an abstract communicated to him, colored 
 Pitt's speech " with his own peculiar style and dic- 
 
 1" Heut braten sie eine Gans, 
 Dae bin ich, armen Hans! 
 Nach hundert Jahren kommt ein Schwan, 
 Den werden sie ungebrateu I'an." 
 
 2 " Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders; Gott helfe mir! 
 Amen." 
 
MISQUOTATIONS. 193 
 
 tion." Johnson is reported as saying, " That speech 
 I wrote in a garret in Exeter street." 
 
 Shakespeare vs. Barnfleld. — " The Passionate 
 Pilgrim " can of course be found in any volume of 
 Shakespeare, but the latter part, beginning with : 
 
 " As it fell upon a day 
 In the merry month of May, 
 Sitting in a pleasant shade, 
 Which a grove of myrtle made," 
 
 was not composed by him, but by Richard Barnfield, 
 who called it an " Address to the Nightingale." 
 Ellis says in his *' Specimens," Vol. II. : " This 
 song, often attributed to Shakespeare, is now con- 
 fidently assigned to Barnfield ; it is found in his 
 book of ' Poems in Divers Humours,' published in 
 1598." 
 
 Other Proverbs. — *' Blude is thicker than 
 water." Because this proverb is found in " Guy 
 Mannering," Chap, xxxviii., it is nearly always 
 ascribed to Scott, but it was very common in the 
 seventeenth century. It is found as early as 1670 
 in John Ray's and other collections of proverbs. 
 
 " Evir communications corrupt good manners" 
 was not composed'%y St. Paul, but by Menander, 
 the Grecian comic poet, and most likely the ajDostle 
 was onl}'^ using an already familiar proverb. 
 
 " God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb" 
 has a sufficiently biblical ring about it to account 
 for the common impression that it appears in a 
 
194 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 passage of the Old Testament. The original source 
 is not known. It occurs in Sterne's " Sentimental 
 Journey," but it is much older than that, for in a 
 collection of proverbs published as far back as 1594 
 we find " Dieu misure lefroid a la brebis tondue'''' 
 ( " God proportions the cold to the shorn lamb"). 
 
 A person w^ishing to convey a message of con- 
 dolence to a woman who had lost her husband, 
 wrote it: ''God tempers the wind to the stolen 
 lamb." " In the midst of life we are in death" 
 is also wrongly taken to be from the Bible. It 
 was transferred to the Book of Common Prayer 
 from an old German hymn in Latin — an antiphon 
 said to have been composed by Notker, a monk 
 of St. Gall, in 911, while watching some workmen 
 building a bridge at Martinsbriicke, in peril of 
 their lives. It forms the groundwork of Luther's 
 antiphon, " De Morte." Nor is the well-known line, 
 ** The merciful man is merciful to his beast," to be 
 found in the Scriptures, though " A righteous man 
 regardeth the life of his beast " may be (Proverbs 
 XII., 10). On the other hand, comparatively few 
 persons seem aware that the expression " The skin 
 of my teeth" appears in Job xix., 20. 
 
 The every-day quotation " Every man has his 
 price " is evidently a misquotation of Sir Robert 
 Walpole's words: referring to certain factious or 
 profligate adversaries and their adherents resembling 
 themselves, he said, ' ' All these men have their price ! " 
 {Vide Cox's " Life of Walpole," Vol. L, p. 757.) 
 
MISQUOTATIONS. 195 
 
 A Nation of Shopkeepers. — It is commonly 
 thought that Napoleon the First was the author of 
 the expression " a nation of shopkeepers." Even 
 Wheeler, in his " Names of Fiction, "thus attributes 
 it: "A contemptuous appellation bestowed upon 
 the English by Napoleon Bonaparte." But it was 
 used by Adam Smith in his "Wealth of Nations," 
 when Napoleon was only six years old, and at that 
 time every English statesman knew it " by heart." 
 Through translation the phrase naturally caught 
 the fancy of French politicians, and some twenty 
 years later its popularity was permanently assured 
 by Barere, who, in the French Convention of June 
 11, 1794, publicly bestowed the already familiar 
 catch-phrase upon England. He said, in allusion 
 to Howe's battle of June 1st: "Let Pitt, then, 
 boast of his victory to his nation of shopkeepers." 
 
 Sheep and Tar. — The English sometimes 
 speak of "Losing a ship for a ha'p'orth of tar." 
 But who ever heard of a ship the timbers of which 
 required tar to hold them together? Substitute 
 '* sheep " for " ship " and the absurdity no longer 
 appears, for clearly the allusion is to the shep- • 
 herd's economical practice of marking his flock. 
 It is as well to compare : 
 
 "And judge you now what fooles those are 
 Will loose a hog i for a ha'p'orth of tar." 
 
 (" Maronides " (Geo. Philip's), 1673, Bk. VI., p. 22.) 
 
 1 " Hog " is used in Yorkshire and some other counties for a 
 sheep a year old. 
 
196 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 *' The Dog and his Shadow." —There is a con- 
 fusion of words veiled under this phrase. It is, of 
 course, obvious tliat it was not the shadow that the 
 greedy animal saw in the brook, but the reflec- 
 tion of himself with the piece of meat in his 
 mouth. 
 
 Mistakes in Given Names. — Fond parents 
 of new-born children are often at a loss for a 
 name to confer on them. Sometimes ludicrous 
 mistakes are made. A father, shortly after the 
 beginning of the present century, was greatly 
 interested in the French Revolution, and wishing 
 to commemorate it in the name of a daughter 
 called her Ca-ira, but not knowing French pro- 
 nounced it Kayiry. She was always known to the 
 younger generation as Aunt Kayiry. It is a mis- 
 take to give a girl the name Evelyn, which is the 
 masculine form of the word ; if applied to a girl it 
 should be Evelina, or Eveline, or Avelina. 
 
 Cocaine and Alkaloids. — A writer in "Notes 
 and Queries " says that it is 23articularly exasperat- 
 ing to hear cocaine pronounced as two syllables. 
 He says: "It cannot be too emphatically insisted 
 that this word should be pronounced as a word of 
 three syllables, co-ca-ine, signifying as it does the 
 active principle of the narcotic shrub coca, which 
 by the way has nothing to do with cocoa." 
 
 Another writer takes exception to the statement 
 that " the termination ine [in] always denotes the 
 alkaloid or active principle of anything." It is true 
 
MISQUOTATIONS. 197 
 
 morphine is the active principle of opium ; nicotine, 
 of tobacco ; quinine, of cinchona ; stryclinine, of 
 nux vomica; caffeine, of coffee; but there are 
 iodine, bromine, glycerine, chlorine, crocine, and 
 carmine which do not denote alkaloids, nor is an 
 alkaloid necessarily the active princi^^le of a thing ; 
 for instance, " opium yields, beside morphine, papa- 
 verine, thebaine, codeine, narcotine, narceine, and 
 probably several more, each of which has proper- 
 ties of its own, none of which has precisely the 
 same value as any other." 
 
 Common Mistakes in Fpeneh. — Some of the 
 most decorous and cleverest-looking intruders in the 
 realm of language have no right to their respecta- 
 bility. Take this one : " A duel a roiitrance " (from 
 the ♦' Touchstone of Life," April, 1897). There is 
 not such an expression known in French, yet 
 English writers nearly always use it when they 
 really mean a outrance ('• to the utmost" — " in the 
 strongest terms ") . Expose is another. Too often 
 this is written as French for *' exposure," but expo- 
 sition is the right term. Next, gasconnade deserves 
 two " n's," although it does not always get them. 
 Then there is the fanciful nom deplume. No French- 
 man ever uses it. The French term is noyn de guerre, 
 properly applied to assumed names, such as Athos, 
 Porihos, and Aramis, which French gentlemen often 
 used till they had won their spurs, or as long as 
 they wished to remain unknown. Custom may 
 have sanctioned an error of this kind, but it cannot 
 
198 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 make an error justifiable. And we have yet to 
 learn, in spite of music-hall programs, that a 
 Frenchman addresses his envelopes with either of 
 the horrible Anglo-French constructions, Mons. or 
 Mdlle. Again, gourmet sometimes takes the place 
 intended for gourmand ; the meaning is, however, 
 very different, as gourmet signifies, in French, a 
 judge of wine, and gourmand a glutton, or, more 
 mildly, a gastronomist. 
 
 A most egregious blunder is to write coitte qui 
 coute for "cost what it may," for then it has the 
 ridiculous meaning of " cost whom it may." The 
 proper phrase is coute que coute. A weekly paper 
 says : " This sort of coute qui coute policy has oper- 
 ated before." But it is surprising to find the dis- 
 tortion even made by Pope in his "Imitation of 
 Horace," Bk. II., Sat. VI. : 
 
 "... loved his friend, and had a soul, 
 Knew what was handsome, and would do't. 
 On just occasions, coute qui coute." 
 
 Double entendre, which some writers seem to 
 think is French, has never existed in France. Per- 
 haps doable entente is intended, *but even then a 
 word cannot be, but may have, a double entente, as 
 mot a double entente. It is a mistake to tack an 
 "of" on the French expression apropos. It is 
 better not to use the expression. 
 
 Common Mistakes in Latin. — " Dulce domum " 
 is not, as so often supposed, ' ' sweet home ; " and 
 
MISQUOTATIONS. 199 
 
 this in sjjite of the fact that it is sometimes seen as 
 the name of suburban viUas. A "sweet home" 
 would be, in correct Latin, dulcis domus ; 'Ululce 
 do77ium,''' on the other hand, means " (that) sweet 
 (word), homeward," from the song sung at Win- 
 chester College at the close of the term. In utter 
 defiance of grammar, the surplus money ofl:ered for 
 distribution by insurance offices is usually called 
 '■'bonus'''' (a good maji) instead of '* bonum'''' (a 
 good thing) . 
 
 In the English Church Catechism, in answer to 
 the question, "What is yovu' name?" the answer 
 should not be "N. or M.," but " N. or NN.," i.e., 
 Latin nomen aid nomina, name or names. The 
 printers started the mistake. 
 
 As a general rule it is a mistake to use foreign 
 words when English words would serve as well. But 
 if foreign words must be used, they should be cor- 
 rectly used. 
 
 "Pitfalls of Pedantry." — It is a mistake to 
 put: 
 
 Aide-de-camps for aides-de-camp ; 
 Chef-d'oeuvres for chefs-d'oeuvre ; 
 Handsful for handfuls ; 
 
 Cherubims for cherubim or cherubs. Cherubims is 
 given in 2 Sam. vi., 2, as the plural of cherub, 
 and in conversation the same error frequently 
 occurs. Of course if the inflection im is used 
 the s is not required. Compare seraph — ser- 
 aphim; Baal — Baalim (the images of Baal). 
 
200 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 On the other hand, Shakespeare, in "The 
 Temj^est/^ makes Prospero say to Miranda, 
 
 " Oh, a cherubim 
 Thou wast that did preserve me." 
 
 Animalculae for animalcula ; 
 Omnibi for omnibuses ; 
 Pliantasmagoria for phantasmagorias ; 
 Apparata for apparatus ; 
 Ignorami for ignoramuses ; 
 Iliati for hiatuses ; 
 Phenomenons for-phenomena; 
 Alussulmen for mussulmans. 
 
 On the other hand, it is a mistake to speak of: 
 A^ dicta for a dictum ; 
 A data for a datum ; 
 An ephemeras for an ephemera ; 
 A genera for a genus ; 
 A jjhenomena for a phenomenon ; 
 Chinee for Chinese ; 
 Portuguee for Portuguese. 
 
 Mr. Palmer calls such blunders the pitfalls of 
 pedantry. But many similar blunders have been so 
 widely adopted that they have become recognized 
 as correct, thus : 
 
 Minnow is a false singular for minnows ; 
 Grouse for grice; because, forsooth, mouse is the 
 
 singular of mice ; 
 Pea for pease (as if chee for cheese !) ; 
 
MISQUOTATIONS. 201 . 
 
 Sherry is an assumed singular of sherris, for SjDan- 
 
 ish Xeres, wine of Xeres ; 
 Cherry is an assumed singular of cherries, which 
 
 stands for French cerise. 
 
 Many words have lost or gained letters by reason 
 of the propinquity of an article : 
 
 Apron should properly be napron, from the French 
 
 naperon, nappe, cloth; 
 Auger should be nauger, from nav and gor, a wheels 
 
 borer ; 
 Adder is really nadder ; 
 Newt is an eft ; 
 Orange should be norange, from Sanskrit naranga, 
 
 through the Persian and Arabic. The Sanskrit 
 
 word means bright and is applied to a snake ; 
 
 hence the legend of the serpent guarding the 
 
 golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides ; 
 Alligator is the Spanish el lagarto (Latin lacertus), 
 
 a lizard ; 
 Daffodil should be affodil, a form of asphodel ; tansy 
 
 is the French athanasie ; 
 Omelette is the French Talemette, a cake. 
 
 Many words have been so long popularly mis- 
 spelled that the error has become fastened to the 
 language : 
 
 Sound should be soun (as if we said gownd for 
 
 gown) ; 
 Sovereign should be sovran, and foreign, forein ; 
 
202 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Seapoy should be Sepoy (for the Oriental Sipahi, a 
 soldier) ; 
 
 Sirloin should be sur-loin (the part above the loin) ; 
 
 Sirname should be surname ; 
 
 Rhyme has no right to the " h ; '"" it should be rime ; 
 
 There should be no *' 1 " in could ; 
 
 Frontispiece should be frontispice, from the Latin 
 Jrontisjnciimi, the front seen (of a building) ; 
 
 Guarantee should be guaranty, and repartee should 
 be reparty ; 
 
 We object to any one pronouncing real, reel ; but 
 ordeal should be ordeel, for it means an out- 
 deal ; 
 
 Dragomen for Dragomans. He travelled in the 
 East with two Dragomen. The correct plural 
 forms of Dragoman, Turcoman, and Ottoman 
 end in s. Yet these endings are not analo- 
 gous : in Dragoman the suffix an is simply 
 adjectival ; in Turcoman (prof>erly Turkman) 
 the ending man is a Persian word meaning 
 like or thus, Turkman really meaning Turk- 
 like ; and Ottoman (properly Uthman) is sim- 
 ply a proper noun wrongly used in an adjectival 
 sense ; 
 
 It is a mistake to use aborigine as the singular 
 number of aborigines. Alms is really a singu- 
 lar word, though now used in the plural ; and 
 news is properly used by Shakespeare with 
 these (" Wherefore should these good news 
 make me sick ? "" " 2 Henry IV.," IV., 2), though 
 
MISQUOTATIONS. 203 
 
 now we use it as if it were a singular word 
 made up of the points of the compass, N., E., 
 W., S. Assets should properly be singular; 
 bellows and gallows, plurals ; eaves is singular, 
 and its proper plural is eaveses, though custom 
 has dropjDed it. So riches is the French richcsse, 
 and is really singular ; summons is the French 
 semonce, a citation. 
 
204 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MISTAKEN DERIVATIONS. 
 
 Philomel. — This word for the nightingale, so 
 affected by early English poets, is not derived from 
 the Greek words meaning melody-loving, but from 
 phileo and melon, fruit lovers. The gale in night- 
 ingale has nothing to do with the wind, but is 
 allied to our yell; it is therefore the nightsinger. 
 
 The word honeymoon has no connection with 
 honey other than in the fact that its Icelandic con- 
 gener hjoii, " a wedded j^air," may be related to the 
 Anglo-Saxon hiwa, a hive, or hii\ a house. 
 
 Unruly has Nothing to do with Rules. — The 
 translators of the Bible and many other writers have 
 naturally connected unruly with rule, as in the 
 phrase "Warn them that are unruly" when the 
 marginal reading is " disorderly." But unruly 
 corresjDonds to the German unruhig, restless, and is 
 not allied to rule. 
 
 A Brown Study under a Different Color.— 
 When we find a friend in a brown study we remark 
 on it and wonder what is the color of his thoughts. 
 They may be blue, but not brown. It may be a per- 
 version of the old French embronc, which means 
 bound down , sad, pensive, thoughtful , allied toproiie. 
 
MISTAKEN DERIVATIONS. 205 
 
 Bucks and Bulls. —The animal kingdom is not 
 responsible for buckwlieat. Buck is another form 
 of beech, and it is really beech-wheat, so called 
 because of the resemblance of the kernels to beech- 
 nuts. Neither has a j^apal bull nor an Irish bull any 
 connection with the fierce lord of the field. The 
 one is from the Latin bulla, a seal, the other from 
 the Icelandic bull, nonsense. On the other hand, the 
 disreputable verb cabbage is not really a slander on 
 the vegetable. It comes from the Dutch Kabassen, 
 to steal, to bag, to put in one's basket, Kabas. 
 
 Carnival. — Byron, in "Beppo," says: 
 
 " This fast is named the Carnival, which being' 
 Interpreted implies * fareAvell to flesh ; ' 
 
 So called because, the name and thing agreeing. 
 Through Lent they live on fish both salt and fresh." 
 
 But Byron was wrong. Carnival is not from 
 the Latin caro and vale, but from Low Latin carne- 
 levamen, a consolation of the flesh. 
 
 Helpmeet or Helpmate. —In Genesis ii., 18, 
 it says : "I will make him an helpmeet [that is, 
 lit] for him." This collation of noun and adjec- 
 tive has been welded into a common noun. But 
 the real compound should be help-mate. 
 
 The Peep o' Day is the Pipe o* Day. — Chil- 
 dren at least suppose that the expression peep o' 
 day refers to day peeping or j^eering over the east- 
 ern horizon. Palsgrave in 1530 gives the true mean- 
 ing, " at daye pype," " a la pii^e du jour ;'''' that is, 
 
206 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 the time when the birds begin to sing — '• the earli- 
 est pipe of half-awakened birds." 
 
 Pennypoyal worth More than a Penny.— 
 An old-fashioned remedy is " pennyrile tea." The 
 word is a corruption of the translation of the botan- 
 ical name pulegium regium, pulege, pnliall royal, 
 hence pennyroyal . 
 
 Penthouse. — There is no house to a penthouse 
 except the house to which it is aj^pended. The 
 word is really pentice, from the Latin 2^e?idere, to 
 hang. It was an over-refinement that lengthened it 
 into its present form. 
 
 Philopena op Philippine. — The game of for- 
 feit called by Americans philopena, as it is a penalty 
 of love is supposed to be derived from the German 
 Vielliebchen corrupted into Philippinchen, a sweet- 
 heart or valentine. 
 
 Pickaxes. — There is no axe about a pickaxe. 
 The genuine English word is pickeys, a pick, some- 
 times spelt pycoyse. 
 
 Pile. — Wordsworth begins his elegiac stanzas 
 suggested by a picture of Peel Castle with the line, 
 
 ** 1 was thy neighbor once, thou i-ugged pile." 
 
 He probably did not realize that he was making 
 a pun. Pile and peel are the same word, meaning 
 castle. The word pile for a wooden stake comes 
 from the Latin j?9i7«, a pier or pillar ; pile, a heap, 
 from the Latin plla, a ball. 
 
 The Milliner and the Million. — The word mil- 
 
MISTAKEN DERIVATIONS. 207 
 
 liner is sometimes supposed to be derived from the 
 Latin mille, a thousand, as of one that dealt in the 
 thousand and one articles of feminine dress-orna- 
 mentation. It is really from Milaner, a person that 
 sold gloves, laces, and other finery from Milan. 
 But the word tureen is not derived from Turin ; it is 
 for terrine, made of earth (terra). Bartlett says 
 that million for melon is an old corruption of 
 melon, and Colgrave is quoted as giving counte- 
 nance to it. Du Bartas in 1621 speaks of the marine 
 "vines, roses, nettles, millions, pinks, gilliflowers, 
 mushrooms." 
 
 Vinegar's Mother. — Probably most persons 
 imagine that there is a maternal relationship be- 
 tween vinegar and its mother. The word is really 
 mudder, which is found in all Germanic languages, 
 with the natural sense of mud, thickening. 
 
 Running a-muek. — There is no relationship 
 between Bunyan's man with the muck-rake and 
 Dryden's man who " runs an Indian muck at all he 
 meets." The word is derived from the Malasian 
 amok, signifying a peculiar frenzy which sometimes 
 impels the native to rush into a crowd, striking 
 blindly with his ki^is or crease. McNair, in his 
 " Perak and the Malays," says : " The first warning 
 of such an event is given by the cry 'Amok, amok,"^ 
 when there is a rush, and people fly right and left 
 to shelter." And in " Tavernier's Voyages " (II., p. 
 202) it says: "Drawing their poisoned daggers, 
 they cried a mocca'upon the English." 
 
208 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Welcome is not Well Come. — Welcome is not 
 
 an English translation of the Italian ben-venuto, well 
 and come, bat is a corruption of Anglo-Saxon wil- 
 cuma, from ivil, gladly, and cumian, to receive ; 
 hence an acceptable guest. 
 
 Rabbits and Rarebits. —Archbishop Trench 
 asserts that in the dish of melted cheese the word 
 rabbit is a corruption of rarebit. Palmer says it is 
 really rabbit, "the mock heroes of the eating- 
 house," like "Irish apricots," for j)otatoes; " Cape 
 Cod turkeys," for codfish; " Digby chickens," for 
 herring; "Albany beef," for sturgeon; and the 
 like. A Frenchman translated it as un lapiu du 
 pays de Galles! 
 
 Whaling for Wailing. — Jamieson, in his 
 Scotch dictionary, quotes this definition of whaling : 
 " a lashing with a rope's end, from the name of a 
 roj^e called a whale-line, used in fishing for whales." 
 It should be wale, or welt. 
 
 Whiskey and Water. — Whiskey, which used 
 to be spelt usquebaugh, comes from the Keltic uisge, 
 w^iich means water. It is the same word that is 
 found in many English names of localities, the 
 Wash, Usk, Ox-ford, ^a:-mouth, Ouse, Isis, like the 
 Indian termination eg, og, ock, unk, which also 
 means water. It is ingeniously hidden in the name 
 of Phoenix Park, Dublin, which was really Fionn- 
 uisg, clear sjoring, but a column in the park shows 
 a phoenix rising from a pyre. 
 
 Acres and Wiseacres. — When a dull lawyer 
 
MISTAKEN DERIVATIONS. 209 
 
 argued that none should be admitted to the bar 
 except those that had some hxnded property, Curran 
 said : " May I ask, sir, how many acres make a wise- 
 acre ? " But the word is another form of the Ger- 
 man Weissager, wise-sayer, or wizard. On the 
 other hand, the word witch in witch-hazel is not 
 connected except in imagination with the power of 
 the tree in detecting water. It is the wicken or 
 wick-tree ; in Anglo-Saxon cwic-brain, which 
 means living tree. 
 
 Woman Woe to Man. — It used to be thought 
 seriously that the word woman meant woe to men, 
 *' Because by woman," says Southey, "was woe 
 brought into the world." Of course that is false 
 etj^mology ; nor is the derivation from womb and 
 man anymore accurate. It is from ivif, the weaver, 
 or possibly from the Anglo-Saxon wifcm, to join or 
 weave together, the conjunx, the joined-to-man. 
 
 One who Muses does not neeessapily cul- 
 tivate the Muses. — This word does not come 
 from the muses, but is from the French 7nuser, 
 which is a term of the chase meaning to lift the 
 muzzle into the air and stand as if listening, paus- 
 ing, or pondering. 
 
 The Old Nick. — Some persons confuse the 
 name Nicholas with the poj^ular name of the Evil 
 One. Thus Butler in " Hudibras " says that Nic- 
 colo Machiavelli " gave his name to our Old Nick ; " 
 and in one of Ramsay's poems it appears as Auld 
 Nicol. But the term is a relic of the old English 
 
210 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 nicor, a goblin, allied to the word nixy. Palmer 
 says that Old Harry was originally used in refer- 
 ence to Henry's destruction of the monasteries. It 
 might be confused with the verb harry, to lay 
 waste. 
 
 Or Ever. — In the authorized version of Daniel 
 it says, " The lions had the mastery of them and 
 brake all their bones or ever they came at the bot- 
 tom of the den." Here the translators imagined 
 that ever, of which e'er is a contraction, was a more 
 dignified form than ere or or alone. Or ere is 
 tautological. 
 
 Pagoda. — Bailey, in his dictionary, derives 
 pagoda from Pagan's god. It may be derived 
 from the Persian but-khod4, Idol-God. 
 
 Pea-Jaeket. — Captain Marryat, in "Poor 
 Jack," says that the article of sea-apparel called 
 P-jaeket got its name as an abbreviation of pilot- 
 jacket. But the pea part is evidently from the old 
 English pi/, a cloak, as in court-py. The Dutch 
 word i^'J nieans a rough coat. 
 
 Marbles not made of Marble. — As marbles 
 are never made of marble, the origin of the word 
 by which bo^^s call the little round balls in their 
 game must probably be sought elsewhere. In 
 Evans' glossary it is explained as a term manu- 
 factured from marl, out of which in some parts of 
 England marbles are made. Palmer derives the 
 name from the French marelles. 
 
 Nightmares. — Captain Burton, in "Etruscan 
 
MISTAKEN DERIVATIONS. 211 
 
 Bologna," confounded the ending mare in night- 
 mare with the female of the horse, and the illus- 
 trator Fuseli depicted the incubus as visiting a 
 sleejDer in the shape of a snarling mare. With the 
 same mistaken notion Shakespeare, in " King 
 Lear" (III., 4), speaks of " the nightmare and her 
 nine foals." Sir Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, and 
 many other writers have been likewise deceived. 
 The word is really the Anglo-Saxon mara, allied to 
 the Sanskrit mara, a devil or destroyer. 
 
 Jepked Meat. — What most persons imagine to 
 be the significance of jerked in the compound 
 "jerked beef" it would be hard to say. The word 
 is not derived from the verb to jerk, but from the 
 Peruvian charki, as is shown by the following cita- 
 tion from Prescott's " Conquest of Peru": '* Flesh 
 cut into thin slices was distributed among the 
 people, who converted it into charki, the dried meat 
 of the country." 
 
 An Apk that was not Noah's. — It is a mis- 
 take to suppose that the word ar^k, often used in the 
 sense of citadel, especially in regard to oriental or 
 Indian towns, is derived from the Latin arx, though 
 it may have the same root as seen in arceo, to keep 
 off, defend. It is a genuine Persian word, properly 
 spelt arg. 
 
 Belfpies and Bells. — A belfry is not necessarily 
 a tower to hold a bell. We are misled by the sound. 
 It is the English form of the French beffroi, and was 
 often spelt berfray or bewfray, a watch-tower. 
 
212 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 The Bitter End. — We sometimes speak of 
 carrying a feud out to the bitter end, and suppose 
 that it is the same word as used in the phrase " a 
 bitter disappointment." It was, however, origi- 
 nally a nautical term. The bitterns end is that 
 part of the cable that, being coiled around the bites 
 or bitts, remains on board. Admiral Smyth is 
 quoted as saying, in "The Sailor's Word Book " : 
 "When a chain or rope is paid out to the bitter 
 end, no more remains to be let go.'' 
 
 Bonflres not Boneflres. — Dr. Johnson, in his 
 dictionary, says that bonfire is a fire made on the 
 receipt of good news. Other earlier lexicographers 
 thought it was so called because it was made of 
 "clear bones and no woode" (Fuller, " Mixt Con- 
 templation"). Shakespeare, in "Macbeth," speaks 
 of " the everlasting bonfire," as if for bale-fire, a 
 funeral pyre. 
 
 The Help Apparent. — The word apparent in 
 the expression " heir apparent" is derived either 
 from paraunt, for paravaunt, meaning first, or 
 else from apparenU, related. 
 
 Various Mistakes in Derivations. — Apple-pie 
 order is not an order peculiar to the region of per- 
 petual pie. It is from cap a pie, referring to the 
 complete equipment of a soldier. Neither has the 
 word attic anything to do with Greece. Palmer says 
 it is a word borrowed from the Sanskrit " atiak,^'' 
 the top room in an Indian house. Veranda also may 
 be from the Sanskrit direct throiigh the Portuguese. 
 
MISTAKEN DERIVATIONS. 213 
 
 Carryall, the name of the American carriage, is 
 not so called because it conveys the whole family, 
 but it is a corruption of the French cariole. 
 
 The plant that country folk call cast-me-down or 
 stickadove is a curious metamorphosis of the botan- 
 ical name cassidone, which is derived from Sioechas 
 Sidonia. 
 
 Cat's cradle has nothing to do with cats. The 
 word is a jDcrversion of cratch (French creche), a 
 wicker-work rack. 
 
 Nor is catsup in any sense a dish to set before 
 Tabby. It is the English spelling of the Indian 
 word kit jap. 
 
 The Italian word cento, as in a cento of verses, is 
 not derived from centum, a hundred, but from the 
 Greek kentron, a patch-work. 
 
 The old-fashioned stock in trade of the novelists 
 was a changeling, but it is a mistake to suppose it 
 meant originally one child changed for another in 
 the cradle ; it is derived from old EnHish chano^ 
 (kang) , an idiot, a natural ; such children were pop- 
 ularly supposed to be brought by the fairies and 
 substituted for the bright baby born. " Such men 
 do chaungelings call so chaunged by Fairies' theft," 
 says Spenser. 
 
 A cutlet is not a little cut, any more than a bullet 
 is a little bull. It is derived from the French cote- 
 lette, and means a rib {cote) of any kind of animal. 
 
 More Examples. — The old English cloth called 
 ciprus, Cyprus, cipres, or " cobweb lawne," derives 
 
214 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 its names probably with the French crepe, from the 
 Latin crispiis, curled linen. Connected with the 
 idea of mom-ning, it naturally took the form of 
 cypress ; as where Jeremy Taylor speaks of " black 
 cypress, a veil of penitential sorrow." 
 
 Many poets think there is a verb to darkle, to 
 rhyme conveniently with sparkle. But the word 
 darkling is not a present participle ; it is an adverb 
 meaning "in the dark." " Out went the candle and 
 we were left darkling," says Shakespeare ( " King 
 Lear," L, 4). 
 
 Davy Jones' Locker is supposed to have a biblical 
 original, Jones standing for Jonah, and David, a 
 po23ular nautical name, being prefixed. 
 
 Demijohn has nothing to do with the John which 
 stands as the typical name of all nations (John Bull, 
 Jean Crapaud, Hans, Ivan, Johnnie Reb, etc.). 
 Damajana is a large glass bottle ; the French make it 
 dame-jeanne ; the Italians, damigiana. Of course 
 it is possible that the Arabic is derived from the 
 French ; though Littre's dictionary connects the 
 ending with Turkish jouna, a glass bottie. 
 
 Charles's Wain. — Tennyson speaks of Charles's 
 Wain in " The May Queen." Who Wcis the Charles 
 thus apotheosized and put into the sky like an ancient 
 hero? Charlemagne? Some have thought so, others 
 have attributed the honor to Charles I. or II. But 
 it is really the churPs wain or farmer's wagon ; just 
 as the Greeks called it hdmaxa, a chariot. Nei- 
 ther is Charlotte Russe named after a hypothetical 
 
MISTAKEN DERIVATIONS. 215 
 
 Russian woman, tsaritsa or peasant ; it comes from 
 the old English charlet, which is in turn derived 
 from the French chair, meat. 
 
 Cliieken-heapted Cowards. — Chicken-hearted 
 does injustice to the domestic fowl, which is gener- 
 ally a doughty fighter. The word is connected with 
 Swedish kikna, to lose heart ; and has several con- 
 geners in the English dialect. Neither has coward 
 (cowheart) anything to do with the domestic cow, 
 or with cowherd as Spenser spells it. The timid 
 hare is couart (equal to short-tail). The connection 
 is evident, then, with the word tail. 
 
 Milk and Wine. — Clouted cream is a corrup- 
 tion of clotted cream. The Rev. A. S. Palmer 
 points out the fact that clouted means nailed, and 
 that the Greek words for to fix and to nail were 
 likewise applied to curdled milk. Our fathers 
 in the old intemperate days liked mulled wine. 
 Mulled is not really from a verb, but from mould, 
 earth, and signifies the wine used at the molcle ealu, 
 or funeral feast. 
 
 Discords in the Heart. — It is a mistake to 
 think that when you hear a discord the word cord 
 is necessarily involved. It comes from dis, apart, 
 and cors, heart ; hearts at variance ; so with accord- 
 ance, concord. 
 
 Asses and Dogs and Frogs. — Some persons 
 imagine that a painter's easel is so called because 
 it makes his work easier. It is from the Latin asel- 
 lus, a little ass, and is therefore of the same breed 
 
216 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 as our clothes-horse. In the same way pulley is 
 not from the verb to pull, but from pulain, a colt. 
 
 In the word grayhound the color of the dog does 
 not give it the name. It is really the Graian or 
 Grecian dog, as Spaniel is the Spanish dog. 
 
 The term curmudgeon is not derived from any 
 reference to " puppy, whelp, or hound, or cur of low 
 degree." It is for cornmudgin or corn dealer, 
 corn-hoarder; hence parsimonious. The word cor- 
 morant is allied with it, as corn-vorant ; neither is 
 the dog-fish so called because it is fond of dogs ; it 
 is really the dag or dagger fish. 
 
 When, some time since, two railway companies 
 quarrelled over a crossing, and the employees of 
 the one pulled up the newly laid rails and frogs 
 of the other, a wit called the contest " a new 
 batrachiomachia, or battle of the frogs." The word 
 frog in such a connection or as applied to a part of 
 a horse's hoof is a corruption o{ frush, for fursh, a 
 fork {Ln,t\x\furca) . But a frog on a coat is a frock 
 ornament. 
 
 Persons who live in "flats" imagine that the 
 name is given to their apartments because the 
 rooms are all on one floor. But it is derived from 
 the Anglo-Saxon flett, a dwelling, house, or cham- 
 ber. In Scotch ^e^ is a floor or story of a house. 
 
 It is a mistake to imagine the Freemasons are 
 any more free than those that do not belong to the 
 order. Scheie de Vere derives the term from 
 Frere-Mason, a brother mason. 
 
MISTAKEN DERIVATIONS. 217 
 
 Puzzles fop Fopeigneps. — A stranger in the 
 Boston post-ojEiice asked a man whom he met, 
 •* Where is the foragin office ? " He made a mis- 
 take in pronunciation (though perhaps not far from 
 the truth) ; but the g in foreign is a mistake. It is 
 an interloper; Chaucer spelt it forayn. It comes 
 from the Latin foris, out of doors. It should be 
 properly spelt foren or forein. 
 
 Nothing puzzles 2iforener more than the pronun- 
 ciation of our English words ending in ough. The 
 Frenchman who said he had a cow in his box may 
 have studied ^y right's " Fifteenth Centuiy Vocabula- 
 ries," where hie hisses is translated as the cowe. Be- 
 thought is still pronounced bethoft in some parts of 
 England, and daughter as dafter. The soldier's 
 leave of absence is a corruption of the Dutch ver-lof 
 (German Verlaub) {lof, hmb, and leave being identi- 
 cal in meaning), and was originally called furlof. 
 
 Gaits and Shoes. — Wheti a boy wants to make 
 sport of a companion he often sajs he " has a gait 
 like a pair of bars." The pun really recalls the 
 old spelling, which is correct. Gait has no near 
 connection with " go." It is the same as the 
 Swedish gata or gatan, and means a road or street. 
 To " gang your ain gait" is to go your own way. 
 A secondary meaning crept in, and the word now 
 means a mode of walking. The same word is 
 compounded with lope, to run, in the expression 
 to run the gantlope, or incorrectly the gauntlet; 
 that is, to run through a lane or street of soldiers 
 
218 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 each armed with whips. Some people imagine the 
 word galoshes is derived from gallo-shoes, as if of 
 French origin. It is supposed by most etymolo- 
 gists to come through the Latin colopedia, a wooden 
 shoe, from the Greek kalo-pedion — a *' wood foot" 
 or last. Now it is used in all countries for rubber 
 overshoes, as for instance galoshi, in Russia. 
 
 Hessian boots are not boots worn by Hessians, 
 but boots and gaiters in one, from the old word 
 huseons, which is joerhaps the same as the English 
 diminutive hos-kins, little hose. 
 
 Gambrel-poof s. — Dr. Holmes, in a quatrain, 
 describes the oi'igin of the word gambrel-roof : 
 
 *' Gambrel, gambrel, let me beg 
 You'll look at a horse's hinder leg ; 
 First great angle above the hoof, 
 That is the gambrel; hence gambrel roof." 
 
 Gambrel is a cant term for a crooked stick. It is 
 derived from the Welsh and Irish cam; Indo-Eu- 
 ropean root gam, meaning crooked. Wlien Scott 
 speaks of the deviPs game leg he means a crooked, 
 a disabled leg; when a Iamb gambols it plays with 
 its legs, and yet the word has no connection with 
 game. A gammon (or wrongly spelt gambone) of 
 bacon is from the same root, as is also ham. 
 
 Modified Oaths. — Many persons wishing to 
 express their feelings, but not wishing openl}" to 
 break the commandment, use modified oaths as if 
 thev were more harmless. Oh, dear, is the French 
 
MISTAKEN DERIVATIONS. 219 
 
 Dieu ; Jiminy is either the Latin Oemini (Castor 
 and Pollux) , or else Jesu Domine ; la or law 
 is for Lord ; gosh is for God ; zounds is for God's 
 wounds ; Od'sbodkins is God's body ; Od'spitikins, 
 God's pity. 
 
 Different Kinds of Gin. — Gin is sometimes 
 called Geneva, as if it were a distinctively Swiss 
 drink. But the liquor is made from the juniper, 
 which in French is ginievre. 
 
 Victor Hugo wrote a curious poem called " Les 
 Djinns." All readers of the Arabian Nights are ac- 
 quainted with the jjowerful spirits called Jin or 
 Genies. The word is allied with the Latin Genius, 
 but comes from the Persian Jinni (plural Jin) . 
 
 Instep. — It is a curious, but natural, mistake 
 to connect that part of the foot called the instep 
 with step. Skeat's dictionary says it is from in and 
 stoop, the in-bend of the foot. 
 
 Isinglass. — The thin sheets of transparent or 
 translucent mica, and the gelatine used in making 
 jelly, sometimes misspelled icing-glass, get their 
 name from the Dutch huyzenblas, wliich means 
 sturgeon bladder. The spelling icing seems to 
 have arisen from the original meaning of jelly 
 (French gclee), something frozen. 
 
 Jaekalls and Jaekstones. — The popularity of 
 the name John and its variant Jack is also seen in 
 the word jackall or jack-call, which is really the 
 Persian shaghal, the howler, and m jaekstones y which 
 should be chack or chuck-stones. 
 
220 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Jolly-boats. — Few persons when they read in 
 nautical novels of the captain going ashore in the 
 jolly-boat realize that it is only another name for 
 the yawl, the yawly-boat. 
 
 In the Soup. —When we have our first course 
 of soup and call for Julienne we little think of the 
 strange origin of the word. It used to be m^ide 
 with sorrel, the name of which in Italy is alleluia, 
 because its ternate leaf was regarded as an emblem 
 of the trinity. The soup was introduced into France 
 by the Italian cooks of Catherine de' Medici, under 
 the name juliola. Hence Julienne ! Neither is a 
 jniree soup a pure soup. It comes from the old 
 English and French pori^e., a vegetable pottage, 
 from the Latin porrum, a leek, porraia, leek soups. 
 
 Against the Grain. — When one speaks of some- 
 thing going "against the grain," the picture sug- 
 gested is of a knife or plane running in opposition 
 to the fibres of the wood ; it is a popular and eftec- 
 tive metaphor; but in old times, when French had 
 a greater influence on the language than it has now, 
 we find it expressed " against the gr'e or gree ; " that 
 is, against the wish or desire. 
 
 Grass Widows. —A grass widow is generally 
 regarded as a woman whose husband has gone to 
 grass. Some writers try to find an explanation in 
 the French grace, a widow by courtesy. As it 
 is grass in the Scandinavian languages, others 
 have conjectured that it comes from the word 
 gradig (our greedy), signifying a woman who 
 
MISTAKEN DERIVATIONS. 221 
 
 longs for her husband. Here one may have a 
 wide choice. 
 
 It is generally supposed that the word great in 
 the expression "they are great friends" is almost 
 slang, like "thick." But it is commonly used by 
 early writers, often alone. Pepys, in his "Diary," 
 says ; "Lady Castlemare is still great with the 
 king." Bishop Hall says : " Moses was great with 
 God." It has been derived in this connection from 
 the Irish gradh, dear ; from the Anglo-Saxon 
 grUan, to know familiarly, our greet. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that the broad, short, 
 crooked sword commonly used in the Middle Ages, 
 and called hanger, was so called because it hung by 
 the side. The name is a corruption of the Arabic 
 and Persian khanjar, a sabre. In the French it also 
 appears with the article al alfange. Neither has 
 the word hangnail anything to do with hang; it 
 is in Old English agnel, and may derive from ange, 
 pain. 
 
 Husband is not a house band, but simply the 
 house master, band in the compound being the 
 teller or owner. 
 
 Sleepers that do not wake. — The word sleeper 
 has been ingeniously connected in relationship with 
 dormer, as in dormer-window. It is really another 
 form of the Norwegian sleip, meaning slippery, 
 hence a smooth piece of wood, and comparable 
 with slab and slipper. 
 
 The word vent, for a small opening, has no more 
 
222 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 to do with the Latin ventus, the wind, than the word 
 door has to do with window, as Webster says. It is 
 another form oi fent, a cleft or chink (just as vixen 
 is the feminine of fox) . 
 
 Pudding- should have no *' g.'*— When children 
 leave the " g" off from pudding they really make 
 no mistake. It was added by a refinement of aflec- 
 ted gentility, just as some persons now say capiing 
 for captain, chicking for chicken, kitching for 
 kitchen, woolling for woollen. 
 
 A Quappy, but not of Roek. — In reading 
 English books where hunting terms are introduced, 
 many persons mistake the word quarry, used for 
 game. It comes from the Latin cor, the heart, and 
 originally signified the part of the intestines given 
 the dogs as a reward for good work ; the corres- 
 ponding French term is corce. 
 
 The Reindeep. — The introduction of the rein- 
 deer into the Klondyke has caused various news- 
 paper writers to speak of the animal as if it derived 
 its name from the word rein, because it is harnessed. 
 There is some doubt as to the real origin of the 
 term, but there is no doubt that reins as "lines" 
 must be ruled out. The German for it is Rennthicr, 
 '• a beast that runs." Others derive it from the 
 Lapp reino, a posture, hence the domesticated deer. 
 In Icelandic it is called hreinn, clean. 
 
 Ridings ape Thipdings. — Palmer says that 
 rook, the name of the castle in the game of 
 chess, is a corruption of Italian 7^occo, a fort or 
 
MISTAKEN DERIVATIONS. 223 
 
 castle, which in turn is a corruption of the Per- 
 sian rokh, a boat, that being the original form of 
 the piece. But in Persian the term is rukh, and 
 means cheek. 
 
 Shrubs that do not Grow. — Shrub in the ex- 
 pression raspberry shrub is the same term as sirop 
 and sherbet, which in turn are derived from the 
 Arabic sharib, to drink. 
 
 Steelyard. — One of the oddest of popular mis- 
 understandings of words is steelyard, which has 
 neither steel nor yard in its makeup. It is a corrup- 
 tion of stelleere, or steller, a regulator or balance. 
 
 Tailors and Hatters. — The common slur on 
 tailors, that nine tailors make a man, is said to be 
 derived from the practice of tolling the bell thrice 
 three times for the death of a man, and twice three 
 times for the death of a woman. Hence nine tellers 
 made it a man. In the same way the idea that 
 hatters have a traditionally hot temper arises from 
 the old English word better meaning furious, rag- 
 ing; so that "as mad as a hatter" is easily ex- 
 plained. 
 
 Names of People and Places. — On the author- 
 ity of Monier Williams, the name of that great 
 prophet usually called "Mahomet" ought to be 
 s^Dclt thus, "Muhammad," this being the passive 
 participle of the verb hamada, signifying "to 
 praise." The original family name, as given by 
 Lake, was Kothan. "There is certainly not more 
 than one with a more interestins" career than 
 
224 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Mahomet, or, more correctly, Muhammad," says the 
 "Daily Chronicle." 
 
 " Bede " is the common way of spelling the name 
 of " The father of English learning." The correct 
 way is Bceda. 
 
 Also Swithhun — which is the form given in 
 om^ native manuscripts — is not only turned into 
 Swithun, with one " h," rendering the word 
 meaninrfess, but is even chano^ed into Swithin. 
 And the Christian name of the celebrated archi- 
 tect, Inigo Jones, would, if properly spelt, be 
 En ego. 
 
 The correct pronunciation of Pepys, as given by 
 a descendant of the Diarist, is not, as usually 
 heard, " Peps," but Peeps, as Weems for Wemys. 
 The common way of saying " dahlia," as if daylia, 
 is really naming a totally different plant, — the 
 " dalea," — a greenhouse perennial named after 
 the English botanist, Dr. Samuel Dale, whereas the 
 "dahlia" was named after the Swedish botanist 
 Dahl. 
 
 Propep names Misapplied. — The name of 
 Tom, popularly applied to bells, is derived from 
 the boom of the bell-tone, as in tom-tom. The 
 terms Cicely ana Alison are not used in connection 
 with sweet feminine proper names. Sweet Cicily 
 is the Greek Sesilis ; Sweet Alison is alyssum. 
 Valentine's day is not a saint's day. Valentine 
 comes from galantine, a lover. But as birds pair 
 about the time of Bishop Valentine's martyrdom, 
 
MISTAKEN DERIVATIONS. 225 
 
 February 14, that day was used as a popular time 
 for love missives, and called Valentine. 
 
 Nor is Will in Will o' the Wisj) a proper name ; 
 it is the same as the Icelandic villa, to bewilder. 
 
 Trifles. — Trivial and trifle are not allied. The 
 meaning of trifle would seem to connect it with 
 trivial ; but they are drawn from sources far apart. 
 Trivial is from a Latin word meaning cross-roads, 
 and hence popular, common, and finally cheap. 
 Trifle is a jest or lying story, from the French 
 iruffer, to mock. 
 
226 THE MISTAKES WE MAliE. 
 
 CHAPTER XY. 
 
 MISTAKES IN SPEAKING AND WRITING. 
 
 High-pitehed Voices. — It is a common mis- 
 take, especially in New England and among women, 
 to speak in a high and artificial voice. The nasal 
 quality that makes our American voices so disagree- 
 able may with care be overcome. Speak low and 
 distinctly. 
 
 Hesitation in Speech. —Language is a tool. It 
 should be used with skill. Notice how many 
 speakers, both in public and in private, hesitate and 
 stammer. It is a mistake to prefix or add the glid- 
 ing syllables er or a to a word. It is unnecessary ; 
 it is a bad habit ; but it may be cured. 
 
 Use of Slang. — It is a mistake to use slang or 
 to i^epper one's speech with expletives. All extrav- 
 agance in language weakens the efi'ect. It is a 
 mistake to qualify every verb and adjective with 
 "awfully." Even the example of Plato does not 
 make it advisable. 
 
 Conceit. — Conceit is odious . It is generally a 
 mistake to talk about one's self. More interesting 
 topics may be easily found. 
 
 Mispronunciations. — Most of us pronounce 
 our own language inaccurately. In the majority of 
 
MISTAKES IN SPEAKING AND WRITING. 227 
 
 words there is authority for several pronunciations. 
 Then we may take our choice. A list of the com- 
 monest mistal^es is here appended. 
 Do not pronounce : 
 
 Abdomen for abf/omen ; 
 
 Acclimate for acc/miate ; 
 
 Akeret for accurate ; 
 
 Acrost for across ; 
 
 Acumen for acz^men ; 
 
 Admiralty for admiralty ; 
 
 AdiiU for adult ; 
 
 Adverse for arfyerse ; 
 
 A^ain for a^e?^ ,• 
 
 Aggrandize, for aggran- 
 dize; 
 
 Agil for do^il ; 
 
 Agriculturalist for agri- 
 culiMVisi ; 
 
 Alabaster for alabaster ; 
 
 ^Zbumen for al6tmien ; 
 
 Alms for aZias ; 
 
 ^^egro for al/egro ; 
 
 Allepathy for alZopathy ; 
 
 Al\y for ?dly ; 
 
 Almond for ahmond ; 
 
 Alms for ahmz ; 
 
 Araature for amateur ; 
 
 Ame?iable for amenable ; 
 
 Amenity for amenity ; 
 
 An'' for and ; 
 
 ^4?zcient for ainshent ; 
 
 Annilate for an^z^hilate ; 
 
 Antipodes for an^2p6des ; 
 
 Ai^ex for apex ; 
 
 Apotheosis for apoZAeo- 
 sis ; 
 
 Apparent for appairent; 
 
 Apricot for apricot ; 
 
 ^rab for ^rab ; 
 
 ^4re/^-etect for arketect ; 
 
 Artie for Arctic ; 
 
 Area for area ; 
 
 Areola for areola; 
 
 Ar^,a?^sas for ^rA:-an- 
 saiv ; 
 
 (Arquebus) arkebuse for 
 ark-we-bus ; 
 
 Sparrowgrass for aspar- 
 agus ; 
 
 Jspirant-for as^M'ant; 
 
 Atheneum for Athe72.eum ; 
 
 Audashus for audacious ; 
 
 Aureola for aureola ; 
 
 Avenoo for avenue ; 
 
 Avon for J.-von ; 
 
 Aivji for awful; 
 
228 
 
 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 (Bacillus) 6asillus for 
 
 ba-a7-lus. 
 (Bade) bade for bad ; 
 B-dnana for hiwiahna ; 
 Ball relief for bass re- 
 lief; 
 (Been) been for bin ; 
 Behemoth for behemoth ; 
 Be/ml for Belial ; 
 (Bicycle) h'lcycl for bi- 
 
 cicl; 
 Bitumen for biiwmen ; 
 Blasp/iemious for blas- 
 
 phe-mous ; 
 Black-guard for bldg- 
 
 gard ; 
 Boatswain for b6s7i ; 
 Bicnnet for bonnet ; 
 Bowsprit for 6osprit ; 
 Brigaiid for brigsLud ; 
 (Buoy) boy for booee ; 
 Callio2:»e for cal-k'-op-e ; 
 (Calm) cam for cahm ; 
 CameZ-Zeopard for cameZ- 
 
 opard ; 
 Camfire for camphor ; 
 (Caoutchouc) c a t h - 60- 
 
 chuk for koochook ; 
 CapiVlary for Capillary; 
 Caribbean forCaribZ^ean ; 
 
 Carotid for ca-ro^id ; 
 
 Catridge for cartridge ; 
 
 Castellan for castellan ; 
 
 Cas-tle for cas'l ; 
 
 Caucasus for Caucasus ; 
 
 (Chasten) chasn for 
 chasn ; 
 
 (Chicago) Chica/igo for 
 Chicawgo ; 
 
 Childern for children ; 
 
 ChiyaZrous for shzynl- 
 rous ; 
 
 (Cinchona) sinc^ona for 
 sin&ona ; 
 
 (Cocheneal) Coac/ieneal 
 for coZc/teneal ; 
 
 Cockatrise for cock-a- 
 trice (tris) ; 
 
 Cognomen for cogTwmen ; 
 
 (Column) colyum for 
 coZum ; 
 
 (Comely) comb-ly for 
 cumly ; 
 
 Comparable for compar- 
 able ; 
 
 Compro?7zise for com- 
 promize ; 
 
 Conch for konk ; 
 
 (7o7idolence for condo- 
 lence ; 
 
MISTAKES IN SPEAKING AND WRITING. 229 
 
 Confiscate for con^scate ; 
 
 Considable for consid- 
 erable ; 
 
 ConspivsiQj for consp^r- 
 aoy 
 
 Contravj for contrstvy ; 
 
 Coral for coral ; 
 
 Counsl for counsel ; 
 
 Coverlid for coverlet ; 
 
 Coward^ce for cowardis ; 
 
 CramheTYj for cran- 
 berry ; 
 
 Crik for creek ; 
 
 Crematory for crem-a- 
 tory ; 
 
 Crinoline for crinolin ; 
 
 Cw^inary for c?i-linary ; 
 
 Cupalo for cupola ; 
 
 (Curasao) Kew-ra-soar 
 for K66-ra-s6 ; 
 
 (Curtain) curtn for 
 curtin ; 
 
 CycZopean for cyclopean ; 
 
 Dandeline for dandelion ; 
 
 Bcm-'ish for i)anish ; 
 
 Daylia for dah-lia ; 
 
 Deaf (deef) for def ; 
 
 Debenture for de-beiit- 
 ure; 
 
 Decade for ^Zccade ; 
 
 i)ecadence for deca- 
 dence ; 
 Decorative for fZecora- 
 
 tive ; 
 Z)ecorous for decorous ; 
 Decreped for decrepit ; 
 De-fine-itive for defiiii- 
 
 tive; 
 Depo for station ; 
 Derilic for derelict ; 
 Desolate for desolate ; 
 (Desuetude) desooetood 
 
 for deswetude ; 
 Devastate for cZeyastate ; 
 Doo for dew ; 
 Directly for derectly ; 
 Disjnit-dnt for cZisputant ; 
 (Docile) do-sil or do-sile 
 
 for c/os-sil ; 
 Do/orous for dolorous ; 
 Do-Yic for dor-ic. 
 (Dromedary) dromedsirj 
 
 for drumedsiry. 
 Doo for due or deiu ; or 
 
 du for do. 
 (Dubious) doobious for 
 
 dewbious ; 
 Dook for duke ; 
 I)i7mstj for di/nnsty ; 
 Effut for effort : 
 
230 
 
 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Edible for eligible ; 
 Elumforelm; . 
 ^'Zecution for eZocntion ; 
 ^eneid for Aene'id ; 
 (Engine) enjine for en- 
 
 (English) English for 
 
 Inglish ; 
 £'?isilage for en-sigh- 
 
 lage; 
 Enthoosiasm for enthusi- 
 asm ; 
 (Epaulet) epulet for e2^o- 
 
 let; 
 (Epistle) e-pzs^Z for episl ; 
 (Equitable) equitsibl for 
 
 eA;vvitable ; 
 Er-a-to for ^r-ato ; 
 Jrysipilus for eresypilas ; 
 Espionage for espionage ; 
 European for Euro^^ean ; 
 EunVZeice forEu-r_?/c?-i-ce ; 
 Evenin for evening ; 
 Evry for every ; 
 (Evil) eve-il for evl ; 
 (Excursion) excurzhun 
 
 for exourshun ; 
 Exemplarfor egzemplar ; 
 Ex^:>a^riate for exjmtvi- 
 
 ate; 
 
 ExpZ^■cable for explic- 
 able ; 
 
 'Exquizit for ea^quisite ; 
 
 Extry for extra ; 
 
 (Extraordinary) extra- 
 ordinary for extrordi- 
 nary ; 
 
 Fairenheet for Fahr-en- 
 heit ; 
 
 Fanatic for ta,-7iaiiG ; 
 
 Fasset for faucet ; 
 
 FavonYe for f avorit ; 
 
 (February) Febuary for 
 Febrooary ; 
 
 Zi^ecund for/ecund ; 
 
 Fellah for fellow ; 
 
 (Feminine) feminine for 
 feminin ; 
 
 (Fertile) fertile iovfertil ; 
 
 Fi-delity for fid-elity ; 
 
 Figger for figure ; 
 
 Filiim for film ; 
 
 (Finale) fin-aZe for fin- 
 ah-le ; 
 
 (Flaccid) flassid for flak- 
 sid; 
 
 Forehead for for-ed ; 
 
 Forgit for forget ; 
 
 For?7u'<:Zable for formid- 
 able ; 
 
MISTAKES IN SPEAKING AND WRITING. 231 
 
 Fortnit for fortnight ; 
 Fragrnew^ary for fvag- 
 
 mentary ; 
 i^rw?^tispiece for frontis- 
 piece ; 
 FullcYwm. for fulcrum ; 
 (Furniture) furnichewer 
 
 for fur-u\t-y\\v ; 
 Futile iovfutil ; 
 (Gasoline) gasoleen for 
 
 gasoYm ; 
 (Gauntlet) gawntlet for 
 
 galintlet ; 
 Ge?zrully or gen-ally for 
 
 genevaWj ; 
 (Genuine) genuine for 
 
 genuin ; 
 (Gerund) jerund for 
 
 jerund ; 
 Gist ioY jist ; 
 Git for get ; 
 
 Gladiolus for gladzolus ; 
 God-iva for Go-c?i-va ; 
 Golden for goldn ; 
 GoncZola for ^o?^dola ; 
 Gor-illa for go-rilla ; 
 Oovemiunt for gov-ern- 
 
 ment ; 
 Gra-nery for gran-ery ; 
 Grat-is for gra-tis ; 
 
 Grev-i-ous for griev-ous ; 
 (rnmace for gvimace ; 
 Grim-aulkin for gri-mal- 
 
 kin ; 
 Gardeen for guardian ; 
 Hast-en for hasn; 
 Helum for helm ; 
 HercuZean for herculean ; 
 Hibernate for /izbernate ; 
 ^u'oglyphic for hi-er-o- 
 
 glyph-ic ; 
 Ho-lo-caust for hol-o- 
 
 caust ; 
 J7or-i-zon for ho-n-zon ; 
 Z?o-ro-scope for hor-o- 
 
 scope ; 
 Hos-pzY-able for hos-\}it- 
 
 a-ble ; 
 (Hough) huf for hok ; 
 Hung for hanged (of 
 
 criminals) ; 
 Hymeneal for hymeneal ; 
 Hl-poc-risy for hyp- 
 ocrisy ; 
 (lohxiQuxnon) itch-neumon 
 
 for iknumon; 
 /dea for irfea ; 
 I-deel for i-de-al. 
 Id-yl for ^-dyl ; 
 /Zlustrate for iUe^^strate ; 
 
232 
 
 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Im??2ejetly for im-??ie-di- 
 
 ate-ly ; 
 Impiously for imp-'i- 
 
 ously ; 
 Im-pZac-able for 'nw-xila- 
 
 cable ; 
 Iiiauo;erate for inauo^-u- 
 
 rate; 
 In-com-j9ar-able for in- 
 
 C07>iparable ; 
 In-cor-2^o-ral for in-cor- 
 
 j}0-re-al ; 
 In-rfec-o-rous for in-de- 
 
 co-rous ; 
 In-dus-iYj for ^?^-dus-try; 
 Inex-o-rable for m-ex- 
 
 orable ; 
 Inex7)^ic-able for m-cx- 
 
 plic-a-ble ; 
 In-hos2J^7able for inhos- 
 pitable ; 
 (Inmost) in-must for m- 
 
 most; 
 7?iquiry for in-^^m'-ry ; 
 Insex for insects ; 
 InsicZu-ous for in-sid-i- 
 
 ous; 
 In-^e-gral for ^>^-te-gral ; 
 Interesting for ^?^terest- 
 
 In-ter-locMtor for inter- 
 locutor ; 
 
 In-test-ine for in-iest-in ; 
 
 /ntrigue for intrigue ; 
 
 (Invalide) i?i-Ya,-leed for 
 in-va-lid ; 
 
 (Inveigle) in-ya-gl for 
 in-yee-gl ; 
 
 Ini'e?^tor3' for i7i-yen-to- 
 
 i-y; 
 
 I-rasA-able for i-ras-ci- 
 ble; 
 
 (Iron) i-ron for iurn ; 
 
 Ir-re^:)ar-able for \Yrep- 
 arable; 
 
 Irrevocable for \vrev-o- 
 cable ; 
 
 Eye-lalian for It-al-ian ; 
 
 I-vry for ivory ; 
 
 (7e?2-u-ary for Jan-u-ary ; 
 
 Jeojjardize for jeopard ; 
 
 Jeruzalem for Jerusa- 
 lem ; 
 
 (Jewel) jule for ju-el ; 
 
 (Jowl) jowl iovjole ; 
 
 Jug-ular for ju-gular ; 
 
 Ketch for catch ; 
 
 Ketchn or kitchn for 
 kitchen ; 
 
 Kiltie for kettle ; 
 
MISTAKES TN SPEAKING AND AVRITIXG. 233 
 
 (Kiln) kiln for kil; 
 Labi for la-hol ; 
 Labrer for laborer ; 
 ia-conism for lac-o- 
 
 nism; 
 Lac^oo^a for Lad-o-o-a ; 
 (Landau) lander or Ian- 
 do for Ian-daw ; 
 Lajy-el for la-pe^ ,• 
 Latent for ^a-tent ; 
 Latn for Lat-in ; 
 (Laundress) laivndress 
 
 for lahndress ; 
 (Leisure) lezh-ur for lee- 
 
 zhur ; 
 Lenth for length ; 
 Len-iant for le-niant ; 
 Le-pa?i-to for lep-an-to ; 
 ieper for lep-ev ; 
 Leth-2iY-g\Q, for \e-ihar- 
 
 gic; 
 Ljev-er for /ever ; 
 (Licorice) lic-eY-ish for 
 
 /^c-or-is ; 
 ia-loc for lilac ; 
 Livelong for livelong ; 
 (Loath) loth for loth ; 
 Lyceum for ly-ce-um ; 
 MsLnimillary for mamm'il- 
 
 lary ; 
 
 Ma-nor for manor ; 
 
 (Mansuetude) man-5t^-e- 
 tood forwaw-swe-tude ; 
 
 Man-tu-a-maker for maji- 
 tu-maker ; 
 
 Ma-ry-gold for 7nar- 
 ygold ; 
 
 Markit for market ; 
 
 Masculine for mascuUn ; 
 
 Mat-von for md-iron ; 
 
 Matron age for mat- 
 ron age ; 
 
 Mat-ron-ly for ma-tron- 
 
 Mattrass for mattress ; 
 (Measure) ma-zhur for 
 
 mezh-iir ; 
 (INIedicine) medsn for 
 
 rnede&m ; 
 (Meerschaum) mere- 
 
 shatvm iormairshowm ; 
 Mellah for mellow ; 
 (Menagery) menajery 
 
 for me)iahzhevy ; 
 Me7Zi?igitis for meningi- 
 tis ; 
 Me^aZlurgy for metal- 
 
 urgj ; 
 Microscope for mzcro- 
 
 scope ; 
 
234 
 
 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Microscopy for micros- 
 copy ; 
 
 Mersicle for mir-acle ; 
 
 Misc/icvas for mis-chie- 
 vous ; 
 
 Mis-chuf for mis-chief ; 
 
 Mois-ten for moisn. 
 
 MoTxaco for Mon-a-co ; 
 
 Mo-nolog for monologue ; 
 
 (i\Iori)hine) morpheenfor 
 morfin ; 
 
 Morsl for morsel ; 
 
 (Mountain) mounting or 
 mountaine for mount- 
 in; 
 
 ilfwseum for mu-^e-uni ; 
 
 (Myrmedon) mur-me-don 
 for meer-me-don ; 
 
 INIy-thology for myth- 
 ology ; 
 
 Necked for ?^d-ked ; 
 
 Nap for nape ; 
 
 Nasent for 7tas-cent ; 
 
 (National) ?i(2-shun-al for 
 nash-un-3l ; 
 
 (Nausea) naw-see-a for 
 naw-she-a ; 
 
 (Ne'er) nere for nair ; 
 
 (Nicotine) mc-o-tee?i for 
 mc-o-tin : 
 
 (None) none for nun ; 
 
 ObcZia-ate for o6-durate ; 
 
 0-6e-sity for ob-es-ity ; 
 
 Ob-sce-nity for obscen- 
 ity, 
 
 (Official) o-fish-al for of- 
 fishal ; 
 
 Of t-en for ofn ; 
 
 Old-en for oldn ; 
 
 Om-brellar for umbrella ; 
 
 Onerous for o?i-er-ous ; 
 
 Op-ponent for op-po- 
 nent ; 
 
 Or-inj for or-ange ; 
 
 Or-de-sil for or-de-al ; 
 
 (Orifice) o-ri-fis for or-i- 
 fis; 
 
 (Original) orig-o-nsd for 
 o-ny-i-nal ; 
 
 Ovevt for o-vert ; 
 
 (Oxide) ox-eyed for ox- 
 id ; 
 
 Pa-mc-la for Pam-ela ; 
 
 Pantomine for pan-to- 
 mirae ; 
 
 Pajy-yrus for pa-py-rus ; 
 
 (Paraffine) parafee7^ for 
 ^jara-fin ; 
 
 Parsl for par-eel ; 
 
 Pa-ri-ah for Par-iah : 
 
MISTAKES IX SPEAKING AND WRITING. 235 
 
 Parislpl forpar-ti-ci-ple ; 
 Pa-ta-tali for po-ta-to ; 
 Partridge for partridge ; 
 Path-OS for pa-thos ; 
 Fat-viot for /9«-triot ; 
 (Pedagogue) pedagog for 
 
 2Jecl-ii-gog ; 
 (Pedagogy) pet^agoggy 
 
 for ped-d-go-}y ; 
 Pec^estal for petZ-es-tal ; 
 Fegasus for Peg-dsus • 
 Pensl for penoil ; 
 Piny for pc-o-ny ; 
 Per-ul for peril ; 
 Persia {Perzhid) for Per- 
 
 shia ; 
 Plia-ton for pha-e-ton ; 
 (Pharmaceutic) pharma- 
 
 kutic for i3har-ma-52^- 
 
 tic ; 
 (Pharmacopoeia) \)\v<iY- 
 
 macopea for pharma- 
 
 co-pe-a ; 
 Phys-i-o?z-omy for phys- 
 
 i-o^-no-my ; 
 (Pianist) pee-a-nist for 
 
 pee-a^-nist ; 
 (Pigeon) pij-in for pij- 
 
 on; 
 Pinchers for ^^"'i-cers ; 
 
 (Piquant) ])\kant for jnk- 
 ant; 
 
 Plac-a-ble forp^a-ca-ble; 
 
 Pla-^5^■-num for plai-i- 
 num ; 
 
 P^e-bee-an for ple-6e-ian ; 
 
 Ple^/iora for plet/i-o-va ; 
 
 Poe^as^e-er for poet-as- 
 ter; 
 
 ^o-lice for po-lice ; 
 
 Polliwog for polliwig ; 
 
 (Pompeii) Pompey-eye 
 for Pompa-ye ; 
 
 Pot-able for po-table ; 
 
 Potentate for po-tentate ; 
 
 Pre-bend for pre6-end ; 
 
 Pres-e-dence for pre-ce- 
 dence ; 
 
 Pre-cize-ly for pre-cise- 
 
 PrecZ-i-lec-tion forpre-di- 
 
 lec-tion ; 
 Pre-/er-able for pref-QV- 
 
 a-ble ; 
 Pre-] ate for pre^-ate ; 
 Prc?7i-at-toor for pre-ma- 
 
 ture ; 
 P?'c-sage for pre.s-age ; 
 (Prescient) presh-ent for 
 
 pre-she-ent ; 
 
236 
 
 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 (Presentation) pre-zenta- 
 
 tion for ^^re^J-entation ; 
 Pre-zent-iment for pre- 
 
 sejit-imeut : 
 (Presumptuous) j9 r e - 
 
 zum-shus for pre-zump- 
 
 tu-ous ; 
 Pretense for pretense ; 
 Pretty for iwiiti} ; 
 'Frevejit-ii-tiye for pre- 
 
 ve?ii-\Ye ; 
 Tnsti?ie for ^mtin ; 
 Priv-a-cy for pri-YSi-cy ; 
 Pro-hi-ty for ^j>ro6-ity ; 
 (Process) pro-cess for 
 
 pros-ess ; 
 Pro-dnce for prod-uce ; 
 Pro-duct for prod-uct ; 
 Pro-gress for j^ro^f-ress ; 
 Pro-ject-ile for pro-ject-il ; 
 Prom-ul-gate for pro- 
 
 mul-gtite ; 
 Pvo-sce7i-'i-um for pro-sce- 
 
 niuni ; 
 Pro- testation for prot-est- 
 
 ation ; 
 Pro-tho-?zo-ta-ry for pro- 
 
 thon--d-lii-ry ; 
 Pu-er-i7e for pu-er-il ; 
 Punkin for jjump-kin ; 
 
 Purport forp?^rport ; 
 
 Pyrimedal for pyram-i- 
 dal ; 
 
 (Pyrites) py-rites for pi- 
 ri-tes ; 
 
 Py-ro-technic for pyr-o- 
 tek-nic ; 
 
 Py-tho-ness for pyth-o- 
 ness; 
 
 (Quay) kay or quay for 
 kee ; 
 
 Quog-mire for quag- 
 mire ; 
 
 (Quoit) kwate for qwoit ; 
 
 Eed-ish. for racZ-ish ; 
 
 (Raj^ine) rapeen for rap- 
 in ; 
 
 (Raspberry) ro2;-berry 
 for raz-berry ; 
 
 Ruther for rather ; 
 
 (Ration) rash-un for ra- 
 slion ; 
 
 (Rational) rashonal for 
 r«s/i-on-al ; 
 
 Pe-ly for re-ally ; 
 
 Pebl for reb-el ; 
 
 Pe-ciprocity for rec-i- 
 procity ; 
 
 Pec-on-ize for rec-og- 
 nize: 
 
MISTAKES IN SPEAKING AND WRITING. 237 
 
 Be-co\\ect for rec-ollect ; 
 
 i?e-con-iioitre for rec-on- 
 noitre ; 
 
 Re-knd for record ; 
 
 i?e-creant for rec-reant ; 
 
 Refluent for re/-lu-ent; 
 
 Re-med-lahle for reme- 
 diable ; 
 
 Repar-able for rep-a-ra- 
 ble; 
 
 BeptWe for rep-til ; 
 
 Rep?^table for rep-iitable ; 
 
 i?es-piratory for respi-ra- 
 tory ; 
 
 Re-?;o-cable for rev-o- ca- 
 ble; 
 
 Runiatiz for rheu-ma- 
 tism ; 
 
 (Rhubarb) rubub for 
 r/ioo-barb ; 
 
 Re-bald for n6-ald ; 
 
 Besk for risk ; 
 
 i?obiist for robust ; 
 
 iio-nio-la for Bom-o-la ; 
 
 Ro-se-o-la for ro-;2e-ola ; 
 
 (Rothschild) Roth-child 
 for Rote-sheeld; 
 
 (Route) rowt for root ; 
 
 *Sa-ccr-do-tal for sas-er- 
 dotal ; 
 
 >S^a-cra-ment for sac-ra- 
 
 ment ; 
 Sa-cri-fice for sac-rifice; 
 Sa-cri-lij-us for sac-ri-le- 
 
 gious ; 
 Sa-gash-us for SB,-ga- 
 
 cious ; 
 (Said) sade for sed ; 
 Sal-ic for Sa-lic ; 
 Sa-leen for sa-line ; 
 Sav-er for sal-ver ; 
 Sanguine for sangwin ; 
 Sarc^owyx for 5«r-do-nyx ; 
 >Sassaparilla for sar-sa- 
 
 pa-ri71a ; 
 Satisfised for satisfied ; 
 5^aturnineforsat-ur-nine ; 
 Sassy for sau-cy ; 
 5eA;-a-tary for secretary; 
 Sickl pear for seck-el 
 
 pear ; 
 (Seneschal) sen-es-cal 
 
 for seweshal ; 
 Senil for se-nile; 
 Short-livd for short-lived ; 
 Sreek for shriek ; 
 Srill for shrill ; 
 Srink for shrink ; 
 Srug for shrug ; 
 Si-mo-ny for sim-ony ; 
 
238 
 
 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Sence for since ; 
 
 Siti-ecure for sj-ne-cure ; 
 
 Slick for sleek ; 
 
 (Sobriquet) soobriket or 
 sou-bri-ka for 5o-bri- 
 ka ; 
 
 Soft-en for sofn ; 
 
 So-le-cism for sol-e-cism ; 
 
 Sjyazum for spasm ; 
 
 (Specialty) spesh-i-aW- 
 ty for sjjesh-ialtj ; 
 
 Stomp for stamp ; 
 
 Ste?it for stint ; 
 
 Stolid for stol-id ; 
 
 Strenth for strength ; 
 
 (Suavity) soo-av-ity for 
 svvav-ity ; 
 
 Subjected for sub-^ec^ed ; 
 
 Sech for such ; 
 
 Sud'n for sudden ; 
 
 (Suite) soot for sweet ; 
 
 Soopl for suj^iAe ; 
 
 Spose for sup-po^e ; 
 
 Sup-prise for sur-prise ; 
 
 Sword for sord ; 
 
 Tab-er-?zac-cle for iab-er- 
 nacle ; 
 
 Tar-tarean for Tarta- 
 rean ; 
 
 Tossl for tassel ; 
 
 Tatter-de-7?ia-lion for 
 
 tatterde?7z«Z-ion ; 
 Tah-vern for tavern ; 
 Tit for teat ; 
 Tele^rop/ier for teleg- 
 
 rapher ; 
 Telegraphj for teZepfra- 
 
 phy; 
 
 Tenable for ^e?zable ; 
 
 Tenet for ^e?zet ; 
 
 Tepid for tepid ; 
 
 (Terpsichore) Terpsi- 
 core for Terp-5ic-or-e ; 
 
 T/m-lia for Tha-Zi-a ; 
 
 Thyme for tyme ; 
 
 TickeWsh. for ticklish ; 
 
 Tin-y for ti-ny ; 
 
 ToZstoi for Tol-sZo-ee ; 
 
 To-130-graphic for top- 
 ographic ; 
 
 Tor-toise for tortis; 
 
 (Turgenief or Tourgue- 
 nieff) Tz^r-ge-nef for 
 Toor-^az?z-yef; 
 
 Toward for toward 
 (tord); 
 
 Travl for travel ; 
 
 Tremendyus for ivemen- 
 dous ; 
 
 Tri-bune for irib-nne ; 
 
MISTAKES IX SPEAKING AND WRITING. 239 
 
 (Troche) trochy for tro- 
 
 kee ; 
 Toon for tune ; 
 Tyr-an-nic for ty-ran-nic ; 
 Ty-van-uy for tyr-anny ; 
 Unk-shus for iinc-tu-ous ; 
 Unit'ocal for xxniv-o-cdil ; 
 Un-pre-ce-dented for un- 
 
 prec-edented ; 
 Fa-ga-ry for Yagarj ; 
 Valuble for val-u-a-ble ; 
 Fariacose for varicose ; 
 Var-i-loid for var-ioloid ; 
 Vaws for vase ; 
 Ve-Aemence for ve-he- 
 
 mence ; 
 Ve-/ie-ment for ve-he- 
 
 ment ; 
 Yelvit for velvet ; 
 Fe^rinary for vet-er-in- 
 
 ary; 
 VideZ^cet for Yidelicet ; 
 (Villain) villun f or fzVin ; 
 YincZicatory for ?;m-dica- 
 
 tory; 
 
 I (Violoncello) violin-cello 
 
 for vee-o-lon-c/ieMo ; 
 Virsigo for virago ; 
 Vis-count for vi-count ; 
 (Visor) vi-zor for viz-or ; 
 Voc-a-ble for t'o-cable ; 
 Vol-a-tile for I'oZatil ; 
 Wagner for Vahg-ner; 
 (Weapon) we23'n for 
 
 wexPn ; 
 Worf for wharf ; 
 Wich for which ; 
 Windah for window ; 
 Wisky for whiskey ; 
 Windicrd for windward; 
 (Women) wimun for 
 
 wim-en ; 
 Wunt for won't ; 
 Wuth for worth ; 
 (Wrestle) rassl for res'l ; 
 (Yacht} yat for yot ; 
 Yit for yet ; 
 
 Zo-di-ac-al for zo-<:Z^■-acal ; 
 Zoo-oloo^ical for z6-olooi- 
 
 cal. 
 
240 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 TERMS MISAPPLIED. 
 
 Mrs. Malaprop, Mrs. Partington, and the Due de 
 Beaufort are conspicuous examples of persons using 
 inappropriate or wrong words to express their 
 ideas. But we see frequently not only in the hasty 
 work of newspaper writers, but even in the produc- 
 tions of famous authors, mistakes that should have 
 been avoided. Many words, judged by their deriva- 
 tion, are used incorrectly in common speech, but 
 have so long i^assed current that, like coins re- 
 stamped, it is idle to object to their use. Examples 
 of some of the more popular mistakes in the use of 
 words here follow : 
 Ability for capacity. Capacity in comprehension ; 
 
 ability in execution. 
 Above for more than or beyond. The river is 
 above fifty yards wide. The task was above his 
 strength. 
 Administer for deal. A blow administered. 
 Aggravate for exasperate, i^rovoke, irritate. His 
 
 conduct aggravated me. 
 Against for when. Have it ready against I come. 
 Aggregate for amount to. The collection aggre- 
 gated $500. The two purses given the min- 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 241 
 
 ister aggregated $1,000. Aggregate is a transi- 
 tive verb. 
 
 Ain^t for isn't. AinH it nice ! 
 
 All not for not all. All the members were not 
 present. 
 
 Allow for think, opine, or claim. He allows he has 
 the right on his side. 
 
 Alternation for succession. An alternation of 
 suitors. 
 
 Alternative for course. He had three alternatives 
 left. 
 
 Amount for degree. He has attained a remarkable 
 amount of perfection [degree of excellence]. 
 
 Antagonize for oppose. He antagonized the Dean's 
 views. 
 
 Any for at all. I am not reading any now. She 
 does not hear any. 
 
 Appreciate for value or esteem. I appreciate him 
 highly. 
 
 Approach for address, appeal to. The party 
 approached the Park Commissioner. 
 
 Apt for likel}^ or liable. He is apt to be fishing. 
 If you speak you will be apt to cause trouble. 
 
 As for that. I don't know as I shall. 
 
 As for so (after a negative) . John is not as good 
 as William. 
 
 Aside for apart. Aside from this consideration. 
 
 As though for as if. It seems as though he were 
 crazy. [This use of though is as old as Chau- 
 cer, who, in speaking of the miller, says : 
 
242 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 " His herd as ony sowe or fox was reed 
 And thertohrood as though it were a spade.^^ 
 
 The translators of the Bible made use of it. It 
 is to be found in nearly every writer of English, 
 and in poetry is certainly justifiable. Yet in 
 ordinary writing as if is preferable.] 
 
 At for by. The house was sold at auction. 
 
 Avocation for vocation. His avocation prevents 
 him from going into society. [Etymologically 
 the distinction between these two words justi- 
 fies their separation ; it gives a useful term of 
 contract between one's duties and one's diver- 
 sions.] 
 
 Badly for very much. I shall miss you badly. 
 
 Balance for rest or remainder. He sold the balance 
 of the edition. 
 
 Be done with for have done with. He said he soon 
 would be done with it. 
 
 Beat for defeat. We beat the enemy. 
 
 Before for rather than. He chooses death before 
 disgrace. 
 
 Benedict for Benedick. The young man has re- 
 cently become a Benedict. [Benedick, as a 
 byword for a newly married man, comes from 
 Benedick, the young gentleman in " Much Ado 
 About Xothing," who ridicules love and finally 
 marries Beatrice. A Benedict is either one of 
 the fourteen popes of this name, or else a 
 monk of the order of the Benedictines. For a 
 bachelor the name "Benedict" is, however, 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 243 
 
 allowable, as it is probably not the result of a 
 
 confusion with the name of Shakespeare's hero, 
 
 but an allusion to the celibacy of the Benedic- 
 tine sect.] 
 Between for among. Betiveen us three. [Between 
 
 is used only of two ; among of more than two.] 
 Better for more than. He received better than five 
 
 dollars. 
 Bi-weekly for semi-weekly. A bi-weekly steamei 
 
 sailing every other Saturday. [Bi-weekly means 
 
 twice a week.] 
 Blame it on for charge or accuse. He blamed it 
 
 on me. 
 Bogus for worthless or fraudulent. A bogus coin. 
 Both alike for alike. They both look alike. 
 Bound for doomed, destined, or determined. It is 
 
 bound to fail. I am bound to win. 
 But for only or that. The others but gave a cent. 
 But for only or that or than. I don't ^doubt but he 
 
 will come. No other excuse but this was given. 
 Cablegram for cable despatch. A cablegram from 
 
 London. 
 Calculate for purpose, intend. I calculate to go to 
 
 Europe this summer. 
 Calligraphy for chirography. His calligraphy is 
 
 illegible. 
 Can for may. Can I have some more strawberries ? 
 Capacious for large. There was a capacious rent 
 
 in the bottom of the shij). 
 Centrifugal for tangential. [When a wet mop is 
 
244 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 spun round to dry it, the water does not fly 
 from the centre, that is, centrifugally, but from 
 the edo-e, and at rio^ht anofles to a line drawn 
 from the centre ; that is, at a tangent, or 
 sideways. You can simulate this fact by 
 whirling a stick round and round and suddenly 
 letting it go, — not throwing it, — when it will 
 fly away, not in a straight line from the 
 shoulder, but sideways. The waves made by 
 dropping a stone into a pond, the light from 
 the sun, and sound and heat are examples of 
 centrifugal force.] 
 
 Claim for assert, maintain. He claimed that he 
 had lost his pocketbook. 
 
 Clever for good-natured. He is a clever fellow. 
 
 Condign for severe. He deserves condign [that is, 
 deserved] punishment. 
 
 Contemptible for contemptuous. I hold a contempt- 
 ible opinion of him. 
 
 Creditably for credibly. He \s creditably informed 
 of the thing. 
 
 Cyclone for tornado or hurricane. A terrible cyclone 
 struck the ship. 
 
 Denude for exhausted. The lake was denuded of 
 its fish. 
 
 Deputize for depute. He was deputized to go to 
 the king. 
 
 Description for kind. He had no furs of any 
 description. 
 
 Deteriorate from for detract from. " Does it in 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 245 
 
 your eyes deteriorate from Milton's peculiar 
 greatness that he could not have given us the 
 conception of Falstaif ?" (Dean Farrar.) 
 
 Develops for turns out, becomes known. It devel- 
 ops that six men were engaged in the con- 
 spiracy. 
 
 Different to for different from. It is different to 
 what it used to be. 
 
 Directly for when or as soon as. Directly he came 
 in he began his work. 
 
 Dirt for earth or loam. They built a dirt road. 
 
 Disposition for disposal. What disposition shall I 
 make of the MS. ? 
 
 Disremember for forget. I disremember when it 
 took place. 
 
 Dock for wharf. He fell off the dock. 
 
 Don't for doesn't. He don't do it. 
 
 Drank for drunk. I have drank the medicine. 
 
 Each other for one another (of more than two). 
 The three women kissed each other. 
 
 Eleo^ant for beautiful. This is an elegant morning. 
 
 Endorse for approve. I e?ido?'se this sentiment. 
 
 Enthuse for to grow or make enthusiastic. Her 
 rendition of the song enthused him ! I was 
 real enthused ! 
 
 Epithet for term of abuse or byword. We are told, 
 in a recent text-book on physiography, that cer- 
 tain islands " have been called the ' Brooches of 
 the Sea,' and well deserve the epithet from their 
 attractiveness." [Instead of epithet, of course, 
 
246 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 metaphor should have been used.] All ad- 
 jectives, whether opprobrious or comiDliment- 
 ary are epithets ; also nouns used as adjectives, 
 or having the descriptive functions of adjectives, 
 such as titles of honor, are epithets; e.g.. Lord 
 Wolseley, Sir John, Cardinal Newman, Will- 
 iam the Conqueror, Pater jEneas, Washington, 
 the father of his country. Such terms as fool, 
 liar, brute, are not epithets, but their adjectives, 
 foolish, lying, brutal, are. An epithet does not 
 necessarily mean anything abusive ; the words 
 beautiful, homely, truthful, pious, are epithets. 
 
 Equally as well for equally well. His autograph 
 would do equally as well. 
 
 Every for all possible. We have taken every pains, 
 and extended him every courtesy. 
 
 Every now and then for now and then. He comes 
 to see us every now and then. 
 
 Expect for suppose. I expect you were sick yester- 
 day. 
 
 Extend for show. 
 
 Female for woman. [This use of female was com- 
 mon in fiction a few years ago, but better taste 
 discards it.] 
 
 Final completion for completion. On its final com- 
 pletion the store will be used by its builders. 
 
 Find for provide. The pupils will find their own 
 books. 
 
 Fix for arrange, repair, etc. He fixed her hair. 
 The clock stopped, but I fxed it. He fixed up 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 247 
 
 and went. [Fix has been called "the American 
 word of words." It is a word of all work. 
 Good taste would suggest discrimination and 
 variety in the choice of verbs. Fix means to 
 establish.] 
 
 Fly for flee. The enemy was seen to fly. [That 
 would be correct if it referred to Harpies.] 
 
 Folks for folk. My folks are well. [This plural of 
 folk, which is itself plural, has become so com- 
 mon as to be almost justified.] 
 
 For the future for thereafter or afterwards. They 
 resided in the city /or the future. 
 
 Fraud for impostor. The court proved to be a 
 fraud. 
 
 Future for subsequent. His future career is un- 
 known. 
 
 Gents for gentlemen. Oents wear pants. [When 
 possible it is better to say men than gentlemen.] 
 
 Goods for material. She had a dress made out of 
 excellent goods. 
 
 Gums for rubbers. It is raining; wear your gums. 
 [Some purists object also to the use of the 
 word rubbers, and would insist on using the 
 word rubber-shoes or over-shoes.] 
 
 Had ought for ought. He had ought to go. 
 
 Hain't for have not. I hain't got it. 
 
 Handicapped for hampered or hindered. He was 
 badly handicapped by his accident. 
 
 Handy for near by. The iDost-oflice is handy to the 
 house. 
 
248 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Have [has] got for have [has] . He has got a bi- 
 cycle. 
 
 Healthy for wholesome. Oranges are healthy eat- 
 ing. [We may speak of healthy surroundings, 
 wholesome advice, healthful occupations.] 
 
 Het for heated. The room was het by a stove. 
 
 However for how. However could you do so ? 
 
 Home for at home. Is your mother home ? 
 
 Hung for hanged; of persons. The defaulter 
 hung himself. 
 
 Hurry up for make haste. He told her to hurry 
 up and come down. 
 
 Idea for opinion. It is my idea that it will rain 
 to-morrow. 
 
 If for whether. I doubt if the letter ever reached 
 him. 
 
 In for into. He threw the boy in the water. He 
 went in the house. 
 
 In evidence for prominent, or conspicuous, or even 
 present. At Mrs. Jones' Count Gold-hunter 
 was in evidence. 
 
 In respect of for with resj^ect to. We have con- 
 sidered the matter in respect of which we were 
 talking. 
 
 Inaugurate for begin or open. The exercises were 
 inaugurated with music by the band. 
 
 [Indices is not the proper English plural of index 
 in the sense of a table of contents. The Latin 
 plural indices applies to mathematical signs, 
 and to the medical equivalent to critical days. 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 249 
 
 It is better to preseiTe a similar distinction also 
 with the two plurals of appendix.] 
 
 Individual for person. There were six distin- 
 guished individuals present. 
 
 Inside of for wathin ; of time. He will be here 
 inside of two weeks. 
 
 Kids for gloves or children. She told the kids to 
 put on their kids ! 
 
 Kind of a for kind of. What kind of a speech did 
 he make ? 
 
 Know as for know that. I don't know as I can. 
 
 Last for latter (of two) . There are two houses on 
 that side. You want to go to the last one. 
 
 Latter for last (of more than two). There were 
 six books in a row. I took the latter. 
 
 Lay for lie. There let him lay. [Lay is a tran- 
 sitive verb. A hen lays eggs. A mason lays 
 bricks. The preterit is laid: The hen laid 
 eggs. I laid the book on the table. Lie is 
 intransitive. I lie on the ground. The preterit 
 is lay : I lay on the ground. I laid my cloak 
 down and lay on it.] 
 
 Learn for teach. He learned me to draw. 
 
 Leave for let or allow. Leave go ! Leave alone of'ii ! 
 
 Less for fewer. There were not less than ten appli- 
 cants. 
 
 Liable for likely. He is liable to break his leg. 
 
 Like for as. He sjieaks like I do. [Like requires 
 an object only. As requires a verb expressed 
 or understood. It is as yellow as gold ] 
 
250 ^ THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Like for as if. It looks like it would snow. 
 
 Lit for lighted. The gas was lit at six o'clock. 
 
 Loan for lend. I will loan you a book. 
 
 Locate for settle. He located near Seattle. 
 
 Lots for many or much. We have lots of apples 
 this year, and lots of trouble in gathering them. 
 
 Lunch for luncheon. Gents who wear pants eat 
 lunch. 
 
 Lurid for bright or red. The sky was lit with a 
 lurid glow. When he came in he gave us a 
 lurid description of the fire. [Lurid means jjale 
 or gloomy.] 
 
 Majority for most. The majority of the bonds were 
 sold at par. 
 
 Materialize for appear. We expected them Sunday, 
 but they did not unatcrialize. 
 
 Mind for obey. Boys should mind their parents. 
 
 Monogram for monograph. He wrote a monogram, 
 on church music. 
 
 Most for almost or nearly. I see him most every 
 day. 
 
 Mutual for common. Mutual enmities cement 
 friendships, [This use of mutual for common, 
 called by Macaulay a vulgarism, has its justi- 
 fication in a genuine need in the language. 
 Nevertheless, as in the example given, it often 
 introduces a wrong concept, and should be 
 used sparingly. There can be no misconstruc- 
 tion of the epithet mutual in " Our Mutual 
 Friend," for instance : it sounds better than 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 251 
 
 our common friend, and is not open to the pos- 
 sible secondary meaning of common.] 
 
 Name for mention. I never named the affair to 
 him. 
 
 Neither, or, for neither, nor. Neither John or I 
 were present. [There seems to be a conflict of 
 authority regarding the use of the alternatives . 
 Thus the Standard Dictionary upholds the use of 
 nor after not. But it seems like piling up double 
 negatives to say. Not John nor William nor 
 Thomas. The not governs the whole, and one 
 should say, Not John or William or Thomas. 
 On the other hand, it is correct to say, John 
 did not sj^eak, nor did I. So, also, after never. 
 I never saw Shakespeare or Milton, is correct, 
 when nor would be wrong.] 
 
 Nicely for ivell. I am nicely to-day. 
 
 No use for of no use. It is no use complaining. 
 [Better, It is of no use to complain.] 
 
 Nothing like as for not nearly so. Cuba is nothing 
 like as pleasant as Hawaii. 
 
 On for by or in. The book is sold on subscription. 
 I came on the cars. [The English ])YQiev inthe 
 street to on the street. But owing to the dis- 
 tinction between on the street and on the side- 
 walk, the American locution will undoubtedly 
 prevail. It is certainly logical and defensible. 
 When a man says he lives "in Fifth Avenue" 
 he seems to imply an out-of-door existence not 
 conveyed by the term " on Fifth Avenue."] 
 
252 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Only for except. The electrics will not stop only 
 at the white posts. [Only is the sworn enemy 
 of accuracy and elegance. It should be placed 
 next the word or j^hrase that it modifies. Thus 
 Mr. Aldrich, in his poem, writes, "I only died 
 last night." But surely, it may be argued, 
 language is not so formal and ironclad that a 
 poet must turn his poetry into prose in order 
 to be precise. Not at all ! And all that one 
 would wish is that a writer or speaker should 
 not sacrifice sense to slipshod haste. If the 
 meaning is plain, euphony is preferable to pre- 
 ciseness, as in the sentence, " lie only lived for 
 their sakes." There seems to be a similar fa- 
 tality about misplacement attaching to the 
 words also, chiefly, scarcely. A little thought 
 will lead one to an instinctive sense of the 
 proper place for these adverbs.] 
 
 Overflown for overflowed. The pond has overflown 
 its shores. 
 
 Own for confess. I oiun I was wrong. 
 
 Pants for trousers or breeches. There is less ex- 
 cuse for this vulgar contraction than there is 
 for gents, which has indeed good old English 
 authority. 
 
 Party for person. Are you the parly I met last 
 night ? 
 
 Patronage for custom. John Johnson, successor to 
 John Smith, solicits your patronage. 
 
 Per for a. This tea is sold for $1.00 j^er j)ound. 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 253 
 
 Three dollars per volume. [Per should be used 
 only before Lathi words : jjer annum, per cen- 
 tum, etc.] 
 
 Perpetually for continually. Careless writers per- 
 petually misuse will for shall. [There is a 
 distinction worth preserving in the use of the 
 words constant, continual, continuous, per- 
 petual, and their adverbs. The careless writer 
 that uses one word for another may not make 
 the mistake frequently, but misuses it whenever 
 the chance occurs : he constantli/ misuses will for 
 shall. Sometimes by accident the careless writer 
 may use the word correctly : he continually uses 
 will for shall . Perpetually gives an exaggerated 
 concept. It means more than incessant. The 
 perpetual flow of a river: the incessant may 
 cease ; the perpetual continues for ever ! ] 
 
 Perspicuity for perspicacity. He is a man of great 
 perspicuity. [Perspicuity means clearness. 
 Perspicacity means clear-sighted, keen. Per- 
 spicuity is objective, i^erspicacity subjective. A 
 person of perspicacity exj)resses himself with 
 25erspicuity.] 
 
 Pianiste for pianist. The pianiste jjerformed her 
 solo handsomely. [Pianist is English ; pianiste 
 is French ; both are used without change of sex 
 termination.] 
 
 Plead for pleaded. He pl.ead liis cause. lie has 
 plead his cause. [Here pleaded should be used 
 in both cases.] 
 
254 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Portion for part. In wh?it portio7i of the country do 
 you re5^tZe? [It is, however, correct to ask at a 
 hotel to be served a single portion.] 
 
 Posted for informed. He is well posted as to his 
 duties. 
 
 Predicate for predict. It is impossible to jiredicate 
 what he will do. On the other hand, predict is 
 sometimes used for predicate. 
 
 Presumptive for presumptuous. He was exceed- 
 ingly presumptive in his demands. 
 
 Preventative for preventive. Quinine is a prevenl- 
 ative for chills and fever. [The rule, in the 
 formation of adjectives from nouns ending in 
 ation, is to add ative, e.g., communication — 
 communicative ; representation — representa- 
 tive ; and from nouns ending in ion to add live, 
 e.g. , deception — deceptive ; prevention — j)re- 
 ventive.] 
 
 Previous for previously. Previous to his coming I 
 saw him. 
 
 Privilege for right. Ouv jirivilege is universal suf- 
 frage. [A privilege is a special or peculiar 
 right, or not a right at all.] 
 
 Propose for purpose. I propose to go to the theatre 
 this evening. 
 
 Proven for proved. It was 2^f'oven that he was a 
 forger. 
 
 Quite for rather. It is quite a warm day. [Quite 
 means fully, completely.] Is the gentleman 
 quite done ? [It is colloquial to use it Avith the 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 255 
 
 indefinite article to mean considerable, or with 
 an article to mean a little. Nevertheless, out 
 of colloquialisms grows racy idiomatic English. 
 And such phrases as "He cuts quite a dash" 
 atone by their vigor for lack of elegance.] 
 
 Raise for rear. She raised three children. [Had 
 this term been applied to pigs it would be 
 correct. It is also incorrect to sj)eak of raising 
 rent.] 
 
 Rarely for very. It was a rarely beautiful even- 
 ing. [It is a moot point whether to use rarely 
 or rare in such a sentence as : It is rarely that 
 one hears of such an accident. Rarely means 
 infrequently, and although it is better to say 
 "One rarely hears," the j^ai'iphrasis may be 
 defended.] 
 
 Rarely ever for rarely if ever. I rarely ever see 
 him. 
 
 Real for very. Ain't she real cute? [Those who 
 use this vulgarism are apt to pronounce it as if 
 it were spelt reel.'] 
 
 Rendition for rendering or performance. Patti gave 
 a superb rendition of her encore ! [Rendition 
 is properly applied to the yielding up of a for- 
 tress or the trying of lard.] 
 
 Replace for displace. The school committee re- 
 placed the algebra by geometry. [Often also 
 replace is used where take the place or places 
 of would be better. The great orators have 
 gone : who will replace them ?] 
 
256 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE, 
 
 Retire for withdrawn or draw out. The govern- 
 ment has bsgun to retire the paper currency. 
 [Some persons wishing to be overnice speak of 
 retiring instead of going to bed.] 
 
 Rugged for sturdy, robust. He is a rugged boy. 
 
 Ruination for ruin. It will be the ruination of him. 
 
 Run for manage. Who runs his business for him ? 
 
 Sabbath for Sunday. I will come next Sabbath. 
 
 Seldom ever for seldom if ever, or seldom or never. 
 We seldom ever meet. Seldom or ever is mean- 
 ingless. 
 
 Set for sit. Is the hen setting'} Take a seat and set 
 down. [One sets the hen ; but the hen sits on 
 the eggs.] 
 
 Settle for pay. When did he settle his bill ? 
 
 Simply for absolutely. The concert was simply de- 
 licious. 
 
 Since for ago. I came a week since. Since when is 
 tautological. My tire was punctured ; since when 
 I have not ridden. Since when did he fail ? 
 
 Smart for fashionable. A number of the smart set 
 are sailing next month. 
 
 Some for somewhat. It rained some. I think some 
 of buying a seashore residence. 
 
 Some place for somewhere. I have lost my purse. 
 I must have left it some place. 
 
 State for say. He stated that he was forty-six. 
 [State means to set out the particulars in detail.] 
 
 Stop for stay. At wiiat hotel are you staj^j^ing ? 
 [To stop means to cease.] 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 257 
 
 Subsequent for subsequently. The peace was made 
 subsequent to their defeat. 
 
 Supposititious for imaginary, hypothetical. In the 
 stqjjjosiiilious event of his coming, you will 
 cause his arrest. [Supposititious means coun- 
 terfeit ; but its look and sound connect it in the 
 common mind with supposed] 
 
 Sustain for receive. lie sustained an injury to his 
 knee. 
 
 '\ ha.i for when. Scarcely had I spoken than the 
 door opened. 
 
 These kind for this kind. These kind of blows kill. 
 
 Those kind for that kind. Those kind of pears 
 are delicious. [It must be confessed that this 
 colloquialism is ingrained in the common Eng- 
 lish speech, preserved in literature as it is in 
 the works of Bacon and many others.] 
 
 To for at. I was to church this morning. 
 [Nevertheless, in spite of the rule, since the 
 verb to be is sometimes used idiomatically for 
 to go, the expression I have been to church, 
 I have been to the theatre this afternoon, may 
 possibly be defended.] 
 
 Towards for toward. The shots flew towards six 
 soldiers. [Anything that shall reduce the sibi- 
 lance of our English tongue is welcome. The 
 final 5 on all words compounded with ivard 
 is superfluous.] 
 
 Trans ferrence for transfer. I attended to the trans- 
 fer rence of the bonds. 
 
258 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Transpire for occur, take place, happen, or elapse. 
 The great Boston tire transjnred in 1872 ; twenty 
 years hare transinrcd since then. [Transpire 
 means to leak out, become known. It tran- 
 spired that his father was a forger.] 
 
 Try for make. lie will ti^y the ex^Dcriment this 
 afternoon. 
 
 Unbeknownst for unknown. She came in unbe- 
 knownst to me. 
 
 Under weigh for under way. We got under lueigh 
 at sunrise. [To weigh means to lift, as to 
 weigh anchor, but way, nautically speaking, 
 indicates motion or progress through the 
 water.] 
 
 Usage for use. The usage of the split infinitive 
 seems to be on the increase. 
 
 Venal for venial. He was guilty of a venal sin. 
 [Yenal means ready to be bought, mercenary. 
 Venial corresponds to pardonable.] 
 
 Vulgar for immodest, obscene. Do not listen to 
 vulgar stories. [Vulgar properly means low, 
 coarse, and ill-bred.] 
 
 Ways for way. He came a long ways with me. 
 
 What for that. I do not doubt but what I shall see 
 him there. [In the locution, He brought in 
 nothing but what he paid duty on, it is cor- 
 rectly used.] 
 
 Who for whom. Who did you see? [It may l)e 
 fairly argued that this is a condensed form for. 
 Who is it that you saw? This objective use 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 259 
 
 of who belongs in the same category as, It is 
 me, It is him. Nice writers will not fall into 
 this colloquialism. Yet those that enjoy idio- 
 matic speech will not hesitate to use it in 
 common conversation.] 
 
 Whom for who. We saw the explorer luhom they 
 said was the bravest man living. 
 
 Will for shall. We ivill move, on the first of 
 January, to our new store. [Will in the first 
 person, singular and plural, denotes a promise, 
 expresses will. Shall denotes future action. 
 Will I bring my violin ? asks the careless 
 musician. How can his hostess know what he 
 will do? Shall I bring my violin? would 
 imjDly that permission was sought.] 
 
 Without for unless. He will not go on the stag-e 
 ivUhout his father consents. 
 
 Worst for worse. If worst comes to worst. 
 
 Worst kind for exceedingly. I want to see her 
 worst kind ! 
 
 Would for should. We would not shed a tear if 
 the man was hanged. [The truth is, failure 
 to discriminate in the proper use of these aux- 
 iliaries deprives our language of its inheritance 
 of niceness and accuracy. But it is often difficult 
 to decide on the j^rojDcr word to use, particularly 
 when the sentence is complicated by indirect 
 discourse. The New York " Evening Sun," in 
 the sentence "They feel confident that out of the 
 3,500 men they ivill be able to call talent that 
 
260 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 shall send the department ahead/' manages to 
 misuse both auxiliaries. The Frenchman said: 
 " I will drown ; no one shall help me ! ''] 
 You was for you were. Was you there ? 
 
 Mistakes in Comparison. — We often make 
 mistakes in comparisons of adjectives by omitting 
 the exclusive "other" with comparatives and in- 
 serting it with superlatives. 
 
 St. Peter's is larger than any church in the world. 
 That would imply that it was larger than itself or 
 that it was not a church. 
 
 The London "Times" alleged that Mr. Stanley 
 w^as the only one of his predecessors who slaugh- 
 tered the natives of the region he passed through. 
 
 They were the most audacious of all the other 
 enemies. 
 
 Where two objects are compared it is a mistake 
 to use the superlative degree. John was the tallest 
 of my two sons. In the same way the poem errs 
 when it says : " And lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all 
 the rest." 
 
 Mistakes in Use of Pronouns. — Careless 
 writers fail to discriminate in the use and position 
 of pronouns. Much confusion often arises from the 
 lack in English of distinctive pronouns like the 
 French celui-ci, celui-la. Thus of two or three 
 men : He told him that if he did not pay him 
 within a week he would cause him to turn over to 
 him the property that he had just bought of him. 
 
 The possibilities of njisi^nderstanding that sen- 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 261 
 
 tence are multiplied. So of she and her. It requires 
 great skill to manage these grammatical forms so 
 as to avoid ambiguity. 
 
 The misuse of which for that is widesjjread. 
 Few of our most j^opular modern writers make the 
 distinction, and yet the proper distinction often ren- 
 ders a sentence free from trace of ambiguity. 
 
 The rule is simple : That should introduce a 
 clause restricting and completing the meaning of 
 the antecedent. 
 
 Which and who should introduce a new fact con- 
 cerning the antecedent. I took the only boat which 
 I could see. A sentence containing a relative 
 clause with " which " may be ambiguous. A sen- 
 tence containing a relative clause with "that" 
 properly used cannot be ambiguous. Sometimes 
 the distinction is so unimportant that no one would 
 care to make it, as for instance : The sheep that 
 were in the orchard broke loose. The sheep which 
 were in the orchard broke loose. In the lirst in- 
 stance the sentence implies that the other sheep did 
 not break loose, that there were other sheep. In 
 the second there is no implication that there were 
 other sheep ; the sheep broke loose, and the sheep 
 that broke loose were in the pasture. 
 
 " You will open the conferences which will be 
 held in Paris." Here it is evident that the question 
 of the place to have the conferences is fully de- 
 cided. They will be held in Paris. Had thai been 
 used, the order would be plain that there were to 
 
262 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 be other conferences elsewhere, and that the chan- 
 cellor was to preside over the ones at Paris. Is 
 not the distinction evident and worth utilizing in 
 other cases ? 
 
 In cases where ambiguity might be serious, it 
 is well to use " that" for " who."' As for instance : 
 The officers who received promotion assembled in 
 the hall. This implies that all the officers received 
 promotion and assembled in the hall. 
 
 The officers that received promotion assembled 
 in the hall. That implies that only those that re- 
 ceived promotion assembled in the hall. 
 
 Sometimes careless or ignorant writers misuse 
 "that" for " which." 
 
 On the Seine lies the city of Paris, that the Ger- 
 mans occupied in the Franco-Prussian War. That 
 signifies that another city of Paris was not occupied 
 by the Germans. 
 
 Professor Compton, in his " Common Errors of 
 Speech," falls into the error that he criticises ; he 
 says: " The English language allows a degree of 
 freedom in the use of the passive form that is often 
 conducive to rapidity and force, but tvhich is, in the 
 present day, much abused.'' 
 
 These distinctions promote precision of language, 
 and should be carefully taught to the young. 
 
 It is a mistake to use the reflexive pronouns my- 
 self ioV I," yourself iov " jou.,''' himself tor '* him." 
 John and myself came together. 
 
 It is a mistake to use pronouns without antece- 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 263 
 
 dents, even when the context supplies the missing 
 noun : "The bazaars are interesting centres of obser- 
 vation. Here the potters are engaged in turning 
 their wooden wheels. In Persia they use them as 
 water-coolers." Meaning, of course, the pots made 
 by the potters. 
 
 Misplacement of Clauses. — A kindred error is 
 to separate, by a subordinate clause, the pronoun 
 from its antecedent, often giving rise to ludicrous 
 misstatements. 
 
 Ludicrous mistakes are often made by the care- 
 less introduction of subordinate clauses. " Paid 
 to a woman whose husband was drowned by 
 order of the vestry under London Bridge." 
 
 "He was suddenly seized witli an attack of 
 paralysis whilst at breakfast, of which he ulti- 
 mately died." 
 
 "Erected to the memory of John Pliillips 
 accidentally shot as a mark of affection by his 
 brother." 
 
 " He was driving away from the church where 
 he had been married in a coach and four." 
 
 A Glasgow paper thus described a shipping ac- 
 cident : "The captain swam asJiore, as did also 
 the stewardess. She was insured for £3,000, and 
 carried two hundred tons of pig iron." 
 
 Morse's geography tells of a certain town that 
 contains "four hundred houses and four thousand 
 inliabitants, all standing with their gable ends to 
 the street." 
 
264 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 An advertisement in the " Times" announced this 
 peculiar need : 
 
 ** Two sisters want washing." 
 
 The following three sacrificed accuracy to econ- 
 omy : 
 
 " Shetland pony suitable for a child with a long 
 mane and tail." 
 
 "Wanted, a piano by a lady with modern legs." 
 
 " Wanted, a nurse for an infant between twenty- 
 five and thirty." — Telegraj^h. 
 
 It is often better to break a recalcitrant sentence 
 of this sort into two or even more independent sen- 
 tences. 
 
 A plural noun following a singular will some- 
 times mislead a writer into using a plural verb. 
 This is called the "error of proximity." "The 
 statement of these facts were disagreeable to him." 
 "To Marat, and Danton, and Robespierre are due 
 the honor." This is one of the commonest and most 
 insidious of errors, flundreds of examples might 
 be and have been culled from famous authors. 
 
 It is a common error to use a singular verb with 
 the relative following an inclusive superlative : 
 
 He is one of tha tallest men ivho has ever walked 
 the streets of the metropolis. 
 
 Careless w^riters and speakers often clumsily use 
 the perfect infinitive dependent on a past or perfect 
 verb : I was sorry not to have seen you yesterday. 
 
 I would have liked to have asked him his name. 
 Here " I should like to have asked " or " I should 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 265 
 
 have liked to ask " are the proper forms, there being 
 a slight difference in meaning between the two. 
 
 He declared that he should have been proved to 
 have spoken those words. 
 
 Here there is ambiguity ; because he might refer 
 to the one that declared or to another person ; should 
 might mean ought to be or ought to have been, and 
 to have spoken might or might not stand for the 
 original thought. Veril}^ indirect discourse in Eng- 
 lish is beset with difficulties. 
 
 Froude is cited as saying : " He might have been 
 expected to have gone." To go would be better. 
 
 It is a mistake to use the participial construc- 
 tion and neglect the necessary apposition : Having 
 spoken the customary caution, the door was shut. 
 Miss Austen, in "Pride and Prejudice," wrote: 
 " Amazed at the alteration in her manner, every sen- 
 tence that he uttered increased her embarrassment." 
 
 An " Old Soldier" justifies the title of his book 
 (" Rough Notes") by this sentence : " Being early 
 killed, I sent a party in search of his mangled body." 
 
 Carelessness in the Use of Ppepositions. — 
 Carelessness in the use of prepositions causes a 
 slovenly style. 
 
 Some English writers nse to iov from, with the 
 adjective different. He is diflferent to his father. 
 
 Differ with has a different meaning from differ 
 from. 
 
 Connect to is sometimes used for connect with. 
 A rubber tube connecting to the pumj). 
 
266 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 Compare to likewise erroneously takes the place 
 of compare with. 
 
 He wore a hat ornamented by gold galoon. 
 
 Sympathize in for sympathize with. 
 
 Throw in for throw into. 
 
 Some grammarians animadvert on the use of 
 between for " among" where more than two objects 
 are mentioned. In most cases among is certainly 
 2)referable. But where the imagination supplies 
 the thought of pairs, between may be justified. 
 
 A close union sprang up between these four men. 
 
 Here among should certainly be used. A con- 
 stant intercourse prevailed between the soldiers of 
 the two opposing armies. Here "between" is 
 defensible. 
 
 Some writers use between with every or each. 
 Between each musician hung an electric light. 
 
 Mrs. Gaskell wrote: "Between every stitch she 
 could look up." A great obstacle interposed 
 between our union. Here the duality of union 
 suggested "between." 
 
 It is a mistake to repeat the conjunction that in a 
 sentence where a subordinate clause intervenes 
 between the verb and the dependent clause. 
 
 I told him that if he broke the window that he 
 would have to pay for it. 
 
 The misplacing of adverbs is a common mistake. 
 Not onlg should be placed so as to qualify the word 
 it affects, and should be followed by but also. Few 
 writers are not guilty of carelessly neglecting this 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 267 
 
 simple rule. Thus a literary journal says: Homer 
 was not only the maker of a nation, but of a 
 language and of a religion. 
 
 Here either not only should follow maker, or the 
 words " but also the establisher." 
 
 The Split Infinitive. — It is generally a mis- 
 take to employ the split or divided infinitive ; that 
 is, to separate to from its verb. 
 
 "To in certain measure approve.'' "I hope to 
 quickly come." Occasionally perfect definiteness 
 seems to require this collocation of the adverb. 
 
 " It is said that China hopes to easily procure in 
 France funds to enable her to promptly pay the 
 indemnity." 
 
 Here as easily might apply to hopes, and as it 
 would awkwardly ioWow ijrociire, "to easily pro- 
 cure," though clumsy, might be pardoned ; but the 
 second instance in the same sentence is unpardon- 
 able. 
 
 "There is a disposition not to tamely yield." 
 Here if tamely were placed after not, the sentence 
 would be worse and not better. It should read: 
 "Not to yield tamely." 
 
 Common-sense and an ear quick to appreciate 
 harmonious combinations should guide in such cases. 
 But the hard and fast rule that would never allow 
 an adverb to separate to and its verb is not in 
 accord with the free genius of English. There 
 are so many examples of its infringement by the 
 best and most idiomatic writers of Ens^lish that no 
 
268 THE MISTAKES WE MAKE. 
 
 frenzied protest on the part of purists will avail. 
 Yet it is a mistake not to avoid the awkwardness of 
 the split infinitive whenever it is possible to do so. 
 
 Never is a word that is frequently misplaced. 
 Ruskin in one sentence says to this effect: "We 
 never remember ever to have seen." 
 
 Omission of Artieles. — It is a mistake to omit 
 the article when different objects are mentioned 
 under the same regime. He sold the black and 
 white puppies : meaning that he sold the black 
 puppies and the white puppies, and not the 
 puppies of mixed black and white. 
 
 The Democratic and Republican parties held their 
 convention. This would imply that it was a joint 
 convention. 
 
 It is a mistake not to employ the article before 
 the titular adjectives Reverend and Honorable, 
 which are not, like Doctor and Major, titles. The 
 Reverend Doctor Hodgson ; the Honorable John 
 Jones ; the Venerable Archdeacon Smith. It looks 
 particularly awkward to have the article omitted 
 when the abbreviations are used: "Rev. William 
 Jackson occupied Rev. Mr. Hunt's pulpit." " Hon. 
 Henry Archer was elected to Congress." 
 
 By constant study of the best models of English 
 style, by "eternal vigilance" in avoiding ambigu- 
 ities, by guarding the tongue and the pen, and, 
 above all, the mind, from fallino' into careless habits 
 
TERMS MISAPPLIED. 269 
 
 one may learn to make this language of ours a 
 beautiful instrument for the expression of thought. 
 One who can write with well-balanced and graceful 
 phrasing, who can speak easily, fluently, and with- 
 out hesitation and stumbling, and who, above all, 
 has something worth saying, is certain to win the 
 attention of the world. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A brown study under a different color, 204. 
 
 Acres and Wiseacres, 208. 
 
 ^sop's fables much involved in legend, 96. 
 
 Affra capella, translated " African she-goats," 174. 
 
 African she-goats, amusing translation of A^ra capella, 
 
 174. 
 Against the grain, 220. 
 Agrippina not put to death by Nero, 99. 
 Ainsworth narrates exploits of Dick Turpin. See Dick 
 
 Turpin, 168. 
 A la pipe dujour. See Peep o' Day, 205. 
 Alexander compared with Thothmes, 90 ; conquests of, 91 ; 
 
 did not weep for other worlds to conquer, 91. 
 Alfred, King, did not burn the cakes or enact good laws, 
 
 119. 
 ** A little more than kin and less than kind," meaning and dex'i- 
 
 vation of, 85. 
 All is lost save honor, 192. 
 Aloe, the gardener's fable concerning, 32. 
 A nation of shopkeepers, originated by Adam Smith, 195. 
 Anaxarchus, Alexander's favorite philosopher, 91, note. 
 "Ancient Mariner," error of Coleridge in, 171. 
 Ancient statues were colored and adorned, 59. 
 A new brougham sweeps clean, 163. 
 Anglo-Saxons, the, 119. 
 Anglo-Spanish conflict. See Armada, 145. 
 
272 INDEX 
 
 " Anna Karenina," German translator of, misled by Slavonic 
 
 epigraph, 174. 
 Anniversaries, mistaken, IH. 
 Antwerp, heraldic cognizance of, 24. 
 Apologies do not imply faults, 84; used in the old Greek 
 
 sense of defence, 84 ; evidences of Christianity technically 
 
 called apologetics, 85. 
 Apostles' Creed, the, not of apostolic origin, 5. 
 Appleton, Thomas G., witty sayings wrongly attributed to, 
 
 187. 
 A quarry, but not of rock, 222. 
 Arabia Felix, called by the Arabs Yemen, 23. 
 Archimedes and his circles, 92; met his death at Syracuse, 
 
 92 ; stories in relation to him not probable, 93. 
 Armada, about the, 145 ; cause of its defeat, 145 ; why it was 
 
 sent, 146. 
 Arnold von "Winkelried, the story of, a legend, 152. 
 Articles, omission of, 268. 
 Aryan, the term, can only be used in a linguistic sense, 113, 
 
 note. 
 Asses and dogs and frogs, 215, 216. 
 A star that is not a star, mistake of Coleridge in "Ancient 
 
 Mariner," 170, 171. 
 " As merry as a grig," 55. 
 
 Athanasian Creed, the, not the production of Athanasius, 102. 
 Augustine, St., did not introduce Christianity into England, 
 
 110; teaching of, in relation to Wise Men, 101. 
 Aurochs sometimes incorrectly applied to the bison, 36. 
 Australian not to be called a " native," 7. 
 Auto da/e, the first, was at Valladolid, 104. 
 
 Babylon and Babel, etymology of, 20. 
 Bacon, misquotation of. See Shakespeare's Slips, 164. 
 Baeda, statement of, in relation to St. Augustine and Ethel- 
 bert, 110. 
 
INDEX 273 
 
 Baffin's Bay is not a bay, 21. 
 
 Banyan, the persistent error regarding, 30. 
 
 Barnfield, Ricliard, composed part of " The Passionate Pil- 
 grim," 193. 
 
 Bar sinister, the, not a sign of bastardy, 84. 
 
 Beaufort, due de. See Iron Mask, 158. 
 
 Beaver, the, habits of, 50. 
 
 Becket's mother, legend of, 123 ; his father a Norman, 124. 
 
 Beef tea, no nourishment in, 66. 
 
 Bees, blunders about, 52. 
 
 Belfries and Bells, 211. 
 
 Belgrade means the white town, 24. 
 
 Belial was the father of no sons, 102. 
 
 Benche on the story of the Iron Mask. See Story of the 
 Iron Mask, 158. 
 
 Benzoni the first to tell the story of Columbus and the egg. 
 See Columbus's Egg, 154. 
 
 Berdoe, Dr., mentions mistake of Browning. See A Brown- 
 ing Mistake, 168. 
 
 Bering Strait should not be spelled Behring, 21. 
 
 Bicycle, the, not a new invention, 79. 
 
 Birds and insects, 44. 
 
 Birds with wrong names, 44; grouse known by diiferent 
 names, 44; bobolink becomes reed-bird, rice-bird, and 
 butter-bird, 44 ; the English yellow " hammer " is the yel- 
 low-bunting, but should be yellow-ammer, 45 ; the hedge- 
 sparrow is not a real sparrow, 45 ; the so-called muscovy 
 duck has no claim on Russia, 45 ; the night-jar is often 
 called the *' goat-sucker," 45 ; lose their way, 46 ; do they 
 die of cold ? 46 ; how they sleep, 48 ; the eagle does not 
 fly downward beak first, 49 ; the scarlet ibis not the 
 sacred ibis, 49; the owl perches with only two toes visible, 
 49 ; the nightingale sometimes sings throughout the day, 
 49; the turkey found in Mexico by the Spaniards, 50; 
 stories of the ostrich have no basis in fact, 50 ; the name 
 
274 INDEX 
 
 of the flamingo derived from its color, 51 ; only five 
 species of hawks and blackbirds injurious to vegetation, 
 51. 
 
 Bison not a buffalo, 36. 
 
 Black Prince, the, did not always wear black, 130. 
 
 Blarney Stone, the, in Ireland, 22. 
 
 " Bleak House " not written in house represented, 176. 
 
 Bloodhound, the, not naturally cruel, 34. 
 
 Bloody Queen Mary, the evils perpetrated in her reign insti- 
 gated by others, 136. 137. 
 
 ** Blude is thicker than water." See other Proverbs as- 
 cribed, 193. 
 
 Blunders about bees, 52. 
 
 Blunders made by famous authors and others, 164. 
 
 Bock bier, name said to be derived from town of Eimbeck, 
 82. 
 
 Bolmerino, Lord. See Execution of Charles I., 140. 
 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon, did not originate the phrase, "A nation 
 of shopkeepers," 195. 
 
 " Bones" of contention, 8. 
 
 Bonfires not bonefires, 212. 
 
 Boroias, the, stories of their crimes an invention, 156. 
 
 '* Born in the purple " does not refer to the Roman or Grecian 
 Imperial Court d^-e, 84. 
 
 Borrow, George, cynical description of Byron's funeral, 171. 
 
 Boscobel Oak. See Charles II., 141. 
 
 Botanical misnomers, 27. 
 
 Braedalbane, Earl of, instigates massacre at Glencoe. See 
 Massaci'e of Glencoe, 143. 
 
 Brain, weight of the, 81. 
 
 Breed's Hill, place where battle of Bunker Hill was fought, 1. 
 
 Briar pipes made from the bruyere, 28. 
 
 British Museum, tradition of, in relation to King's Library, 
 179. 
 
 Britons, the ancient, usually called Celts or Kelts, 113; 
 
INDEX 275 
 
 not driven into Wales, nor exterminated, 115, 116; lived 
 side b}' side with their conquerors, 116; blended with the 
 lineage of the Saxons, l\o et seq. 
 
 Brougham, Lord, did not invent the carriage of that name, 
 163. 
 
 Browning mistake, a, 168. 
 
 Bruce and the spider a latter-day fable, 124. 
 
 Bruneleschi and the o^^g. See Columbus's Egg, 154. 
 
 Bruno was not burnt alive, 110. 
 
 Brugsch, Dr., discovers fable of Lion and Mouse in Egyptian 
 papyrus, 97. 
 
 Bryant on the different names of the grouse, 43. 
 
 Brydges, Sir Egerton, ascribes authorship of famous epitaph 
 to William Browne, 189. 
 
 Bucks and bulls, 205. 
 
 "Buffalo " Bill, number of buffaloes killed by, 36. 
 
 Bull-dog, the, not so ugly as he is ugly, 35. 
 
 Bullets that act like explosives, 64. 
 
 Bunker Hill Monument not erected on Bunker Hill, 1, 
 
 Butler, in " Hudibras," credits Nicolo Machiavelli with giv- 
 ing " his name to our Old Nick," 209. 
 
 Butt'on, John, declares that Judge Jeffreys presided over trial 
 ofChaiiesI. See Execution of Charles I., 140. 
 
 Byron, blunder of, in " Marino Faliero," 171; George Bor- 
 row's cynical description of funeral of, 171. 
 
 Cabot, John, the undoubted discoverer of the American conti- 
 nent, 135. 
 
 Cabot, Sebastian, did not discover the American continent, 
 134. 
 
 Cade, Jack, was a gentleman, 133. 
 
 Caesar Augustus not a public benefactor, 97. 
 
 Caesar, Julius, words falsely attributed to, 98. 
 
 Calvary, from the Latin calvarium, a skull, 21. 
 
 Cambridge not the bridge on the Cam, 24. 
 
276 INDEX 
 
 Cambronne at Waterloo, 189. 
 
 Camel's-hair, Moleskin, and Catgut, 11. 
 
 Camel, the, called " Ship of the Desert," 37. 
 
 Canaanites not exterminated by the Israelites, 100. 
 
 Canterbury not the first Christian church in England, 112. 
 
 •' Cape Cod turkeys." See Rabbits and Rarebits, 208. 
 
 Carlos, Don, died a natural death, 156; false statements of 
 historians, 156, 157. 
 
 Carlyle, queer English of, 173. 
 
 Carnival, wrong use of, by Byron, 205. 
 
 Cats' eyes ax'e not phosphorescent, 35. 
 
 Caxton, the first English printer. See Printing Press, 154. 
 
 Celts, or Kelts, the ancient, 113. 
 
 ** Chamois " leather a sham, 11. 
 
 Champagne, the age of, 157. 
 
 Charles L, monopolies granted by, 86 ; execution of, 140 ; did 
 not kneel with his head on block, 140. 
 
 Charles II. did not hide in a tree, 141 ; why May 29 is cele- 
 brated, 141, 142. 
 
 Charles's wain, 214. 
 
 Charlotte d'Eon de Beaumont was a man, 159. 
 
 Chateau not necessarily a castle, 89. 
 
 Chicken-hearted cowards, 215. 
 
 Christ was born 4 B.C., 100. 
 
 Cinderella's glass sUpper, poetic beauty of, 87. 
 
 Cinque Ports increased to thirty-nine, 22. 
 
 City of London, arms of, 132. 
 
 Clarence, Duke of, was not drowned in wine, 135. 
 
 Clarke, E. C, finds only a charred fragment of Magna Charta, 
 127, 128. 
 
 Claudian speaks of the Picts, 114. 
 
 Cleopatra, lies about, 98 ; Cleopatra's Needle, 1 ; did not dis- 
 solve her pearls in vinegar, 99. 
 
 Cleopatra's Needle first erected by Thothmes, B.C., 1600, I ; 
 taken by Cleopatra, frona its original position, 1, 2, 
 
INDEX 277 
 
 Cocaine and alkaloids, mispronunciation of, 196. 
 
 Coffee-" berry " not a berry, but a seed, 27. 
 
 "Cold roast Boston" (Nahant) not invented by Thomas G. 
 Appleton, 187. 
 
 Cold winters, 14. 
 
 Coleridge, error of, in " Ancient Mariner," 171. 
 
 Colossus of Rhodes, no probability of such a statue, 97. 
 
 Columbus's egg a myth, 154; Columbus not Columbus, 155. 
 
 " Come 'long. Jack," street in Hong Kong, 176. 
 
 Comets and collisions, 65. 
 
 Common mistakes of many kinds, 59. 
 
 Common mistakes in French, 197; "A duel a Voatrance" 
 197; '■'' Exposi^'' 197; " Gascon nade" 197; ^^ Nom de 
 plume,''^ 197; '' Mons.," and " Mdlle.," 198; *' Gourmet," 
 198; ^' Cofde qui co/lte," 198; ^* Double entendre," 198; 
 A propos," 198. 
 
 Common mistakes in Latin, 198; '■^ Dulce Domum," 198; 
 " Bonus," 199. 
 
 Coneys are not rabbits, 39. 
 
 " Conqueror's " title, the 120 ; he did not lay Northern Eng- 
 land waste, 121. 
 
 Constance de Beverly, fate of, as depicted by Scott, 106. 
 
 Coral reefs, depth of, 80. 
 
 Coriolanus, mother of, 95. 
 
 Cork legs, no trace of cork in, 13. 
 
 " Cormorant" derived from " corn-vorant," 216. 
 
 Coronation mugs, 161. 
 
 Country dances, properly a "contra" dance, 13. 
 
 Creoles, various definitions of, 88. 
 
 Crime of youth, the, 192. 
 
 Cromwell fond of out-door games and sports, 139; did not 
 attempt to sail to America, 140. 
 
 Cromwell had no illegitimate children, 169. 
 
 Cromwell, Henry. See Story of the Iron Mask, 158. 
 
 Curious blunders in general history, 149. 
 
278 INDEX 
 
 Curmudgeon not derived from reference to puppy, 216. 
 Cyclones, tornadoes, and hurricanes, confused use of, 88. 
 
 Death, is it painless ? 62 ; when is it most busy ? 63. 
 
 Deceptions about Dickens, 176. 
 
 Deer forests are without trees, 28. 
 
 De Foe, mistakes of, 165, 166. 
 
 Depth of coral reefs, 80. 
 
 Derivations, mistakes in: ^^ cap a pie,'' '* attic," ** carryall," 
 
 " cast-me-down," "cat's cradle," catsup," "cento," 
 
 "changeling," "cutlets," " Cyprus," "darkle," "Davy 
 
 Jones's locker," "demijohn," 212, 213. 
 Desert, a, that is fertile, 23. 
 Desdouits, Professor, doubts evidence of burning of Bruno, 
 
 111. 
 Dickens, Charles, invents " Mrs. Harris " and " Sairey 
 
 Gamp," 170 ; deceptions about, 176 ; " Old Curiosity Shop " 
 
 in Portsmouth street not immortalized by, 176; "Bleak 
 
 House," mistakes about, 176. 
 Dick Turpin, mistakes about, 168; never rode to York on 
 
 " Black Bess," 168. 
 Dick Whittington had no cat, 132. 
 " Dictes or Sayings of the Philosophers." See Printing 
 
 Press, 154. 
 Dido and the hide, story of, 96. 
 Ditferent kinds of gin, 219. 
 
 " Digby chickens." See Rabbits and Rarebits, 208. 
 Diogenes' tub a myth, 96. 
 Dirt, mediaeval, 149. 
 Discords in the heart, 215. 
 " Dispute of the Stomach and the Members " identified with 
 
 an ancient Egyptian original, 97. 
 Dives not a proper name, 107 ; and Lazarus, misapprehension 
 
 in relation to, 107. 
 Dog-days and rabies, 34. 
 
INDEX 279 
 
 Dog- fish not so called from its fondness for dogs, 216. 
 
 Don Carlos, 136. 
 
 Drayton, Michael, alludes to penance of Jane Shore, 136. 
 
 Dresden china made at Meissen, 10. 
 
 " Duke of Wellington," an iron steamship nicknamed " Iron 
 
 Duke," 180. 
 Dumas creates an English village, 172. 
 Dutch clocks made in Germany, 11. 
 Dutch, the, did not invent thimbles, 79. 
 
 Eagle, the, does not fly downward, 49. 
 
 Earth, the, as a conductor, 80. 
 
 Easter, the first, 101. 
 
 Edward VI. not a founder of schools, 137. 
 
 Edwards, Miss Amelia B., compares Thothmes with Alexan- 
 der, 90. 
 
 Eglantine does not ** twist." See Milton in Error, 169. 
 
 Egyptian cigarettes and tobacco, 28. 
 
 Egyptian sphinx, Greek legend of, 3. 
 
 Eleanor, Queen, and the fable of the poison, 129. 
 
 Electric light in a fog, 80. 
 
 Elizabeth of Valois. See Don Carlos, 136. 
 
 England, people of, not descended from Celts, 113. 
 
 English, the, not an Anglo-Saxon people, 118. 
 
 Epicures, right definition of, 85. 
 
 Epicurus, the apostle of temperance, 85. 
 
 Epitaph, well-known (" Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother "), 
 falsely attributed to Ben Jonson, 188; found in manu- 
 script collection of William Browne's poems, 189. 
 
 Ermine, the symbol of justice, 39. 
 
 Errors of translation, 173. 
 
 Ethelred, not Unready, 120. 
 
 Evans, Oliver, made a machine for dredging purposes, 70. 
 
 "Every man has his price," a misquotation of Sir Robert 
 Walpole, 194. 
 
280 INDEX 
 
 "Evil communications corrupt good manners," 193. See 
 
 Other Proverbs, 193. 
 Execution of Charles I., 140. 
 
 " Fair Rosamond " was not poisoned by Queen Eleanor, 
 
 123 ; was not the mother of an archbishop, 123. 
 Famous men, sententious sayings wrongly attributed to 
 
 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas 
 
 G. Appleton, 186. 187. 
 Farrar, opinion of, in relation to birth of Christ, 100. 
 " First catch your hare " not found in " The Art of Cookery," 
 
 170. 
 First Prince of Wales, the, 129. 
 First transatlantic steamer, the, 69. 
 Flag, the, that rules the wave, 86. 
 Flamingo, the, derives its name from its color, 51. 
 Flammarion spreads error in relation to Bruno, 1 10 
 "Flat" derived from the Anglo-Saxon ^^e^;^, a dwelling, 216. 
 Fleur-de-Lis, the, brought to France by the crusaders, 130. 
 Flying-fish and squirrels, 43. 
 Foolscap, origin of terra, 86. 
 " Fortunes of Nigel," mistake in. See The Wrong Bones, 
 
 167. 
 Fouche, Joseph. See Talleyrand and Fouche, 187. 
 Fountain pens and typewriters, 79. 
 Frauds in fur, 13, 29. 
 Frauds in the larder, 12. 
 Freeman, Professor, on alleged cruelty of the "Conqueror," 
 
 121 ; on the Mogul Empire, 149. 
 "Freemasons " not m.ove free than others, 216. 
 French archer, the, was not flayed alive, 126. 
 Friday, is it an unlucky day, 7o ; a partial list of fortunate 
 
 Fridays, 75-78. 
 " Frog," in use on railroads, a corruption of frush, 216. 
 Fur, frauds in, mink, skunk, muskrat, coney, 39, 40. 
 
INDEX 281 
 
 Fust, or Faust, Johann. See Printing, 153. 
 Fuji-yama, mountain in Japan, 15. 
 
 Gaits and shoes, puns on, 217. 
 
 Galileo did not say " E pur si muove," 190. 
 
 Gambx-el roofs, description of, by Dr. Holmes, 218. 
 
 Garter, the, on another footing, 128 ; story of its founding a 
 legend, 128. 
 
 Gascoigne, Sir William, did not send " madcap " son of Henry 
 IV. to prison ; was not reappointed by Henry V., 132. 
 
 Gate of Janus, the, 93. 
 
 Gates misunderstood. Aldgate should be Algate, meaning 
 free to all, 25 ; Cripplegate does not refer to a gate fre- 
 quented by beggars, 25 ; Billingsgate commemorates the 
 Anglo-Saxon term " family of the gods," 25 ; Grub street 
 not named because of its eating-houses, 25. 
 
 Gaul, the country now called France, 20. 
 
 Geoffrey, archbishop of York, the only non-rebellious one of 
 Henry II. 's children, 123. 
 
 George the Third and Bishop Watson, 84. 
 
 Gessler and William Tell. See William Tell, 150. 
 
 Gill's " Student's Geography," mistake in, 180. 
 
 Gladstonian error, 168 
 
 Glastonbury, chui-ch founded in, by St. Patrick, 112. 
 
 Glasse, Hannah, there never was a, 169 ; the " Art of Cook- 
 ery," 169, 170. 
 
 " Gleanings of Past Years," error of Gladstone in. See A 
 Gladstonian Error, 168. 
 
 Glencoe, massacre at, not by Englishmen, 143. 
 
 " Glove for a shoe," mistake in English version of Bible, 175. 
 
 " God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," See Quotations 
 wrongly ascribed, 194. 
 
 Goethe's " Faust," Mephistopheles the fiendish character in, 
 89. 
 
 Goggle-eyed saints, mistaken translation of Wiclif, 174. 
 
 Good yeeres that are bad, mistake of Shakespeare, 175. 
 
^^^ INDEX 
 
 Gooseberries not for geese, 33. 
 
 Gothic architecture not invented by the Goths 10 
 
 Gramercj Park derived from the Dutch De' Kromme Zee 
 
 Grass widows, choice as to its derivation, 220. 
 Gravestone, an untrustworthy (Old Parr), 178. 
 Grayhound not derived from color of dog,' 216.* 
 'Greatest altitude in each State in the Union, 16-18 
 'Great friends," commonly used by early writers, 24. 
 Gregorovius, Ferdinand, on the papacy, 103. 
 Grolier not a binder, 177, 
 
 Guillotindid not invent the guillotine, 161; was not its first 
 
 victim, 163, 
 Guinea-pig, the, does not come from Guinea, 38, 
 Guns, the horse-power of, 81. 
 Gutenberg, See Printing, 153, 
 Gutta percha means the " gum of Samaria," 32. 
 
 Haggard, Ryder, on the " walling up " of nuns, 106. 
 Halket^ Baron, at Waterloo, See Cambronne at Waterloo, 
 
 "Hanger," corruption of the Arabian and Persian Khanjar, 
 a sabre, 221. -^ ' 
 
 Hannibal fable, the, 97. 
 
 ''Harmless as doves," mistranslation in New Testament, 174 
 Hastings, battle of, 120. 
 Ham:as, R, H., odd blunder of, regarding Charles Sumner, 
 
 Hawks and blackbirds, only five species of, injurious to 
 
 vegetation, 51, 
 Hawthorn not a thorn that bears haws, 33. 
 Heart, the, a popular mistake about, 63. 
 Helena, mother of Constantine, not a Briton, 107. 
 Helpmeet or helpmate, wrong compound, 205. 
 Henry I. did not die of gluttony, 122. 
 
INDEX 283 
 
 Henry 11. did not conceal Fair Rosamond, 123. 
 
 Hessian boots are not boots worn by Hessians, 218. 
 
 Higginson, Francis, declares the Puritans were not separat- 
 ists, 138. 
 
 Hingeston, F. C, translates Affra capella " African she- 
 goats," 174. 
 
 " History of the Plague." See Defoe, 166- 
 
 Hodgkins speaks favorably of Nero, 99. 
 
 " Hog " used in Yorkshire for a sheep a year old, 195, note. 
 
 Holiday, no national, 72; legal, in the various States, 
 72-75. 
 
 Holland, doubtful derivation of name, 19. 
 
 Hollyhocks a sort of hoax, 33. 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, on the nautilus, 54. 
 
 Homout Ich Dene signed by the Black Prince, 127. 
 
 Horatius and the bridge, story of, 94. 
 
 House-fly, the, formation of feet of, 52. 
 
 How a bull charges, 37. 
 
 How deep-sea fish fall up, 57. 
 
 Hudson's Bay should be called a sea, 21. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, mathematical blunder of, 172 ; misspells English 
 proper names, 172 ; on Cambronne's words at Waterloo, 
 189. 
 
 Hurricane, definition of, 89. 
 
 Huss did not say " Sancta simplicitas," or pun on his own 
 name, 191. 
 
 Ibis, the scarlet, not the sacred ibis, 49, 
 
 Ice in Iceland, 14. 
 
 In the soup, 220 ; a. puree soup not a pure soup, 220. 
 
 " Irish apricots." See Rabbits and Rarebits, 208. 
 
 Irish, origin of the, 96. 
 
 Iron Duke, the name derived from an iron steamship, 180. 
 
 Iron mask, story of the, 158. 
 
 Irving, Washington, and the monks of Newstead, 155. 
 
284 INDEX 
 
 Irving, Washington, quotes story of Columbus and the egg. 
 
 See Columbus's Egg, 154. 
 Israelites did not exterminate the Canaanites, 100. 
 " Ivanhoe," mistake in, 167. 
 
 Jack Straw's Castle on Hampstead Heath, 5. 
 
 " Jack," the English origin of the name, 86, 87. 
 
 Jane Shore, what really happened to her, 135, 136; did not 
 give her name to Shoreditch, 136. 
 
 Janus, the strange Roman god, gate of, 93 ; a temple built to 
 him by Caius Duilius, 93. 
 
 Jeflferson. more Democratic than generally supposed, 163. 
 
 ** Je me rends," woi-ds uttered by Cambronne at "Waterloo. 
 See Cambronne at Waterloo, 189. 
 
 Jenkins, Henry, a veteran impostor, 178. 
 
 Jerked meat, 211. 
 
 Job's Stone erected by Rameses, 2. 
 
 John, King, did not sign " Magna Charta," but affixed his 
 seal, 127. 
 
 Johnson, Dr. See The Crime of Youth, 192. 
 
 John the Baptist's food was locusts and wild honey, 54. 
 
 Jollyboat, only another name for yawl-boat, 220. 
 
 Juggernaut not a fetish, 107 ; old missionary stones and pict- 
 ures exaggerated, 108. 
 
 Jutland foi'merly belonged to the Jutes, 19. 
 
 "Kenil worth," mistake in. See Scott's Mistakes, 167. 
 
 Kensington Palace not in Kensington, 3. 
 
 Kilmarnock, Lord. See Execution of Charles I., 140. 
 
 King of beasts, the, a coward, 35 . 
 
 King's Library, the misleading inscription on, 179. 
 
 Korea, native name Cho-sen. 
 
 Kosciusko and the end of Poland, 191. 
 
 Lady-bird, the, not a bird, but a beetle, 52. 
 
 Lady Jane Grey. See Execution of Charles I., 140. 
 
INDEX 285 
 
 *' La garde meurt et \mais\ ne se rende pas" not said by 
 Cambranne. See Cambronne at Waterloo, 189. 
 
 Lambeth Palace in the diocese of Westminster, 4. 
 
 Laughton, Prof. Knox, explains story of Nelson and Parker 
 at Copenhagen. See Nelson, 142. 
 
 Lead shot cooled by falling from towers, 81. 
 
 Left-handed yarn, a, 94 ; Roman family name Scsevola 
 means left-handed, 94. 
 
 Leonidas, the pass of Thermopyte defended by, 92. 
 
 " L itat ! c est moi. Monsieur ! " no historic foundation for 
 saying. See Louis XIV., 190. 
 
 Lewes, George, " History of Philosophy," Dr. Johnson's ex- 
 act woi'ds, " Let us take a walk down Cheapside," found 
 in, 188. 
 
 Liebig, the chemist, weight of brain of, 81. 
 
 Locusts are good to eat, 52. 
 
 London's highest ground, 165. 
 
 Longsword, Richard, son of Henry H., but not a Cliflford, 
 123. 
 
 Lion and the Mouse. See ..^sop's Fables, 97. 
 
 ** Lord " Bacon a misnomer, 8. 
 
 Lotus, the, sacred plant of the Egyptians, 32. 
 
 Louis XIV. and the State, 190. 
 
 Louis Philippe no changeling, 159 ; absurd stories in relation 
 to, 159. 
 
 Lucifer not Satan, 7 ; not called so by Milton, 8. 
 
 Macaulay retold the legend of Porsena, 94 ; told the story of 
 
 Horatius and the bridge, 94. 
 Macdonalds of Glencoe not massacred by Englishmen. See 
 
 Massacre of Glencoe, 143. 
 MacEdairn, leader of the Picts, 115. 
 " Madcap " son of Henry IV. not sent to prison by Sir 
 
 William Gascoigne, 132. 
 Mad dog never foams at the mouth, 34. 
 
286 INDEX 
 
 Maginn, "William, original writer of exploits of Dick Tur- 
 pin. See Dick Turpin, 168. 
 
 Magna Charta sealed in 1215, 127. 
 
 Magnetic mountains, 80. 
 
 Marbles not made of marble, 210. 
 
 ** Marino Faliero," blunder of Byron in, 171. 
 
 Markham, Clements R. See Columbus's Egg, 154. 
 
 Marylebone derived from Mary le bourne, 25. 
 
 Mary, Queen, bed of, at Holyrood, a fable, 148. 
 
 Mary Magdalene, little known about, 102. 
 
 Maspero, Professor, identifies one of ^sop's fables with 
 ancient Egyptian original, 97. 
 
 Matioli, Ercoli. See Story of Iron Mask, 158. 
 
 Maxwell, Sir Herbert, on the fable of " Bruce and the spider," 
 124. 
 
 Meissen ware, 10. 
 
 Mephistopheles a devil, but not the Devil, 89 ; the fiendish 
 character in Goethe's " Faust," 89. 
 
 Mercator, Latin for Kremer, 180. 
 
 Mice and Marmots, 37. 
 
 Michelet on bathing in Europe. See Mediaeval Dirt, 149. 
 
 Milk and wine, 215. 
 
 Milliner, tbe, and the million, 206. 
 
 Milton in Error, 169. 
 
 Minerva's ^gis, 60. 
 
 Misplacement of clauses, 263-267. 
 
 Mispronounciations, 226-239. 
 
 Misquotations : " Now is the winter of our discontent," 181 ; 
 " One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," 181 ; 
 " And like the baseless fabric," etc., 182 ; " Si monumentis 
 quceris circumspice," 183 ; *' Water, water, everywhere, 
 and not a drop to drink," 183; "'Twas ever thus from 
 childhood's hour," 183; "Irresponsible indolent re- 
 viewers," 184; "Fresh fields and pastures new," 184; 
 "The human form divine," 184; "Spare the rod, and 
 spoil the child," 184; " The even tenor of their way," 
 
INDEX 287 
 
 184 ; ** The end justifies the means," 184 ; " When Greek 
 meets Greek, then comes the tug of war," 185 ; '* Every 
 mickle makes a muckle," 185 ; " Duty toward our neigh- 
 bor," 185; "You have hit the nail on the head," 186; 
 "The knights are dust," etc., 186. 
 
 Mistaken derivations, 204 ; " Philomel," 204 ; *' honeymoon," 
 204 ; •' unruly," 204 ; " brown study," 204. 
 
 Mistakes about animals, 34. 
 
 Mistakes about mountains, 15 ; Mount Blanc not in Switzer- 
 land, 15 ; Mount St. Elias not the highest peak in North 
 America, 15 ; Mount Ararat the ancient name of a district 
 in eastern Armenia, 15. 
 
 Mistakes about plants, 27. 
 
 IVlistakes in comparison, 260. 
 
 Mistakes in connection with ancient history, 90. , 
 
 Mistakes in English history, 113. 
 
 Mistakes in given names, — " 9^"ii'^>" " Evelyn," 196. 
 
 Mistakes in plurals, 200-202. 
 
 Mistakes in use of pronouns, 260-263. 
 
 Mistakes we make about places, 14 et seq. 
 
 Mistakes we make in religious history, 100. 
 
 Modified oaths, 218. 
 
 Moguls and Romans, 149; the Mogul Empire, 149; the name 
 loosely applied, 149. 
 
 Monkey, the, and the stick, 38. 
 
 Morea, the ancient Peloponnesus, 20. 
 
 Moscow not set on fire by the Russians, 160. 
 
 Moses had no horn, 100. 
 
 Moths do not eat holes in our curtains and clothes, 52. 
 
 Mountains, magnetic, 80. 
 
 Mouse Tower, the, Southey's poem founded on misconcep- 
 tion, 176. 
 
 Mt. Pilatus not named after Pilate, 25. 
 
 Mugs, coronation, 161. 
 
 Muhammad was not a miracle worker, 109, 
 
288 INDEX 
 
 Mummy wheat, erroneous stories relating to, 31. 
 Miincliausen, Baron, story of, 166. 
 
 Names of people and places, mistaken dei-ivations, etc. : 
 "Mahomet," " Bede," *• Swithburn," " Inigo Jones," 
 "Pepys," "Dahlia," " Tom," " Cicely," and *' Alison," 
 " Valentine," 223-225. 
 
 Names that are ./wr-fetched, 39. 
 
 Napoleon and the steamship " Fulton," 70. 
 
 Nautilus, the, does not sail, 54. 
 
 Nelson did not disobey Parker at Copenhagen, 142. 
 
 Nelson River not named after the naval hero, 21. 
 
 Nero not such a bad fellow, 99; did not put his mother 
 Agrippina to death, 99 ; did not play and sing while Rome 
 was burning, 99. 
 
 New Forest, depopulation of, by William I., 87. 
 
 Newell, Mr., inclined to trace British Christianity to a Gal- 
 ilean origin, 111. 
 
 Nicholas, Tsar, was an Oldenburg, 144. 
 
 Nightingale, the, sings by day as well as by night, 49. 
 
 Nightmares, Captain Burton, Fuseli, Shakespeare, Scott, 
 Lamb, and many other authors deceived in regard to 
 derivations of, 210, 211. 
 
 "Nihilists " really " Radicals," 6. 
 
 Norsemen and Northmen were the Norwegians, 85. 
 
 No woman was ever pope, 105. 
 
 Nuns were never " walled up," 106, 
 
 " Ode to Aphrodite," by Sappho, 95." 
 
 " Old Curiosity Shop " in Portsmouth Street not immortal- 
 ized by Dickens, 176. 
 Omission of articles, 268. 
 
 One who muses does not necessarily cultivate the Muses, 209. 
 Or ever, error of translators of Bible, 210. 
 Ostriches and their feathers, 50. 
 Owl, the, perches with only two toes visible, 49. 
 
INDEX 289 
 
 Oxford and the Bosporus, 19. 
 
 Pagoda, really derived from Persian but-khoda, 210. 
 
 Palace, name of, often an error, 3, 4. 
 
 Palmer, Mr., on " Pitfalls of Pedantry," 200. 
 
 Pan, the Greek god, a purifier, 60. 
 
 Papacy, origin of the, 102. 
 
 Papin, Dionys, excites anger of Karl of Hesse, 70. 
 
 Parr, Old, untrustworthy inscription on gravestone of, 178. 
 
 Parsis not fire-worshippers, 107. 
 
 Parsi, the name only another form of Farsi, or Persian, 107. 
 
 *' Passionate Pilgrim, the," part of, not composed by Shake- 
 speare, 193. 
 
 Patrick, Saint, founds church in Glastonbury, 112. 
 
 Pea-jacket, Captain Marryat's derivation of, 210. 
 
 Peeled, but not skinned, passage in Isaiah, 176. 
 
 Pennyroyal worth more than a penny, 206. 
 
 Penthouse, an over-refined word, 206. 
 
 Pepys, diary of. See Grass-widows, 220, 221. 
 
 Perignon, cellarer to the Abbey of Haute Villiers. See 
 Champagne, 157. 
 
 Perrault's fairy story of Cinderella, 87. 
 
 Petronilla, Maria Stella. See Louis Philippe, 159. 
 
 Petronius Arbiter put to death by Nero, 99. 
 
 " Peveril of the Peak," mistake in, regarding Queen Eliza- 
 beth's birth. See Mistaken Anniversaries, 144. 
 
 Philip II. and Elizabeth of Valois. See Don Carlos, 156. 
 
 Philopena or Philippine, 206. 
 
 Piazza, an Italian word denoting the Spanish plaza, French 
 place, and English square, 89. 
 
 Piccolomini, Max, no myth, 156. 
 
 Piccolomini, Octavio. See Max Piccolomini, 156. 
 
 Pickaxes have no pick, 206. 
 
 Picts, the, were not painted, 114; the name originally a 
 tribal one, 114; no doubt of their fighting qualities, 114, 
 115. 
 
290 INDEX 
 
 Pierce, Sir, commonly supposed to have murdered Richard 
 
 II., 131. 
 Pile the same word as peel, 206. 
 Pilgrim Fathers, the, not Puritans, 138; did not start from 
 
 Plymouth, 139. 
 Pipe-coloring not modern, 61. 
 "Pitfalls of pedantry," 199-203. 
 Pitt (the elder) did not use the expression, " The atrocious 
 
 crime of being a young man," 192. 
 Plantagenets, the, 122. 
 Plaj'fair, Dr. Lyon, on bathing in Europe. See Mediaeval 
 
 Dirt, 149. 
 Plump children, 66. 
 Plutarch's allusion to Alexander, 91. 
 
 Polar bear nicknamed by the whalers ** Old Brownie," 39. 
 Pompey's Pillar erected by Publius, 2. 
 Pope Gregory VII. accused of burning Sappho's poems, 95. 
 Pope Johann (or Joan), a fable, 105. 
 Pope misled Warburton, 169. 
 Pope, the, infallibility of, 104. 
 Porsena, legend of, retold by Macaulay, 94. 
 Prester John, the kingdom of, 109. 
 Prevost, Abbe. See Cromwell, 169. 
 Primary colors, 71. 
 
 Primroses and other flowers, different colors of, 32. 
 Prince of Wales's three feathers. 129. 
 Printing press, the, introduction of, into England, 154. 
 Printing, who invented the art of? 153. 
 Prometheus and fire, tbe legend of, 61. 
 Proper names misapplied, — " Will o' the Wisp," 225. 
 Prophecy mistaken, in relation to Byron, 171. 
 Prussic acid and almonds, 82. 
 Pudding should have no g, 222. 
 Pulque skins, sold at Mexican railway stations, 83. 
 Purchas, John, " Pilgrimages of," 109. 
 
INDEX 291 
 
 Puritans not so strict, 139. 
 
 Puzzles for foreigners in pronunciation, 217. 
 
 Queen Bess's pocket-pistol, inscription and translation, 177, 
 
 178. 
 Quotations wrongly ascribed, 191. 
 
 Rabbits and Rarebits, 208. 
 
 Raspe, E. E., author of the story of Baron Mtinchausen. See 
 Baron Munchausen, 165. 
 
 Rattle-snakes, concerning, 57. 
 
 Rawlinson, Prof. George, compares Thothmes with Alexan- 
 der, 90; argues against the story of Cleopatra and the 
 asp, 98. 
 
 Red Sea, Hebrew Yam Snph, sea of bulrushes, 24. 
 
 Reindeer, the, introduction of, into the Klondike, 222. 
 
 Remarks attributed to wrong person, 191. 
 
 Reservoir of 1,001 columns a fraud, 3. 
 
 Rice paper made of trimmings of linen, 28. 
 
 Richard Coeur de Leon a subject of legend, 125 ; enters on 
 the third crusade, 125 ; imprisoned in Austria, 125 ; not 
 discovered by Blondel de Nesle, 125, 126. 
 
 Richai-d XL, Shakespeare's story of his death unreliable, 131. 
 
 Richard III. not a humpback, 136. 
 
 Ridings are Thirdings, 222. 
 
 Rizzio's bloodstains, belief in, a result of superstition, 147. 
 
 Rings, ancient Roman, 60, 7iote. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe, real story of, 165. 
 
 Roger of Hovendon relates story of flaying of French 
 archer, 126. 
 
 Romulus, story of, a myth, 95. 
 
 Roof of the world, the, 15. 
 
 Rose not a flower, 94 ; derivation of the name, 94. 
 
 Rosewood trees not red or yellow, but almost black, 30. 
 
 Rostopchin, Count, alleged incendiary of Moscow. See Mos- 
 cow, 160. 
 
292 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Round-robins, antiquity of, 65. 
 
 Rousseau on epicurism, 85. 
 
 Rufus not shot by an arrow, 121. 
 
 Rump Parliament prescribed size of paper for their journals, 
 
 " Saint " and " Holy " not synonymous terms, 104 ; mosque 
 
 of Saint Sophia not named for any saint, 104; Saint 
 
 Sepulchre Protestant churches in Eno:land, 104; Saint 
 
 Croix River in Wisconsin, 104 ; Saint Chapelle at Paris, 
 
 104. 
 Sairey Gamp a myth. See Hannah Glasse, 169. 
 Sala, G. A., imagined a quotation from Boswell's Johnson, 
 
 188. 
 Sanson, C. H., experiment on decapitating machine. See 
 
 Guillotin, 161. 
 Sappho did not commit suicide, 95 ; her nine books of lyric 
 
 poems burnt by an anti-Pag-an fanatic, 95. 
 Savonarola not the precursor of Protestantism, 108. 
 Saxons, the, did not land when the Romans left, 117. 
 Scaevola and King Porsena, 94. 
 Scaliger accuses Pope Gregory VII. of burning Sappho's 
 
 lyric poems, 95. 
 Scheie de Vere derives term "Freemason" from " Frere- 
 
 Mason," a brother mason, 216. 
 Schiller's Wallenstein. See Max Piccolomini, 156. His 
 
 famous tragedy of Don Carlos. See Don Carlos, 156. 
 Schmidt makes drawing of guillotine. See Guillotin, 161. 
 Schoffer, Peter. See Printing, 153. 
 Scorpion, why it stings itself, 54. 
 Scotus, Marianus, the first histoi'ian to mention the fable of a 
 
 woman pope, 105. 
 Scottish " shires " are misnomers, 18. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, on massacre of Glencoe. See Massacre of 
 
 Glencoe, 143. Mistakes made by, 167. 
 
INDEX 293 
 
 Seals are not flayed alive, 41. 
 
 Sealskin that is not sealskin, 40. 
 
 Sea, mistaken notions about the, 68. 
 
 Selkirk, Alexander. See Robinson Crusoe, 165. 
 
 Seneca a usurer, 97. 
 
 Shakespeare, slips of 132; Bohemia (" Winter's Tale"), has 
 no seaboard, 164; clocks (** Julius Caesar") not known 
 to the Romans, 164. 
 
 Shakespeare vs. Barnfield, 193. 
 
 Sheep and tar, absurdity of the proverb, 195. 
 
 Shelley, mistake as to the place of his drowning, 177. 
 
 Ship of the desert, the, the camel, 37. 
 
 Shrewmouse not a mouse nor akin to a mouse, 38. 
 
 Shrubs that do not grow, 223. 
 
 Skeat (Elymological Dictionary) defines "wainscot," 88, 
 89. 
 
 Sleepers that do not wake, 221. 
 
 Sloth, the, not slothful, 40. 
 
 Slow-worms and glow-worms, 55. 
 
 Small fry, 43. 
 
 Smith, Adam, originated the phrase, " A nation of shop- 
 keepers," 195. 
 
 Snakes do not coil round a tree, 56 ; have ears, 56. 
 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, traditionary sites of, 23. 
 
 Sophia, mosque, not called for any saint, 104. 
 
 Southey, his poem of Mouse Tower founded on misconcep- 
 tion, 176. 
 
 Sparrow of the Bible, the, 46. 
 
 Spenser, mistake of, in " Faerie Queene," 175. 
 
 Sphinx, the Egyptian, 3. 
 
 Split infinitive, the, 267. 
 
 Standard Dictionary gives derivation of word ** Creole," 88. 
 
 Stars do not " fall " or *' shoot," 9. 
 
 Steamboats, opposition to, 70. 
 
 Steam locomotion, 99. 
 
294 * INDEX 
 
 Steelyard, an odd popular misunderstanding, 223. 
 Stephenson not the first to construct a steam railway, 69. 
 Stevens, John, designed the first engine to carry passengers 
 
 on a track in the U.S., 70. 
 St. Peter's at Rome not the chief church of that city, 26. 
 Strangford, Lord, on the Picts, 114. 
 Street of the Golden Dragon, derivation of name, 176. 
 Sumner, the wrong, 171. 
 Sunstroke not chargeable to the sun, 9. 
 Sylvio, Joseph. See Max Piccolomini, 156. 
 
 Tacitus, hatred of, for Nero, 99. 
 
 Tailors and hatters, 223. 
 
 Talleyrand and Fouche, 187; Talleyrand did not invent the 
 expression, " It is the beginning of the end," " lis n'ont 
 Hen appris ni rien oublie" *' Words were given man to 
 disguise his thoughts," *' It is worse than a crime ; it is a 
 blunder," 187. 
 
 Tarquin's insult to Lucretia, story of, a legend, 94. 
 
 Tell, William, did not exist, 150; his story a myth, 150-152; 
 the legend common to many peoples, 152. 
 
 Tennyson, " Welcome to Alexandra," 118. 
 
 Terms misapplied, 240-259. 
 
 The ark that was not Noah's, 211. 
 
 The bitter end, originally a nautical term, 212. 
 
 "The dog and his shadow," confusion in phrase, 196. 
 
 " The Game and Playe of the Chesse " not the first book 
 printed in England. See The Printing Press, 154. 
 
 The movement of sap, 29. 
 
 The Old Nick, confusion in regard to derivation, 209. 
 
 The peep o' day is the pipe o' day, 205. 
 
 Thermopylae, the battle of, 92. 
 
 Thimbles not invented by the Dutch, 79. 
 
 Thorns, W. T., exposes frauds of Parr's and Jenkins's age, 
 178. 
 
INDEX 295 
 
 Thothmes the third not to be compared with Alexaader,,90 ; 
 
 his conquests narrated by Professor Rawlinson, 90. 
 TolstoY, Count, on the burning of Moscow. See Moscow, 
 
 160. 
 Tomb of Abel derives its name from ancient city of Abila, 3. 
 Tornado, description of, 88. 
 Traitor's Gate, the, is not tlie original, 135. 
 TransUition, errors of, 173. 
 
 Trevithick, Richard, father of the locomotive, 69. 
 Trivial and trifle are not allied, 225. 
 Troy, the story of, a myth, 92. 
 " Tulips and Turbans," mistake in Spenser's " Faerie 
 
 Queene," 175. 
 "Tun" and its meaning, 87. 
 Turkey, the, not from Turkey, 50. 
 ♦* Twenty Years After," geographical blunder of Dumas in, 
 
 172. 
 Tyler, Wat, why he was killed, 131. 
 Tyrrel, Walter, did not shoot William Rufus, 121. 
 
 *' Union Jack," origin of term, 87. 
 
 *'Un lapin du pays de Galles" French for Welsh rabbit, 208. 
 Unruly has nothing to do with rules, 204. 
 Unter den Linden, in Berlin, 18. 
 
 " Up guards and at them " never uttered by Wellington at 
 Waterloo, 189. 
 
 Various mistakes in derivations, 212. 
 
 Venetian glass not made in Venice, 10. 
 
 Venus was not a well-formed woman, 61. 
 
 Victoria, Queen, not a Guelph, 143 ; her names and descent, 
 
 144 ; mistake in regard to her accession, 144. 
 Vinegar's mother, 207. 
 Viking, pronunciation and meaning of, 85. 
 VioUet-le-Duc on bath-rooms in twelfth century. See Medi- 
 
 seval Dirt, 149. 
 
296 INDEX 
 
 Wainscot, Skeat's definition of, 87. 
 
 Wallenstein, Thekla. See Max Piecolomini, 156. 
 
 Warburton misled by Pope, 169. 
 
 Water, filtered, not purified, 67. 
 
 Waterloo, Cambronue at, 189. 
 
 Water, the fieeziug power of, 71. 
 
 Wear your furs outside, 62. 
 
 Welcome is not a well come, 208. 
 
 Westminster Abbey has never been an abbey, 4 ; Ben Jon- 
 son's name misspelled in, 189. 
 
 Whales do not spout water, 42. 
 
 Wharton, N. T., rejects story of Pope Gregory and Sappho's 
 poems, 95. 
 
 What a city really is, 25. 
 
 " Whiskey and Water." See Rabbits and Rarebits, 208. 
 
 White Tower, the, originally Caesar's Tower, 5. 
 
 " Within a windowed niche in that high hall," etc., not appro- 
 priate. See Cambronne at Waterloo, 189, 190. 
 
 Why " Cabby " is a " Jehu," 8. 
 
 Why the cock stands on steeples, 60. 
 
 Why the scorpion stings itself, 54. 
 
 Why trees split, 29. 
 
 Wiclif mistakes Keltic expression, 174. 
 
 Wise men of the East, 101. 
 
 " Woful Lamentation of Jane Shore," a ballad, 135. 
 
 Woman woe to man, 209. 
 
 Words falsely attributed to Caesar, 98. 
 
 Words in which blunders have become recognized as correct, 
 200, 201. 
 
 Words, phrases, and things that are misunderstood, 84. 
 
 Words that have been so long misspelled that the error has 
 become fastened to the language, 201, 202. 
 
 Words that have lost or gained letters by reason of the pro- 
 pinquity of an article, 201. 
 
 Words that some great men never spoke, 188. 
 
INDEX 297 
 
 Workingmen are not " Proletarians," 6. 
 Wormwood not a wood for worms, 33. 
 Wrong bones, the, 167. 
 
 Xerxes attacks the Spartans at Thermopylae, 92. 
 
 "Yellow Jack," the sailors' personification of yellow fever, 
 
 87. 
 Yellow-hammer. See Birds with Wrong Names, 44, 45. 
 
 Zebras, are they untamable ? 43. 
 Zoroaster, religion of, taken to India, 107.