A merchant of London wrote his East India factor to send him 2 or 3 apes;
but he forgot to write the "r" in "or," and the factor wrote that he had
sent 80, and would send the remainder of the 2 0 3 as soon as they could be
gathered in.


13. A very well-known writer had a similar experience. He was selling
copies of his first literary venture, and telegraphed to the publisher to
send him "three hundred books at once." He answered. "Shall I send them on
an emigrant train, or must they go first-class? Had to scour the city over
to get them. You must be going into the hotel business on a great scale to
need so many Cooks." I was bewildered; but all was explained when a copy of
the dispatch showed that the telegraph clerk had mistaken the small "b" for
a capital "C."


14. MAKING AN EXCUSE; OR, JOHNNY PEEP

[A guest pleading to be excused from a speech or a song might say that he
wanted to be accounted as "Johnny Peep" in the following story which Allan
Cunningham tells of Robert Burns.]

Strolling one day in Cumberland the poet lost his friends, and thinking to
find them at a certain tavern he popped his head in at the door. Seeing no
one there but three strangers, he apologized, and was about to retire, when
one of the strangers called out, "Come in, Johnny Peep." This invitation
the convivial poet readily accepted, and spent a very pleasant time with
his newly-found companions. As the conversation began to flag, it was
proposed that each should write a verse, and place it, together with
two-and-six pence, under the candlestick, the best poet to take the