Doctor concluded his remarks when the machine seized him, and in less time than it takes to write it, the pig was cut into fragments and worked up into delicious sausages. The occasion will long be remembered by the Doctor's friends as one of the most delightful of their lives. The best pieces can be procured for tenpence a pound; and we are sure that those who have sat so long under his ministry will rejoice that he has been treated so handsomely."

SLIPS OF THE TELEGRAPH.

The Prior of the Dominican Monastery of Voreppe, in France, recently received the following telegram:-"Father Ligier is dead (est mort); we shall arrive by train to-morrow, at three.— LABOREE." The ecclesiastic, being convinced that the deceased, who was highly esteemed in the locality, had selected it for his last resting-place, made every preparation. A grave was dug, a hearse provided, and with the monks, a sorrowing crowd waited at the station for the train. It arrived, and, to the astonishment of every one, the supposed defunct alighted, well and hearty. The matter was soon explained. The reverend father, returning from a visit to Rome, where he had been accompanied by the priest Laboree, stopped to visit some monks at SaintJean-de-Maurienne, and requested his companion to telegraph the return to his monastery. The message sent was: "Father Ligier and I (et moi) will arrive," &c. The clerks inadvertently changed the et moi into est mort, with what result has already been told.

A firm in Cincinnati telegraphed to a correspondent in Cleveland, as follows:-"Cranberries rising. Send immediately one hundred barrels per Simmons." Mr. Simmons was the agent of the Cincinnati house. The telegraph ran the last two words together, and shortly after, the firm were astonished to find delivered at their store one hundred barrels of persimmons.

SERIAL" INCONSISTENCY.

In Mrs. Oliphant's interesting story of "Ombra," there is a curious contradiction between the end of Chapter XLV. and the beginning of Chapter XLVI. A domestic picture is given, an interior, with the characters thus disposed:

"One evening, when Kate was at home, and, as usual, abstracted over a book in a corner; when the Berties were in full possession, one bending over Ombra at the piano, one talking earnestly to her mother, Francesca suddenly threw the door open, with a vehemence quite unusual to her, and without a word of warning-without even the announcement of his name to put them on their guard-Mr. Courtenay walked into the room."

Thus ends Chapter XLV., and thus opens Chapter XLVI. :

"The scene which Mr. Courtenay saw when he walked in suddenly to Mrs. Anderson's drawing-room, was one so different in every way from what he had expected that he was for the first moment as much taken aback as any of the company. * * * The drawing-room, which looked out on the Lung' Arno, was not small, but it was rather low-not much more than an entresol. There was a bright wood-fire on the hearth, and near it, with a couple of candles on a small table by her side, sat Kate, distinctly isolated from the rest, and working diligently, scarcely raising her eyes from her needle-work. The centre-table was drawn a little aside, for Ombra had found it too warm in front of the fire; and about this the other four were grouped-Mrs. Anderson, working too, was talking to one of the young men; the other was holding silk, which Ombra was winding; a thorough English domestic party-such a family group as should have gladdened virtuous eyes to see. Mr. Courtenay looked at it with indescribable surprise."

MISTAKES OF MISAPPREHENSION.

Soon after Louis XIV. appointed Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, he inquired how the citizens liked their new Bishop, to which

they answered, doubtfully: "Pretty well." "But," asked his Majesty, "what fault do you find with him?" "To say the truth," they replied, "we should have preferred a Bishop who had finished his education; for, whenever we wait upon him, we are told that he is at his studies."

There lived in the west of England, a few years since, an enthusiastic geologist, who was presiding judge of the Quarter Sessions. A farmer, who had seen him presiding on the bench, overtook him shortly afterwards, while seated by the roadside. on a heap of stones, which he was busily breaking in search of fossils. The farmer reined up his horse, gazed at him for a minute, shook his head in commiseration of the mutability of human things, then exclaimed, in mingled tones of pity and surprise: "What, your Honor! be you come to this a' ready?"

Cottle, in his Life of Coleridge, relates an essay at grooming on the part of that poet and Wordsworth. The servants being absent, the poets had attempted to stable their horse, and were almost successful. With the collar, however, a difficulty arose. After Wordsworth had relinquished as impracticable the effort to get it over the animal's head, Coleridge tried his hand, but showed no more grooming skill than his predecessor; for, after twisting the poor horse's neck almost to strangulation, and to the great danger of his eyes, he gave up the useless task, pronouncing that the horse's head must have grown (gout or dropsy) since the collar was put on, for he said it was downright impossibility for such a huge os frontis to pass through so narrow a collar! Just at this moment a servant girl came up, and turning the collar upside down, slipped it off without trouble, to the great humility and wonderment of the poets, who were each satisfied afresh that there were heights of knowledge to which they had not attained.

BLUNDERS OF TRANSLATORS.

A most entertaining volume might be made from the amusing and often absurd blunders perpetrated by translators. For

instance, Miss Cooper tells us that the person who first rendered her father's novel, "The Spy," into the French tongue, among other mistakes, made the following:-Readers of the Revolutionary romance will remember that the residence of the Wharton family was called "The Locusts." The translator referred to his dictionary, and found the rendering of the word to be Les Sauterelles, "The Grasshoppers." But when he found one of the dragoons represented as tying his horse to one of the locusts on the lawn, it would appear as if he might have been at fault. Nothing daunted, however, but taking it for granted that American grasshoppers must be of gigantic dimensions, he gravely informs his readers that the cavalryman secured his charger by fastening the bridle to one of the grasshoppers before the door, apparently standing there for that purpose.

Much laughter has deservedly been raised at French littérateurs who professed to be "doctus utriusque linguæ." Cibber's play of "Love's Last Shift" was translated by a Frenchman who spoke "Inglees" as "Le Dernière Chemise de l'Amour;" Congreve's "Mourning Bride," by another, as "L'Epouse du Matin;" and a French scholar recently included among his catalogue of works on natural history the essay on "Irish Bulls," by the Edgeworths. Jules Janin, the great critic, in his trans-lation of "Macbeth," renders "Out, out, brief candle!" as "Sortez, chandelle." And another, who traduced Shakspeare, commits an equally amusing blunder in rendering Northumberland's famous speech in "Henry IV." In the passage

"Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,

So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone."

the words italicized are rendered, "ainsi douleur! va-t'en!""so grief, be off with you!" Voltaire did no better with his translations of several of Shakspeare's plays; in one of which the "myriad-minded" makes a character renounce all claim to a doubtful inheritance, with an avowed resolution to carve for

himself a fortune with his sword. Voltaire put it in French, which, retranslated, reads, “What care I for lands? With my sword I will make a fortune cutting meat."

The late centennial celebration of Shakspeare's birthday in England called forth numerous publications relating to the works and times of the immortal dramatist. Among them was a new translation of "Hamlet," by the Chevalier de Chatelain, who also translated Halleck's "Alnwick Castle," "Burns," and "Marco Bozzaris." Our readers are, of course, familiar with the following lines :

:

"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on't! Oh, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden

That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,
Possess it merely."

The chevalier, less successful with the English than with the modern American poet, thus renders them into French :

"Fi done! fi donc ! Ces jours qu'on nous montrons superbes Sont un vilain jardin rempli de folles herbes,

Qui donnent de l'ivraie, et certes rien de plus

Si ce n'est les engins du cholera-morbus."

Some of the funniest mistranslations on record have been bequeathed by Victor Hugo. Most readers will remember his rendering of a peajacket as paletot a la purée de pois, and of the Frith of Forth as le cinquième de le quatrième.

The French translator of one of Sir Walter Scott's novels, knowing nothing of that familiar name for toasted cheese, "a Welsh rabbit," rendered it literally by "un lapin du pays de Galles," or a rabbit of Wales, and then informed his readers in a foot-note that the lapins or rabbits of Wales have a very superior flavor, and are very tender, which cause them to be in great request in England and Scotland. A writer in the Neapolitan paper, Il Giornale della due Sicilie, was more ingenuous. He was translating from an English paper the account of a man who killed his wife by striking her with a