TELEGRAPHS ON THE TRACK 29 1 



versa. This was a mistake of sound. The receiving 

 telegraphist or ^Yriter omitted the aspirate, or supphed 

 it in the wrong place. 



Blunders like these could only be met by a stringent 

 rule, which compelled the receiving telegraphist to 

 read over as well as count the words of a telegram 

 which his writer had written for him. Accuracy of 

 transmission, no less than speed, was the life-blood of 

 a telegraph company. I call to mind a shrewd 

 remark of Sir W. F. Cooke, in 1850, when a director 

 of the Electric Telegraph Company. ' It would be 

 better for the company,' he said, 'to lose ten pounds than 

 make a material blunder in a telegraphic message.' 



Perhaps the most singular case on record is that in 

 which an unusual irregularity transferred the text of 

 a betting telegram to the address of a social message. 

 So a lady in a North Wales watering-place, anxiously 

 awaiting news of her daughter's safe arrival at a 

 distant town, received a telegram duly addressed to 

 her, and couched somewhat thus : 



' Put two ponies on Marston Moor, but hold the 



monkey for the present.' 



On presenting the telegram at the office and re- 

 ceiving an explanation, the recipient declared she had 

 been quite sure that the telegraph instrument had 

 gone wrong, for not only was the message gibberish, 

 but it was not even in her daughter's handwriting. It 

 is not, I think, on record what action the betting 

 man took when he received the message meant for the 

 mother. TT^ 



