ins your town
to-day, I noticed what appeared at a distance to be one gigantic tree.
It was only when I got close to it and sat down under its branches that
I perceived that what I had thought was one tree was really two
trees--as completely distinct in origin, growth, and nature as if they
had stood a hundred miles apart." No one in the audience (besides
myself) noticed the infelicity of the illustration; nor do I think that
the worthy "Deputation," if he had perceived it, would have had the
presence of mind to act as a famous preacher did in like circumstances,
and, throwing up his hands, exclaim, "Oh, blessed contrast!"

But it does not always require verbal infelicity to produce a "Thing one
would rather have expressed differently." The mere misplacement of a
comma will do it. A distinguished graduate of Oxford determined to enter
the Nonconformist ministry, and, quite unnecessarily, published a
manifesto setting forth his reasons and his intentions. In his
enumeration of the various methods by which he was going to mark his
aloofness from the sacerdotalism of the Established Church, he wrote; "I
shall wear no clothes, to distinguish me from my fellow-Christians."
Need I say that all the picture-shops of the University promptly
displayed a fancy portrait of the newly fledged minister clad in what
Artemus Ward called "the scandalous style of the Greek slave," and
bearing the unkind inscription--"The Rev. X.Y.Z. distinguishing himself
from his fellow-Christians"? If a comma too much brought ruin into Mr.
Z.'s allocution, a comma too little was the undoing of a well-remembered
advertisement. "A PIANO for sale by a lady about to leave England in an
oak case with carved legs."

An imperfect sympathy with the prepossessions of one's environment may
often lead the unwary talker to give a totally erroneous impression of
his meaning. Thus the Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford once brought an
Indian army chaplain to dine at the high table of Oriel, and in the
common room after dinner the Fellows courteously turned the conversation
to the subject of life and work in India, on which the chaplain held
forth with fluency and zest. When he had made an end of speaking, the
Professor of Anglo-Saxon, who was not only a very learned scholar but
also a very devout clergyman, leaned forward and said, "I am a little
hard of hearing, sir, but from what I could gather I rejoice to infer
that you consider the position of an army chaplain in