cing at a page, inquired, "Why pap_a_r instead of pap_e_r?"
Mr. Lenox was overwhelmed with mortification; but Stevens sent for a
skillful bookbinder, who removed the objectionable _a_ and with a
camel's hair pencil substituted an _e_ for it, so that the demon was
conquered after all, but only through great trouble. How would it seem
possible to reissue a printed book, copy it exactly, and yet make an
atrocious blunder? The Type Spirit is equal to even this feat. The book
was a mathematical one, full of formulae. It was not reproduced page for
page, so it was perfectly easy for a signature mark to get printed and
appear in the middle of a page mixed up with an equation, to the
confusion of American mathematical scholarship. More tragic were the
misprints in a work by the Italian poet, Guidi, which are said to have
hastened his death. In an interesting volume by Henry B. Wheatley on
"Literary Blunders," the Tricksy Puck of the Press has revenged himself
on the author for his attacks by smuggling in a number of misprints,
among them one that he must have inspired in the mind of the author, the
spelling "Bride of Lammermuir," which has no warrant in Scott's novel
itself. In the same book is a reference to Shakespeare that diligent
search fails to verify. Thus no knowledge or skill avails against the
Kobold of the Case. The most baffling device of the imp is to cause a
new error in the process of correcting an old one. This residuary
misprint is one against which there is no complete protection. When
General Pillow returned from Mexico he was hailed by a Southern editor
as a "battle-scarred veteran." The next day the veteran called upon him
to demand an apology for the epithet actually printed, "battle-scared."
What was the horror of the editor, on the following day, to see the
expression reappear in his apology as "bottle-scarred"!

Occasionally, however, the mischief maker takes a notion to improve the
copy set before him. The world will never know how often this has
happened, for authors are just as willing to take credit for
excellencies not their own as to lay on the printer the blame for their
own oversights. In one of Artemus Ward's articles he had spoken of a
starving prisoner as appealing for something to eat. The proof rendered
it something to _read_. The humorist accepted the substitution as an
additional absurdity. The French poet, Malherbe, once welcomed a
misprint as an improvement on what he had written. There