But the quotation was written and printed:
Better fifty years of Europe than a circus in Bombay.
One of the worst perversions of a hackneyed quotation (incorrectly given by the speaker) is this, which seems to be the joint work of the zealous reporter and the equally reckless printer:
Amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, sed major veritas.
I may cuss Plato, I may cuss Socrates, said Major Veritas.
Here are other illustrations of the great danger of following the sound regardless of the sense:
Those lovely eyes bedimmed.
Those lovely eyes be damned.
Behold the martyr in a sheet of fire!
Behold the martyr in a shirt on fire!
This battle-scarred veteran.
This battle-scared veteran.[1]
A congressman advocated grants of public lands, not to railroad corporations, but to "actual settlers."
The tired translator of the telegraphic report of the speech construed the last words as "cattle stealers."
An editor closed his leader concerning some municipal abuse that he wished to reform with the quoted Latin lament, o temporal o mores! which the compositor transformed to "O temperance! O Moses!" and it was so printed.
A reporter of a trial tried to write that "the jury
- ↑ Pendleton, Newspaper Reporting, pp. 172-183.
