WHAT SMALL MISTAKES SOMETIMES SHOW.
SMALL mistakes sometimes tell large tales. That which to the ignorant appears like learning, easily shows itself as ignorance to the learned. "If I did not pronounce Rio Grande in the Spanish way," said a sciolist, "my friends would think I did not know any better." "Well," answered the scholar who was advocating the Anglicized pronunciation for Americans, "you don't know any better." And so with a very large proportion of those who would seem sufficiently literate and cultivated to write for the press. They would impress the editors with their facility in the marks of professional accomplishment. They would not send "a manuscript," but an MMS, or an M.S.S., or an MS.S., or an MM.S., or Mms. It is almost as rare to find such writers sending an MS. as "a manuscript." And, again, it is not uncommon to find handsomely printed books, pamphlets, circulars, etc., by or about an L.L.D. One "S" or one "M" too many, or one surplus period, is a small mistake with a large significance. Upon what principle are such abbreviations constructed? How much is there to know about such symbols? Evidently they are dangerous tools in the hands of the inexpert. No one can expect to use them safely, and to carve a writer's fortune with them, unless he is willing to study out what such signs stand for, and how success is not to be attained in literature or scholarship, any more than in any other walk of life, by relying upon seeming to know what one does not know.—S. S. Times.