The Scranton Tribune

Outline Studies
of Human Nature
An Expensive Cablegram.

A Philippine war correspondent for an Eastern paper sent in his usual dispatch for the day from a little town out on the firing line, relates the Chicago Tribune. Under the rules the dispatch had to be addressed and sent direct to the press censor, Captain Green, who, after he had passed upon it and struck out matter he regarded as objectionable, sent it over to the cable station. There the correspondent's co-laborer was to review it and strike out anything from the message that he had already sent. But he had himself hurried out to another part of the firing line in the afternoon and left word at the cable office that the messages which came in from the first correspondent should be sent just as they were to the paper in New York.

The first correspondent, thinking his co-laborer was to edit his message in the cable office, had, after writing his message, put on the following postscript: "For heaven's sake send me a new pair of khaki trousers. Some soldier stole mine yesterday, and I am wearing some pants I took away from a Filipino. Send me also a pair of socks, two cans of sardines and a bottle of whisky. We can charge it all up as street car fare or fodder for horses, or something like that."

The censor, of course, let the postscript go as it was written, for he supposed the man at the cable station would blue pencil it. But the co-laborer was not there and the night operator had no orders to do anything but send messages as they came in. Besides, he did not know but what it might be a code. So he sent it to the New York office.

There were 63 words in the postscript at $2.50 a word gold, amounting in all to $157.50.

What did the telegraph editor in New York think when he received that appeal for a pair of khaki trousers and a bottle of whisky? Nobody knows.

For the saddest part of this story is that it is true.