31 JANUARY 1891, Page 31

[TO THE EDITOR OF TEE " SYECTATOR.1

SIR,—About eighteen or twenty years ago, I received from an Italian friend in Italy, a request to me to do for him a com- mission that did not admit of delay. Being in the habit of sending him joking telegrams, I replied by telegraph in two words,—" Farotelo precipitevolissimevolmente :" "I will do it for you with all possible speed." In the course of the day I received a message begging me to call at the neighbouring district post-office ; and on going there, I was very courteously informed by the chief clerk that my message had not been sent, because the head of the Italian department of the General Post Office objected that one of the words I had used was not. in the Italian language. I was somewhat annoyed that my message should have been thus delayed for several hours, and begged the clerk to inform the head of the Italian department at St. Martin's-le-Grand that the word was in the Italian language ; and, as a matter of fact, it is mentioned both in Fanfani's and Barberi's dictionaries, and it occurs in the Rime of Franco Saechetti :— "Non Kende, no, ma ruzzola le scale, Precipitevolissinievelniente."

I begged him to inform the head of the Italian department of this. The clerk answered me with a smile : "Well, Sir, he is a German."

I am bound to say, however, that this is the only complaint I have ever had to make in sending foreign telegrams front