A Faux Pas

L Figaro, Paris daily, recently, with touching ignorance, published a letter from Benjamin Franklin to Madame B. on the subject of ephemeral flies.

The New York Times gobbled the bait and reproduced a translation of the letter " which, as far as can be ascertained, has not been published hitherto."

TIME, credulous and unsuspecting, took the lead from these two great newspapers and produced a pathetic article entitled "M. Franklin to Mme. B."

Now, sad to say, from the dim recesses of the bookshelf of knowledge comes a work entitled The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, edited by F. H. Smith and published by the Macmillan Company in 1907. On page 206 of the seventh volume of this work appears the letter from Franklin to Mme. Brillon, called The Ephemera, written in 1778.

All of which goes to prove that scoops are sometimes as ephemeral as flies.