``'' There's a man outside with a wooden leg named Smith ``. '' What's the name of his other leg ``?''

Another stock vaudeville gag ran: ``Mother is home sick in bed with the doctor.''

When radio came in, it continued the misplaced modifier in its routines as a standard device.

``'' Do you see that pretty girl standing next to the car with slacks on ``? '' I see the girl but I don't see the car with slacks on ``.''

In recent years gagwriters have discovered this brand of blunder and thus the misplaced modifier has acquired a new habitat in the gagline. In one cartoon a family is shown outside a theater with the head of the family addressing the doorman: ``Excuse me, but when we came out we found that we had left my daughter's handbag and my wife's behind.''

Journalism supplies us with an endless run of such slips. Not long ago a newspaper advised those taking part in a contest that ``snapshots must be of a person not larger than ** f inches.''

Classified ads are also chockfull of misrelated constructions. Readers of the Reader's Digest are familiar with such items which often appear in its lists of verbal slips, like the ad in a California paper that advertised ``House for rent. View takes in five counties, two bedrooms.''

Since brevity is the soul of ambiguity as well as wit, newspaper headlines continually provide us with amusing samples. ``Officials Meet on Rubbish. Many Shapes in Bathtubs. Son and Daughter of Local Couple Married.''