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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 3
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
Mr C. Morton's advertisement this month shows the series of « Karnac, » from long primer to two-line great primer. This is one of the original faces of the Dickinson Foundry, and one of the most artistic designs of its class.
« Cyclops » in the Mataura Ensign relates that the editor lately asked a friend in the country to report a concert. In reply, he says, « The correspondent proceeded without a tremor—at least there is no shake in the handwriting—to ask if the editor would publish 'a correct report of a country concert, with fair criticism.' Great Cæsar's ghost! What was the man thinking of?… I may inform him that when he forwards his 'correct' report of a country concert he can send with it a cheque for £50 to cover loss of subscribers and to pay for a police guard for the office for a week. »
In the autobiography of the Rev. J. G. Paton, one of the missionary pioneers in the New Hebrides (published by Messrs Hodder & Stoughton), the following interesting passage occurs:— « An ever-memorable event was the printing of my first book in Tannese. Thomas Binnie, Esq., Glasgow, gave me a printing-press and a fount of type. Printing was one of the things I had never tried, but having now prepared a booklet in Tannese, I got my press in order, and began fingering the type. But book-printing turned out to be for me a much more difficult affair than house-building had been. My biggest difficulty was to arrange the pages properly. After many failures, I folded a piece of paper into the number of leaves wanted, cut the corners, folding them back, and numbering as they would be when correctly placed in the book; then folding all back without cutting up the sheet, I found now by these numbers how to arrange the pages in the frame or chase for printing, as indicated on each side. And do you think me foolish, when I confess that I shouted in an ecstasy of joy when the first proof came out from the press all correct? It was about one o'clock in the morning: I was the only white man on the island, and all the natives had been fast asleep for hours. Yet I literally pitched my hat into the air, and danced like a schoolboy round and round the printing-press; till I began to think, Am I losing my reason?…. I afterwards heard that Dr Turner had printed a small primer in Tannese, translated by the help of the Samoan teachers; but this I never saw till near the close of my work on Tanna. Dr Geddie sent me a copy, but it was more Samoan than Tannese, especially in its spelling, and I could make little or nothing of it. »