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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 4
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
The Photographic Society of Geneva has been endeavoring to test by actual experiment the generally-received opinion that married partners in the course years develop a likeness to each other. Photographs were taken of seventy-eight old couples, and of a like number of adult brothers and sisters. Careful examination showed that the matrimonial resemblance was greater than the family likeness: a fact the more remarkable, as opposites are so often selected in marriage. Family likenesses are strong in early life; and the experiment is of interest, not only as confirming a matter of common observation; but as illustrating the external and visible signs of the drifting apart that so often occurs with members of a family, and on the other hand, of the physical effects of unity of tastes, objects in life, and environment.
Legislators are an ungrateful set, when reporters are concerned. From the Shorthand Journal we learn that a Sydney councillor complained that his speech in Hansard was « perfect nonsense. » This is a most accurate description of the greater number of Parliamentary speeches; and it is chiefly owing to the intelligence aud consideration of the reporters that the speeches are readable at all. For all this labour the shorthand writer has no thanks. But if he does make a slip, or too faithfully records an honorable gentleman's utterances, public complaint is made at once. Our experience—and Typo has had a good deal in reporting—is, that extempore speakers very rarely know what they have said. This applies both to good speakers and bad. If the latter—and they are generally the most voluble and conceited, whose ambition it is to fill the greatest number of Hansard pages—could only hear themselves for a single evening as the public, and especially the reporters, hear them, they would subside for ever into a silence so profound that, at last, they might gain, if not wisdom, at least the reputation of possessing it.