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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
The Secretary of the Midland Railway Company has written to Messrs. Isaac Pitman & Sons on the adoption of their system of shorthand by the Company, as follows:— « It is perfectly true that we endeavor as far as possible to diffuse a knowledge and an efficiency of shorthand writing among those employed by this company, and it will at once occur to any one that it would be inexpedient to do otherwise than teach the same style throughout. Yours is the system we adopt and exclusively teach. »
Edward Everett's definition of a good education was: « Read the English language well, write with despatch a neat legible hand, and be master of the first four rules of arithmetic, so as to dispose at once, with accuracy, of every question of figures which comes up in practice, and if you have the ability to write pure grammatical English, you have an excellent education. There are the tools. You can do much with them, but you are helpless without them. They are the foundation; and unless you begin with these, all your flashy attainments, a little geology, and all other -ologies and -osophies, are ostentatious rubbish. »
؟Is the beautiful art of wood-engraving to follow that of line-engraving into the limbo of arts too costly to be carried on at a profit? The latter art was for a time kept alive by the great art-unions; but even with them it is being displaced by etchings on the one hand, and heliogravures and kindred mechanical processes on the other. Regarding wood - engraving, the London correspondent of the Inland Printer, writing of Fleet-street, says: « Artists have taken themselves off to the suburbs, and wood - engravers have ceased to exist. The whole of the cheap illustrated papers are adorned by process-blocks, save in so far as wood-engravings are to be picked up second-hand. Wood-engravers, once a well-to-do body of men, are miserably poor, and utter nothing but complaints. Even the Illustrated News and Graphic have ceased, or nearly ceased, to employ the engraver; Punch alone clings to it. The king of engravers, W. J. Linton, has recently delivered a series of remarkable lectures; but he cannot put life into an art that belongs to a bygone age. »
We had a few remarks lately about the amenities of journalism. Here are two or three recent examples of the kind of thing which injures the press more than any outside influences can do. The Wellington Post published a paragraph stating that the Napier Herald had suppressed the telegraphed report of an after-dinner speech by the Premier in order that it might not appear in the evening papers. The charge was a damaging one, and was quite unfounded. The Herald retorted in the following undignified manner: « We beg to inform the Post in the most unmistakable fashion that its statement is a deliberate falsehood, and it was published two days after the original liar who started the story in Napier had publicly apologised for the untruth. » —This is from the News, another Napier paper, in reference to the editor of a country contemporary: « He is now talking a lot of nonsense about the Tamaki Block, and says W. C. Smith is not game to bring an action for libel. There's an old Scotch saying—'Dinna halloo till you're oot o' the bush!' Just so; in the sweet bye and bye, the genial bit of blue paper, with 'Victoria by the grace of God,' will be toted along. All in good time, Mr Ellison. »
The following extracts from the half-yearly report of the Board of Management of the Wellington Branch of the N.Z.T.A. are of interest: « In connexion with the late general strike, aimost every member is aware that an attempt was made to actively implicate this Association in the conflict. Members have cause to congratulate themselves on the fact that their cautiousness prevented them being led blindly into the struggle, which terminated without the object of the strikers being attained, and leaving Unionism in a state of temporary disorganization. The strike, however, has been the means of opening the eyes of Unionists to the weak points in their system, and this experience, though dearly bought, and coming, as it has, in the comparative infancy of Trades Unionism in this colony, will doubtless have a beneficial effect in future.… If one thing more than another has been demonstrated by the late strike it is the fact that the system of levying for the purpose of raising relief funds is both unsatisfactory and obnoxious. Members attend meetings for the purpose of considering what assistance they shall render to a specified purpose, and in a moment of enthusiasm strike a levy for an indefinite period. In the case of a large percentage of members this generosity usually lasts about the same length of time as their enthusiasm—about a fortnight—and the collectors then experience great difficulty in obtaining the money, some members taking advantage of any quibble to either postpone or evade payment altogether. A small weekly contribution to a contingency fund would doubtless obviate this difficulty and save much unpleasantness. »
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The announcement that a large discovery of Wyclif manuscripts has been made at St. Petersburg (says the B. & C. Printer and Stationer) is received by the Wyclif Society with rather mixed feelings. On the one hand, there may be some new manuscripts, but on the other the society is not in a position to print them, and there will have to be either a special appeal or a new society formed if they are sufficiently important to make it desirable that they should see daylight, after lingering in manuscript for five hundred years.
A contemporary has been collecting some of the humors of the hustings. Speaking on the subject of loans, a candidate said. « We have got to the end of our tether—the merchant got a share of them, the land speculator profited by them, even the working men precipitated in them. » But the record was broken last general election in blunders, when an 'orny 'anded candidate emphatically remarked that the longer he looked into these landed monolopies the more completely was he putrefied! At another contest a gallant Major thus addressed the electors:— « I stand before you, fellow citizens (Hear, hear). As I said before, I stand before you, fellow citizens. If I can't do you any harm, I won't do you any good. I can't speak fairer than that. » The electors thought not, and put him at the bottom of the poll. He was followed by a prominent solicitor, who thus contemptuously defied his slanderers:— « Gentlemen, my calumniators may say what they like; their slanders fall off me like duck off a water's back! » Another candidate prudently put copious notes in his hat, to which he frequently referred; but the larrikins finished him up by calling out, « Let us 'ave your speech out of your 'ead, old man, not out of your bloomin' 'at! » and be collapsed ignominiously. Charles Southwell once triumphantly defeated an elector—six feet in his stockings—who for a solid hour kept him from speaking at the hustings by shouting out. « Yer a jumping play-acther, so ye are. Ye live by yer wits! » Taking advantage of a moment's quiet, Southwell quietly leaned over the bannister, and said « It's true, Peter, I live by my wits; but if you had to live by your wits, Peter, you would have been starved long ago. You're two-storied, Peter, but the attics are to let! » A roar of laughter succeeded, and Southwell was enabled to finish his speech in peace. The last example is from Victoria. A bucolic patriot had been asked by the electors whether he was in favor of a borrowing policy, and his agent explained to him that debentures were issued, and the money raised thus on the debentures had to be paid off some time or other, but usually it was left for posterity to do so. The candidate thereupon informed the electors that he was in favor of them 'ere debentures, and that it was only right that our posteriors should be left to pay for them!
The country correspondent of a contemporary reports that since his last letter he has « unearthed two more shoe-makers. » —A Wanganui paper records that a Philadelphia doctor has discovered the hydrophobia bacillus in a dog which he has « rendered rapid by inoculation. » —During a recent rifle match, according to a Marlborough contemporary, « the light was very dark. » —The Egmont Settler, a Taranaki paper, is inclined to exalt its district at the expense of the residents. « Taranaki, » it remarks, « is indeed a veritable paradise, 'Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.' » This is about the roughest thing that has yet been written of the Taranaki settlers.—The Wairarapa comps have some original ideas, and have furnished us with several paragraphs. One on the Standard has just worked off the following: « Col. Eoberts holds the inquest this afternoon at 2 o'clock. It is believed that he will be interred at Featherston on Wednesday. » Mr J. A. Froude mixes his metaphors sometimes. In his latest book he writes of a time « when false steps might have swept this country into the whirlpools. » —A French doctor, writing a work on mental alienation, wrote in the margin of the proof this direction to the corrector: Il faut guillemeter avec soin tous les alineas. (Carefully quote all the fresh paragraphs.) On receiving the completed book, he was stupefied to find the following sentence interpolated: Il faut guillotiner avec soin tous les aliénés. (All lunatics should be carefully guillotined.)—A Parisian paper, puffing a new mine in extravagant terms, spoiled the whole effect by a single wrong letter. The editor summed up in the words: Cette mine est certainement la plus riche du monde enfilons. The last word signifies « veins. » It came out filous, making the passage read « This mine is certainly the richest in the world in swindlers. » Once again the intelligent comp appears to have hit the right nail exactly on the head. —A Masterton town councillor suggested that the borough should obtain an « iron copper » for asphalting purposes, and was quite at a loss to know where the laugh came in.—A Wellington compositor, by substituting a comma for a decimal point, made the Victorian wheat-fields yield in the 1890-91 season the amazing result of 14,876 bushels per acre.—A Marlborough paper lately announced the Hinemoa to sail for Palmerston North. The floods were out at the time; but not quite to that extent.